Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium Program

Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium

His Southern California Work and Legacy

Symposium

Saturday, April 13, 2024

Wilshire Ebell Theatre, Los Angeles, CA

LA Garden Tours

Sunday, April 14, 2024

A Note from the President and CEO

As a national organization encompassing many gardening zones, the Garden Conservancy is always on the hunt for outstanding local and regional stories that can inspire America’s gardeners. The Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium is the perfect program in that regard. An intrinsically interesting topic—one of the least studied aspects of America’s most famous architect—it combines Southern California history, culture, and preservation. In other words, it is perfectly aligned with Conservancy’s vision to “be the champion and steward of the vital role gardens play in America’s history, culture, and quality of life.”

James Brayton

Hall

President and CEO

The Garden Conservancy

Hollyhock House patio view from loggia. Courtesy of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures.com.

Cover: Frank Lloyd Wright, Millard House (La Miniatura), Pasadena, CA. Colored pencil and graphite on paper. Reproduced courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art I Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

Welcome to the Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium

Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” It was certainly true for Wright. He relocated to the city in the early 1920s, after the murder of his lover and the completion of a major project in Japan. He was unmoored and Los Angeles was the city of the future. The Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium looks to the past to inspire a better future. It has been almost two years in the making. The symposium rst took shape through conversations with Janet Parks and developed further with the assistance of Jennifer Gray and Jeffrey Herr. I wish to express my gratitude to this organizing committee and to their associated organizations, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

The narrative arch of today’s program is shaped like an hourglass. Our rst two speakers, Janet Parks and Laura J. Martin, will approach the topic in broad strokes, painting a general picture of Frank Lloyd Wright and his ecological thinking. The talks by Abbey Chamberlain Brach and Jenny Jones will narrow in focus to examine Wright’s crowning achievement in Los Angeles, Hollyhock House, its history and its future as a park and garden. Our last two presenters, Kenneth Breisch and Sa na Uberoi, will broaden the discussion to consider Wright’s in uence on subsequent generations of modernist architects and garden designers in Southern California and beyond.

Horatio Joyce, Ph.D.

Director of Public Programs & Education

The Garden Conservancy

ran o d right s architectura dra ing of San arcos in the esert an un ui t resort hotel for Alexander Chandler. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

Program

Opening Remarks

Stacy Brightman, Executive Director, The Ebell of LA

Horatio Joyce, Director of Public Programs and Education, The Garden Conservancy

Frank Lloyd Wright: A Personal Discovery of His Landscape Designs

Janet Parks, Architectural Historian

Keynote Address: The Past and Future of Ecological Gardening

Laura J. Martin, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Williams College

Hollyhock House: A Garden House & Art Park

Abbey Chamberlain Brach, Director & Curator at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House

Rewilding the Modernist Garden and City

Jenny Jones, Landscape Architect, Terremoto

The Long Shadow of Frank Lloyd Wright in Southern California

Kenneth Breisch, Emeritus Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Southern California

The Accidental Gardener

Sa na Uberoi, Filmmaker

Panel Discussion

Moderated by Joseph Marek, Landscape Architect and Garden Conservancy Board Member

Closing Remarks

Horatio Joyce

p.m.

Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium: His Southern California Work and Legacy

The Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium is a two-day, in-person event in Los Angeles that was developed in partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

The symposium will examine how Wright and other early twentieth-century architects responded to the Southern California landscape and their relevance to gardens today.

Perhaps no architect has been more written about than Frank Lloyd Wright, but his designs for gardens remain less studied and understood, despite how important landscape and nature were to his thinking. Los Angeles is home to one of Wright’s crowning achievements, Hollyhock House (1916–21), a residence originally designed as “half house and half garden.”

Wright embraced landscapes and plants of many types and climates, including native plants, an interest shared with his friend and landscape architect Jens Jensen. Wright’s appreciation of landscape was also enriched by his love of Japanese culture.

Having designed Hollyhock House while in Japan, Wright relocated to Los Angeles in 1923 and began working with his son, Lloyd Wright, a gifted landscape designer who had worked for the Olmsted Brothers in California. Wright spent only a few years in Southern California, yet he created remarkable work in the Hollyhock, Ennis, Storer, and Freeman houses.

Completed more than 100 years ago, Wright’s houses in Southern California are being revitalized as the region changes beyond what he could have anticipated, impacted by drought, pollution, and climate change. The Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium will examine how he and other architects of the period responded to the local landscape and climate, and how they invite us to think about contemporary issues of the twenty- rst century.

The symposium will feature landscape architects, historians, curators, and stewards of Frank Lloyd Wright–designed houses. The event will be of interest to all gardeners, designers, architects, and students who are passionate about history and design, and what they can teach us about gardening today.

Hollyhock House, Residence A, West façade at entrance.

The Past and Future of Ecological Gardening

Biodiversity is struggling, confronted with climate change, persistent pollution, habitat fragmentation, and other extraordinary challenges. Dr. Laura J. Martin, author of Wild by Design, will discuss how garden and landscape history can guide the future of biodiversity restoration, calling for restoration as a means of collaborating with other species.

Dr. Laura J. Martin is a historian and ecologist who studies solutions to the global biodiversity crisis. She is the author of Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration. Her work has been featured in venues including the New York Times, the Atlantic, TIME, and the Washington Post. She is currently Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Faculty Af liate in History at Williams College in Massachusetts.

Symposium Speakers

Abbey Chamberlain Brach

Director and Curator, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House

Hollyhock House: A Garden House & Art Park

This richly illustrated talk will provide an overview of the original design and the park’s evolution, as well as insights into new interpretive approaches that engage the legacy of Hollyhock House as a harbinger of California Modernism.

Abbey Chamberlain Brach is Director & Curator at Hollyhock House, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. She manages interpretation and preservation, including a major restoration of the Residence A guest house begun in 2017. Previously Abbey worked at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the Decorative Arts and Design curatorial department.

Kenneth Breisch

Emeritus Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Southern California

The Long Shadow of Frank Lloyd Wright in Southern California

Frank Lloyd Wright’s impact on the architecture of Los Angeles is immense. Of note is the work of his son and landscape designer Lloyd Wright and one-time protégé Rudolf M. Schindler. The work of all three architects was strongly in ected by the climate and topography of the region, a concept that became central to the development of the unique design tradition that subsequently evolved in Southern California, an aesthetic that will form the focus of this presentation.

Ken Breisch holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and is Professor Emeritus in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California, where he taught architectural history for twenty-two years with an emphasis on Southern California architecture and landscapes.

6 I FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT GARDEN SYMPOSIUM THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY

Jenny Jones

Landscape Architect, Terremoto

Rewilding the Modernist Garden and City

Jenny will share Terremoto’s work and ethos, which seeks to create beautiful gardens based on kindness, collectivity, humility, and wildness. Terremoto is currently working on a planting update at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House, and Jenny will share Terremoto’s approach to working on this iconic property, as well as other signi cant modernist houses and gardens.

Jenny Jones is a landscape architect and principal at Terremoto’s Los Angeles of ce. Jenny co-leads Terremoto’s Test Plot projects and their Land & Labor working group, in addition to working on many historic gardens throughout LA. She studied Landscape and Planning at the University of Virginia.

Janet Parks

Architectural Historian

Frank Lloyd Wright: A Personal Discovery of His Landscape Designs

As the former Curator of Drawings and Archives at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Janet oversaw the transfer of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives to Avery. Wright’s original drawings and photographs, both historical and contemporary, can indicate new directions of understanding the role of landscape in his work.

Janet Parks was Curator of Drawings and Archives at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library for nearly 40 years. She is currently on the board of directors of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.

Sa na Uberoi Filmmaker

The Accidental Gardener

Seven years ago, Sa na, a documentary lmmaker, found herself doubly privileged. She and her husband bought a 1954 Usonian designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Cincinnati, OH, while also residing in the Santa Monica mountains in Los Angeles. Both houses were set in neglected landscapes. A roller coaster journey began to understand Wright’s ideas about nature, discover native plants in two very different environments, and learn to drive a truck fully loaded with mulch across the country.

Sa na Uberoi is an award-winning lmmaker who has written and directed prime-time documentary lms for the BBC, ABC, SBS, and ESPN. Sa na grew up in India and worked extensively in Australia before moving to the US. Sa na is an active member of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.

Joseph Marek

Landscape Architect and Garden Conservancy Board Member

Discussion Moderator

Joseph Marek is a landscape architect and a board member of the Garden Conservancy and Ganna Walska Lotusland. As principal of Joseph Marek Landscape Architecture, he applies the same fundamental principle to every project: the creation of timeless spaces that combine the grace of classical design with a modern sensibility. In each of his designs, he draws on a lifelong interest in plants and a wealth of experience to convey the sensibility of a “garden.”

Tour of the Hollyhock House and Garden

10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

YOUR GUIDES

Abbey Chamberlain Brach

Director & Curator at Hollyhock House, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs

Heather Goers

Preservation Manager at Hollyhock House, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs

Amy Korn

Founding Partner and Design Principal, Korn Randolph

Hollyhock House is Frank Lloyd Wright’s rst Los Angeles commission and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Built in 1921 for oil heiress and arts patron Aline Barnsdall, the house was designed as her personal residence and the centerpiece of a cultural arts complex. Wright was committed to making Hollyhock House sympathetic to the region, and the emphasis he placed on the landscape is remarkable. If one accounts for all the patios, garden courts, the exedra, and roof gardens as originally proposed by Wright, the amount of outdoor space at Hollyhock would have been ve times the amount of usable indoor space. This tour will explore both the house and the site, sharing insights about Wright’s holistic design as well as restoration efforts today, including the Korn Randolph–led landscape plans and the Terremoto-designed native gardens.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT GARDEN SYMPOSIUM THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY

Hollyhock House and Garden. Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures. Courtesy of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs

FRANK

LLOYD WRIGHT GARDEN SYMPOSIUM I SUNDAY, APRIL 14

Tour of the Schindler House and Garden

2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

YOUR GUIDE

A docent from the MAK Center for Art and Architecture

The Schindler House has the inevitability of a masterpiece. Incorporating both architectural and social theory, it unfolds formally, spatially, and intellectually with a coherence of indoor and outdoor space unparalleled in early modern architecture. It was the shared vision of architect Rudolph Schindler and his wife Pauline; he gave brilliant architectural form to her interest in a revisionist lifestyle. Schindler moved to Los Angeles to work for Frank Lloyd Wright. He supervised work on the Hollyhock House and was considered one of Wright’s most talented protégés for a period. Using a consistent four-foot module and standardized “Slab-Tilt” wall construction, Schindler created a building in which no two spaces are alike while at the same time seamlessly integrating indoors and out, creating, in his words, “A Real California Scheme.” Remarkably, since its origin, the Schindler House Garden has been under the care of the same gardener.

Schindler House. Courtesy MAK Center. Photo: Tag Christof, 2021.

A Warm Welcome to Our Open Days Community!

Fueling America’s passion for gardens, the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program is the only nationwide garden visiting program. Thanks to our exceptional community of garden owners and volunteers, there are more than 350 Open Days across the United States in 2024!

Open Days in Southern California have never been busier! This year marked our rst-ever, wildly successful Open Day in Palm Springs, and we have two full weekends of garden visiting in Pasadena (April 21) and Los Angeles (April 28). For more information and to register: gardenconservancy.org/open-days

Reach out to us at opendays@gardenconservancy.org to open your garden next year!

Casa Nancina, 2023 LA Open Day. Photo: Matt Harbicht.

Garden Conservancy Membership

Become a Garden Conservancy member and be part of a growing national community passionate about gardens and the essential role they play in our lives.

Join us as we explore some of the most stunning and unique gardens across the United States through Open Days, learn from experts through our in-person and virtual educational programs, and celebrate the horticultural, historic, and cultural value of American gardens through our preservation work.

Your membership not only will help fund our programs; it also connects you to all we do through exclusive member bene ts. As a member, you will receive several complimentary credits redeemable for Open Days or Virtual Talks, member pricing on all events, the Conservancy’s publications, and more!

Visit gardenconservancy.org/membership or call 845.424.6500 to join today!

2023 Open Day at Urban Wildlife Habitat, Los Angeles, CA. Photo: Matt Harbicht.

THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT GARDEN

Preservation

Since 1989, the Garden Conservancy has worked with more than 100 gardens to advance our mission to preserve, share, and celebrate America’s gardens and diverse gardening traditions for the education and inspiration of the public.

The Garden Conservancy’s preservation department assists garden owners, managers, and community organizations across the country to address a wide range of challenges—from historic rehabilitation and organizational development to collections management and documentation.

The gardens we partner with, from the smallest to the largest, express the artistic spirits of their creators and showcase the broad diversity of garden history and styles found in North America.

To learn more about our preservation work, visit gardenconservancy.org/preservation.

Garden Futures Grants

The Garden Conservancy awards Garden Futures Grants for small public gardens and other nonpro t organizations, making a signi cant impact in their communities through garden-based programming or by contributing to the study and preservation of garden history. In 2023, we awarded $102,000 to 15 organizations nationwide.

For more information about the Garden Conservancy’s grant opportunities, email gardenfutures@gardenconservancy.org

The Garden Conservancy interviews Brent Leggs, Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and Senior Vice President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, about the profound significance of the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum in Lynchburg, VA.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT GARDEN SYMPOSIUM THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY

Chicago Community Gardeners Association, 2023 grant recipient.

Thank You

The Garden Conservancy extends its sincere gratitude to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for helping develop our symposium.

Long-time friends of the Conservancy, the Garden Club of America and the Hancock Park Garden Club were instrumental in helping promote our event.

We are grateful to Hollyhock House and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture for hosting the LA Garden Tours.

Thank you to The Ebell of Los Angeles, our program sponsor of the Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium. Its beautiful facilities provide the perfect setting for our discussions about the history and future of gardening.

The Garden Conservancy educational programs are made possible in part by the Coleman and Susan Burke Distinguished Lecture Fund, Courtnay and Terrence Daniels, the Lenhardt Education Fund, and Susan and William McKinley

Additional support is provided by the Celia Hegyi Matching Challenge Grant, Mrs. Ritchie Battle, the Antonia Breck Fund, Camille Butrus, Michelle and Perry Grif th, Rise S. JoÚson, The Krehbiel Family Foundation, Sleepy Cat Farm Foundation, and JoÚ S. Troy, FASLA.

Garden Conservancy Board of Directors

Robert M. Balentine

Chair

Sharon Pryse

Vice-Chair

James Brayton Hall

President and Chief Executive Of cer

Susan Payson Burke

Secretary

Jean-Paul Montupet

Treasurer

Courtnay S. Daniels

Chair Emerita

Benjamin F. Lenhardt, Jr.

Chair Emeritus

Directors

Mary Randolph Ballinger

Shelley Belling

Allison K. Bourke

Camille Butrus

J. Barclay Collins II

Kate Cordsen

Elizabeth Everdell

Alease Fisher

Lionel Goldfrank III

Cathy Barancik Graham

Susan Zises Green

Kaye Heafey

Suzanne Kayne

Frederick A. Landman

Elizabeth Locke

Joseph Marek

Katie Ridder

Jorge A. Sánchez

Christopher Spitzmiller

Raun L. Thorp

Marshall Watson

Directors Emeriti

Linda Allard

Douglas H. Banker

Josephine B. Bush

F. Colin Cabot

Barbara Whitney Carr

Edward N. Dane

Page Dickey

Dorothy H. Gardner

Dr. Richard W. Lighty

Susan Lowry

Joseph F. McCann

Chapin Nolen

Barbara Paul Robinson

Ann Copeland Rose

Deborah Royce

Susan Stone

Nancy Thomas

Dana Scott Westring

Louise Wrinkle

Garden Conservancy Staff

President’s Of ce

James Brayton Hall, President and Chief Executive Of cer

Pruda E. Vingoe, Chief of Staff and Board Liaison

Finance & Administration

Donna Mortensen, Chief Operating Of cer

Arie Bram, Database Manager

Jevon Maxwell, Database Assistant

Elaine Zanck, Business Manager

Nadia Morgan, Administrative Assistant

Preservation

Pamela Governale, Director of Preservation

Camille Sasena, Preservation Associate

Programs & Education

Horatio Joyce, Director of Programs & Education

Amy Murray, Open Days Program Manager

Phillip Carruthers, Public Programs and Education Associate

LeeAnn Corrao, Public Programs and Events Coordinator

Development

Bridget Connors, Director of Development

Lorraine Mahon, Fellows Tours Program Coordinator

Julie Kirkpatrick, Membership Manager

Kayte Handler, Development Associate

Communications

Cliff Weathers, Director of Communications

Kirill Ginko, Marketing and Digital Content Manager

Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium

His Southern California Work and Legacy

Frank Lloyd Wright Garden Symposium

His Southern California Work and Legacy

LLOYD WRIGHT GARDEN SYMPOSIUM THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY

Hollyhocks at Hollyhock House. Photo: Jeffrey Herr.

OUR MISSION

The mission of the Garden Conservancy is to preserve, share, and celebrate America’s gardens and diverse gardening traditions for the education and inspiration of the public.

OUR VISION

The Garden Conservancy will be the champion and steward of the vital role gardens play in America’s history, culture, and quality of life.

THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY

Post Of ce Box 608 I Garrison, NY 10524 I 845.424.6500

Email: info@gardenconservancy.org Website: gardenconservancy.org

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