Landprints by By Susan Heeger - Princeton Architectural Press

Susan Heeger

L A N D PR I N T S

The Landscape Designs of Bernard Trainor

L A N D PR I N T S

The Landscape Designs of Bernard Trainor

L A N D PR I N T S

55000

9 781616 891305

ISBN 978-1-61689-130-5 US$50.00 / UKÂŁ30.00 Princeton Architectural Press / www.papress.com

Susan Heeger

Copyrighted Material.

L a n d pr i n t s The Garden Designs of Bernard Trainor

By Susan Heeger Photography by Jason Liske and Marion Brenner

P r i n c e to n A rc h i t ec t u r a l P r e s s N e w Yo r k

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Ta bl e o f Co n t e n t s

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Acknowledgments

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Introduction

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R iver m o u th

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F ynb os

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Fa lco n R id g e

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B o u le a n d Olive s

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W in d a n d S e a

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Oa k Tr a il

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Fo oth ill

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H a ll’s R id g e

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Gyp sy

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Teh a m a

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Project Credits and Details

A Coastal Dune

Embracing Essentials

Capturing Water, Borrowing Woodland

California Mediterranean

Pacific Edge

The Spirit of Trees

Wrapping a Ranch House

Connecting the Dots on a Mountaintop

From Hill to Infinity

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Elem ents If you’ve hiked the wilderness of California, following trails through the state’s Coast Range or climbing rocky bluffs above the beach, you’ve seen the enormity of its reach, the force of the heaving, twisting land, the fuzzy meadows and sharp ridges; you’ve heard the ocean’s crashing tides and the land’s sleepy, sun-drunk silence. In these places, the light can be hard and pitiless, and the heat crippling. But when the Pacific fog seeps inland from the ocean, the views become soft, and the cold is stunning. It’s not always a gentle world, but it’s exhilarating and elemental.

This elemental charge sparks the landscapes of Bernard Trainor, an Australian-born designer who has made it his life’s work to honor California’s spirit in gardens across the state.

Neither a naturalist nor an architect, he uses the tools of both to create places that are at home on hilltops and craggy seasides, but hospitable to the people living there too. He’s an observer of the land, not only of what exists now but what has been and might have been— rolling grasslands shot with wildflowers in the spring; or sprawling acres around tile-roofed

I n t ro d u c t i o n

ranchos, where cattle once grazed.

Co nte x t Rather than trying to recreate the past, Trainor mines the details of each place: its native plants, rock, and soil; its climate and topography; its regional architecture and culture; and its history and use. Distilling these, he conceives contemporary landscapes that belong where they are and that offer people comfortable places from which to experience the living world.

Though he also works on the smaller scale of urban and suburban lots, some of his best-known gardens—and those this book portrays—are monumental. Located mostly on the Monterey Peninsula and in rural settings north of San Francisco, they unfold over many acres and extend visually across miles of adjoining land that is often part of state preserves. On these one-of-a-kind tracts, Trainor specializes in a type of artistic conceit, applying simple, understated frames to rugged natural panoramas, the better to bring them into focus. Instead of calling attention to itself, his work draws lines around the wondrous, pulling viewers outward, toward the sound of water and the smell of sage, inspiring sense memories and feelings for the land.

“Nature is not a place to visit; it is home,” wrote poet Gary Snyder—and so it is in Trainor’s gardens.

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O r i g i ns

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Born in southern Australia, Trainor grew up on the Mornington Peninsula, sixty miles south of Melbourne. He surfed its isolated beaches and wandered wind-smacked dunes, enthralled by the scrappy plants that survived the storms, salt spray, and poor soil. His fascination with nature—its powerful, almost primitive impact on the senses—led to his decision to study horticulture and design at Melbourne’s Holmesglen College. As a student, Trainor worked for a local parks department and soon became uncomfortably aware of the widespread Australian practice of forcing English-style garden models—which arose in cool, wet places—on a wilder, more arid land. “It struck me,” he says, “that I was dousing these temperamental plants in annual borders with fertilizers and fungicides so they’d live where they didn’t belong.”

He moved on—to London, where he worked as a gardener for Beth Chatto, the indefatigable English voice of regionally appropriate design. “Her starting point,” he remembers, “was to ‘choose plants that are going to grow and thrive where you are. If they’re not at home, they shouldn’t be there.’” During the same period, he earned a second landscape design diploma from the English Gardening School at the Chelsea Physic Garden, immersing himself in landscape history and the classic principles of great design. Still, he felt restless and out of place in England, and when he was invited to direct a landscape design firm near San Francisco in 1995, he jumped at the chance. California, he recalls, “liberated me.” Greatly moved by the beauty of the Pacific Coast, which reminded him of Australia, he hiked and drove around the region, studying its terrain and plants, its varied weather and shifting light.

Eventually, he discovered Monterey, where cypress trees lean over the fog-shrouded ocean, iconic and mysterious.

“The land gets inside us,” says nature writer Barry Lopez. So Monterey seized Trainor, who moved there in 2002, soon after opening his own landscape architecture office. He began designing residential gardens in the spirit of the place, using native plants, along with compatible varieties from similar climates (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa), and local materials.

From Big Sur to Carmel-by-the-Sea, from the San Francisco Bay Area to Napa and Sonoma counties, he shored up dunes and planted meadows with native grasses, lupine, poppies, and wild lilac. He built sheltering walls from California stone and steps from weathered timbers.

He piped water through fissured boulders to make fountains.

Opposite: Santa Lucia Preserve

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In some gardens the refinement of built elements—especially the meticulously crafted,

of house do they have and how is it oriented? Are there mature, existing trees or hedges that

stacked-stone walls—contrasts strikingly with the rough exuberance of their surroundings, a

might give a new garden a sense of character and age?

contrast that amplifies the power of each. Yet often, if you turn a corner in the same land-

“The analysis starts,” Trainor explains, “as I, sometimes with others from my office, am

scape, the design sits so lightly on its site that you almost miss Trainor’s hand. “If you can’t

driving to the property, past farms, ranches, buildings, towns, fences, gates, streams, boul-

always tell what I’ve done, that’s fine,” he says. “I want my gardens to connect seamlessly with

ders, plant habitats. As I go, I become aware of local culture and natural history. By the time I

surrounding plant communities, to look as if they’re meant to be.”

reach the site, I already have a strong sense of the area’s regional quality. After that, I rely on my instincts, intuition, and a lot more observation. I see the big picture quickly and then work

Co nserv i n g

back to smaller things. It’s not a formula, it’s a feeling.”

A cornerstone of Trainor’s approach is the conservation of resources. Beginning with an impulse toward economy, he is “driven by practical as well as visual considerations,” as he

Ba l a n ce

explains. “I aim to be frugal with design and materials, stripping away ornament and focus-

Along with the setting, the architecture of the buildings on a property plays a large part in a

ing on what’s essential and logical for each location—seeing how little I can do for the great-

garden’s layout. Trainor’s clients tend to be very interested in art and architecture, and they

est impact. Because I came in through the back door, through apprenticing in horticulture

often live in modern or contemporary homes, with crisp, clean forms. The lines of Trainor’s

rather than getting a landscape architecture degree, I wasn’t exposed at first to words like

landscapes are usually similarly crisp, but his penchant for clear and understated design has

‘sustainable,’ ‘ecological,’ or ‘the genius of the place.’ I learned about these things myself

even more to do with what works in a given place than what suits a particular house. “When

before I ever read about them. I figured them out the hard way. And there’s something great

you create a strong frame,” he says, “you make the looser part of the design—that big, natural-

about learning like that, making mistakes, just experiencing the process, and coming to real-

istic view—more vibrant, because it’s framed. Nature becomes more comprehensible when you

ize how it all relates.”

manipulate its edges, give it limits, rather than seeing it as having no beginning and no end.”

Where a garden and its plants belong, they not only look right, they also thrive with little

Trainor always aims to balance good spatial design with the wild, sometimes messy world

help—they’re generous and undemanding.

of plants. “Some designers,” he observes, “meet the challenge by planting a place to death; others fieldwork it endlessly. My interest is in the two together. I’m drawn to well-thought-out

S t u dy

spaces, sustainability, and regional awareness more than I have to have this or that plant. But

Trainor works with a studio team that includes Michael Bliss, a licensed landscape architect,

what gets my juices going is a plant telling me, ‘I’m a living thing. You’re not going to control

David LeRoy, a horticulturist and landscape construction specialist, and Ben Langford, a land-

every aspect of my being.’ I feel that landscape architects who are very rigorous in their site

scape architect and LEED-certified designer with a background in sculpture and sustainable

work and see landscape simply as a support for architecture sometimes miss this—that we

urban design. Trainor is involved in every project at every stage, from conception to completion.

get to work with plants, that we’re dealing with a living world of beautiful, imperfect things!”

The most important—and most intense—part of any project he and his team take on involves

The designer believes that it’s a losing proposition to impose strict geometries on irregu-

analysis of the site: the study of its topography, hydrology, plant communities, light exposures,

lar, naturalistic sites. “My designs,” he notes, “are often fractured, not based on any simple

microclimates, and views, which all play a role in the landscape the designers develop. What

point or perspective. They respond to complexity onsite and work with it to make my landscape

trees, shrubs, grasses, and wildflowers grow naturally or especially well on the property, or

harmonize with the bigger picture.”

nearby? Has the land been ranched or grazed? Does a river or stream run through it? Who are the clients, how do they live, and what do they want from their surroundings? What sort

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Fo cus Trainor is a great admirer of the English landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy, and there’s a similarity to the way both perceive and work within the broader natural context. While Goldsworthy draws lines in snow or sand against mountain ridges or knobby cliffs, Trainor swirls the lines of rock walls or meandering paths against tide-washed coves. In each case, foreground and background speak volumes to one another, enriching our perspective. And in both, the ever-evolving living world—the passing hours and seasons—constantly changes our experience of the created object or scene.

For Trainor, collaboration with nature often means stepping back and paring down a design so that the natural world is emphatically the star and main event. To explain the level of focus and revelation he strives for, the designer quotes the Australian architect Glenn Murcutt, whom he admires: “‘I see simplicity not so much as a disregard for complexity but as a clarification of the significant.’”

It’s hard to miss the significant in Trainor’s gardens, even if you can’t translate it easily into words. In his landscapes, although they do feature patios and terraces, outdoor dining rooms, and swimming pools, there’s somehow less than the expected distance between the visitor and the raw charge of experience. Swimming in one of his pools, you might feel as if you’re paddling straight out into the soft furze of a chaparral. Walking a zigzag path to an ocean overlook, you’re suddenly there, confronting the roar and tumble of the waves.

Peo ple With all his emphasis on natural splendor, Trainor is careful to give clients what they need.

“You can err too much on the side of nature,” he acknowledges. “It’s crucial for people to feel connected to places, to feel good in them and protected.” The architectural lines of his fences and pools help direct views in reassuring ways; paths tell you where to go, and walls cut the wind in seating spots. But even providing for human comfort, Trainor steers clear of unnecessary ornament; he goes big, respecting the setting: “I do everything possible to enter with humility and not overpower what’s there. It’s already better than anything I could do. At the same time, in these wide-open places, you need a big paintbrush, big ideas, so scale-wise, the design harmonizes with what lies beyond.”

Opposite: Boule and Olives

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History moves him as much as context. In California, he observes, “some of the best design occurred through necessity, in missions and ranchos. Their ingenuity is beautiful. Their builders used what they had, thought ‘locally’ because they had to. I love the honesty and straightforwardness of this approach.” While Trainor’s concerns are contemporary, he looks for precedent on historic properties; he lets architecture speak and old houses have their way. He might build walls, for example, using the same locally quarried stone he finds in existing paths and chimneys. Sometimes he dismantles and reuses vintage fencing. He drives the countryside, looking for building and gate details—elements constructed for practical reasons from what was affordable and at hand.

Li g ht a n d A rt As he works out planting designs, Trainor likes to hike through the woods and fields near a project’s site for inspiration. “I love finding new plants—or plants new to me—in local habitats,” he says, “and then using them my way rather than trying to imitate nature. It’s taken me a long time in California to understand how to approach some of these huge, wild places.” In his years here, he’s been stirred by the way early artists and photographers depicted the local landscape’s majesty. Among his favorites, he says, Ansel Adams was especially sensitive to light and shadow, “which can be more powerful than light itself: the way tree shadows move on rock; a cloud falls on water. Here, it’s all about the shifts and shadows, the fog nestling in low spots with the look of a settled lake, the ethereal effects you just catch before they vanish.”

Trainor sees and works the Western landscape with the fresh perspective of a traveler who’s found a home here. His outsider’s eye makes his gardens unique among those by contemporary American landscape architects. With subtle gestures and almost minimalist forms, he explores the existing character of each setting, highlighting native and climate-adapted plants and regional drama while resolving complex sites into places that can be experienced and enjoyed simply.

A tour through ten of his largest, most ambitious landscapes reveals how he organizes the practical elements of each garden against the backdrop of rugged mountains, canyons, and the ocean. Addressing his clients’ needs and aspirations, he builds his compositions around themes, choosing site-specific materials and bringing a meticulous level of craft to creating landscapes that are imbued with the soul of their setting.

Opposite: Aeonium at Rivermouth 18

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Trainor met the owners of this ocean-view bluff in coastal Carmel at a San Francisco garden symposium in 2001. Hearing the designer talk about his work, they liked his emphasis on the power of place. Like many of Trainor’s clients, the couple had bought their property because of its character and views and wanted to honor them, as well as the existing 1929 cottage built of redwood and stone. Nevertheless they hardly used their outdoor space, which was alternately battered by winds and blasted by sun, and lacked sheltered spots for lounging and enjoying vistas. Except for old, specimen Monterey cypress trees (Cupressus macrocarpa) and scrappy, storm-ravaged iceplant (Mesembryanthemum crystallinum), there were few plants to nestle the house into its wild surroundings.

During his first few site visits, inspired by “the spirit of crazy waves, muscular hills, and huge sky,” as he remembers, Trainor developed plans for mediating between the human and natural worlds. One of his biggest challenges was the property’s rugged, ocean-facing slope, which, once the invasive iceplant was removed, threatened to fall away toward the road below.

In contrast to some neighboring landscapes, where the land drops in neat stair-steps and

R i v ermo u th

enclosed garden rooms to that road, Trainor chose to let the natural contours of the land dictate where swaths of plants and descending paths should go. To shore up the hill, he gathered old grape-stakes piled at the property’s edges and installed bands of irregular fencing that

A Coastal Dune

recall sea-washed driftwood.

Carmel, California, 2006

In the zone between the hillside and the house, he faced a different challenge: to create places where the owners could feel comfortable outside, on the edge of a precipice, without adding elements that would interfere with ocean and mountain panoramas. Working outward from the house—and taking cues from the detailing of its chimney made of local stone and existing landscape walls—he designed linked stone terraces on the most commanding yet exposed point of the site, an overlook above rolling dunes, a lazy river, and the Pacific. To create a feeling of security, the main viewing terrace is tucked a few steps below the others and edged with a low, wind-buffering stone wall. Paths take advantage of the cool shade beneath the trees, amid plantings of aqueous-colored succulents that echo the ocean’s blues beyond.

The farther you venture from the house, the more the plants give way to carpeting natives that weave in with those on distant slopes.

Trainor loves the look of local coastal scrub—its subtle golds and silver-greens. Yet not content with simply recreating the appearance of an oceanside dune, he called on nativeplant expert David Fross, co-author of California Native Plants for the Garden (Cachuma

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Press, 2005) to establish a planting concept. The two roamed nearby hills, Fross pointing out species that would thrive at Rivermouth. “He wasn’t looking for the most beautiful natives,” Trainor remembers, “but the ones that would look best because they belonged. A common mistake people make with these plants is thinking they’re all equally good and good together because they’re natives. They mix up plants from different ecosystems that aren’t necessarily compatible—redwoods, oaks, meadow flowers—in one small space. You have to understand your habitat.”

At Rivermouth, the compatible handful he chose with Fross include wild lilac (Ceanothus), the sturdy California field sedge (Carex praegracilis), and manzanita (Arctostaphylos). These became the core of the landscape’s palette and the slope-holding carpet Trainor exchanged for the iceplant, without amending the soil or even watering once the natives were established. Other Californians sprouted on their own: yellow sand verbena (Abronia latifolia), for example, and coyote brush (Baccharis), contributing splashes of seasonal color.

On the home’s sheltered, leeward side Trainor added climate-friendly plants native to other mild, coastal regions, to the entry garden. Rosette-shaped Aeonium arboreum from the Canary Islands, fragrant rosemary from the Mediterranean, and purple-flowering Echium fastuosum from the Portugese archipelago of Madeira all lend drama and deliberateness to the scene that greets arriving visitors.

“I’m mesmerized,” Trainor says, “by how powerful nature is. It’s not always easy to fit people in without overwhelming them, or else putting too strong a human stamp on nature.

When both are in harmony, that’s when a garden becomes beautiful.”

The lounging terrace, built of local Carmel stone, overlooks the Carmel River lagoon and Monterey Bay.

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Heavy coastal winds have dramatically shaped the site’s Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa).

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Left: Steps of repurposed timber and local pebbles create a meandering path amid the tousled sedge and coastal poppies.

Opposite: The small beach house was built in 1929 using local materials. Trainor crafted the grape-stake fence, a dune stabilization device, of wood reclaimed from the site.

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Opposite: Local sage, Ceanothus, dune verbena, lupine, Artemisia pycnocephala, and the coastal poppy Eschscholzia maritima weave together in a carpet that supports the slope.

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Driveway

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Garage

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Parking

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Entry

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House

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Monterey Cypress

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Viewing Terrace / Firepit

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Main Terrace

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Grapestake Fence

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Steps to Beach

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Native Grass Lawn

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Opposite: Twisted, weathered steel contrasts with the project’s reclaimed timber steps.

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Nearly a decade ago, a professional couple from San Francisco bought twenty acres in rural Marin County, envisioning a weekend retreat from their busy lives. They built a clean, contemporary stucco-and-glass house and accompanying guest house, designed by San Francisco architects Kotas Pantaleoni. Competitive swimmers, the owners asked Trainor to add a pool for their work-outs. Otherwise, he recalls, “They so loved the setting, they wanted nothing to interfere with it, nothing too ‘gardeny.’”

En route to his first site meeting, Trainor began forming impressions about the place, as he drove through rolling parkland and fields that were part of ranches or former ranches nearby. Exotic grasses grew on land used to graze cattle, and here and there appeared patches of purple needlegrass (Nassella pulchra)—evidence of long-ago native meadows that once blanketed the region. Then the uphill road veered suddenly west and south, and a large vista opened before him: One enormous tree anchored the foreground, a century-old bay that spread a hundred feet wide. From there, the land rambled out and down, to meet the edges of a state park, and beyond, the spine of mountains that included iconic Mount Tamalpais.

F yn b os

strong, and on a scale that meant something in the midst of this. Small gestures would get

Embracing Essentials

points, and getting to know the terrain of the place. Dramatic in its sweep, it was almost over-

Lagunitas, California, 2003

whelming. For the owners to enjoy it, he would have to balance the majestic with the intimate,

Right away, it was clear, Trainor recalls, that “I would have to contribute something very lost. They’d be embarrassing.” He spent hours walking the land, observing views and vantage

to provide secluded spaces for living that would welcome and protect people near the house.

Trainor began by designing human-scaled spots that extend naturally from the architecture of the buildings on the site: The master bedroom opens onto a quiet courtyard with a reflecting pool; the house and guest house are linked by a sunny patio; and the kitchen overlooks a dining terrace. Farther away from the house, the connection between interior and exterior spaces loosens. There’s no discernable, formal grid; nothing lines up along a single axis or separates “designed” from untouched portions of the site. The house overlooks meadows of native grass—punctuated by yarrow, lupines, and poppies—that roll out in rippling carpets in all directions. Wide concrete steps, embedded in the meadows, drop down to the swimming pool, itself afloat in a sea of grass, with only a small deck to one side. Set out in the distance, the pool holds sky and clouds in its polished mirror, its clean geometry a poignant contrast to the roll and tumble of the surrounding plants and hills. “I spend a lot of time,” Trainor explains, “playing with important structural elements such as pools, rotating them, changing

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their length, moving them closer and farther from the house, looking for that ‘magic zone,’ where there’s a sense of total inevitability.”

One of the designer’s goals for the site was the restoration of grassland, replacing invasive, exotic turf grass with the area’s main native needlegrasses, Nassella lepida and Nassella pulchra. Since true restoration—reintroducing exactly what grew in a place centuries ago—is never possible, Trainor creates “interpretive” restorations, bringing back the plants that once predominated, while adding others that might have grown with them and completing the mix with harmonious natives from climates similar to California’s. Here, amid the needlegrass, he seeded in wildflowers of the region and hand-planted the textural accents of taller grasses, such as native deergrass (Muhlenbergia rigens) and climate-adapted exotics—Mediterranean rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) and South African thatching reed (Thamnochortus insignis).

The old, existing bay tree, likely sown by a bird, is another relic of the past that fits, a living sculpture on the land, mimicking its rounded contours.

The resulting picture is surprisingly changeable, as storm winds rip through, winter fields turn summer-gold, and fog creeps in from the coast, forming silver lakes in the folds of hills. As easily as Trainor’s understated design suits this land, there’s a challenge, he concedes, to such edited compositions. “How do you create a subliminal sense of absolute simplicity,” he asks, “without feeling that something’s missing? It’s easier to put more stuff in gardens, things to hide behind. This is the closest I’ve come to stripping landscape to its essentials.”

The fog drifts into the valley below the pool, casting silvery light on deergrass, California poppies, and Salvia sonomensis.

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