Research Garden DesignBrowse photos, get design ideas & see the hottest plants
As anyone in Hollywood knows well , continuation often disappoint . To redesign and improve on success without gilding the lily is one of the great challenge in any subject field . So when the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles acquire the twentieth - hundred sculpture collection of benefactors Fran and Ray Stark , and ask a stead to show it , the museum wisely returned to Dennis McGlade , a partner at the Olin Partnership and the original designer of the Getty ’s landscape gardening , for expertness .
picture by : Marion Brenner .
The commission was to enhance the existing landscape so as to create compelling degree sets for the large - scale sculpture works , and the design owes at least a top of the hat to showbiz .
By direction of a collaboration with the Getty ’s 18 - twelvemonth veteran plantsman Michael DeHart , the land now sing in concord with a sensational new cast of character . A brilliant reddish de Suvero figure , Gandydancer ’s Dream , visually vibrates in a succulent green stand of junipers ; the shining russet scab of Aeonium ‘ Zwartkop ’ echo the color of bronze works by Isamu Noguchi , Henry Moore and Elisabeth Frink .
DeHart and workfellow Lynne Tjomsland are both veterans of Disney place , and of Walt Disney ’s signature storytelling ethic . “ We ’ve used industrial plant to get out the oculus through , to define rooms by room of color , grain and as a means to punctuate the sculpture , ” says Tjomsland . For object lesson , Verbena bonariensis “ bloom a indulgent curtain of mauve ” among gray - white artemisia leaf . See - through gray - blue sky grasses extend and animate the force . The LEED - EB - license site includes drip irrigation and replace much of the cut lawn with granite paths and California indigene .
A new T1 tram post was build so visitant could go from the street - level parking facility to the top of the hill where the museum is located . The new gardens , which opened officially in 2007 , include a green cap and several other terrace , some travertine - stepped , along the hillside property that includes 150 germinate Akka on 700 Akko of precious Los Angeles real the three estates .
McGlade , a student of the bang-up Glaswegian Ian McHarg and a alumna of the University of Illinois and University of Pennsylvania , has other projects in the works : a new community in the Cayman Islands boast tropical gardens , a Richard Meier residential complex in Beverly Hills and a progressive biotic community plan on a reclaimed riverfront “ brownfield ” location in Napa . For the latter , the idea is to repurpose some of the old industrial artifacts , like reclaimed gantry cranes , says McGlade . There might even be an out-of-door film screen . “ Can you reckon viewing On the Waterfront there ? ” ask McGlade with joy .
The new Getty Gardens are close on Mondays ; for more information call 310 - 440 - 7300 or seegetty.edu/visit .
