Mountain Home Magazine by Ward Dilmore

COVER PHOTO BY AARON ALVAREZ MENDOZA

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Ward Dilmore moved to California after a phone interview landed him a coveted gardener position at Filoli Historic House & Garden. He left Boston and moved into a hacker house in Atherton with ten people. “I knew almost nothing about Silicon Valley—I thought it was just outside LA,” he admits. “Little did I know, I had accidentally moved into the most expensive zip code in the country. I had saved up what I thought was an endless fortune at the time,a whopping $6,000,and soon realized I had to work harder than ever to maintain a basic standard of living.Who would’ve guessed!”

Sitting on the patio of the Woodside Library in late winter, hiding in the shade from the intense sun, is quite a change in climate from his native East Coast.“The sun in the Bay Area is like a good lawyer, even if it’s a cloudy or rainy day it will try and get you the best deal on some sun at some point during the day.Though it can feel like a radioactive death ray in the sky in the summer, I’ll take that over a car covered in ice a million times over.”

Ward grew up on acreage of a former farm that had been taken over by an old-growth forest.“My parents built our family home on the property themselves while living out of a VW Camper van. In case you didn’t guess already,they were of the hippie generation and created an incredible nature wonderland for my brother and me as we grew up.”Living a childhood steeped in nature,he developed an interest in horticulture early on.“My parents remind me that from around three or four years old, I liked to take family friends by hand and teach them the names of all the plants in the garden.Though I have no recollection of it, I guess the kid was onto something.”

Ward Dilmore Behind the Hedges of Silicon Valley’s Estate Gardens

By Abbie Burgess

Ward began his horticulture career at age 15 on a large estate in his hometown. “The owner had small farms of ornamental trees surrounding the hill his property was on.The landscape was complete with many formal gardens, shade gardens, and a Japanese garden built in the style of Monet’s painting.” Looking back, Ward believes this experience taught him far more than the degree in horticultural technology he went on to earn.At the time, it was just an interesting job.“When high school friends were getting jobs at fast food joints and coffee shops for their 昀椀rst jobs, I was watching a billionaire landing his helicopter on his front lawn. Hey, it beats washing dishes…which I had to do during the winter months when New England goes into full frozen wasteland mode for eight months.”

At the University of Sussex in the UK,Ward studied international relations in addition to horticultural technology, achieving what he describes as “perhaps one of the most bizarre combination of degree backgrounds.”Though he considered a career in diplomatic work or working at international NGOs to pursue his love of travel, horticulture won out. “Working with nature had the strongest gravity throughout my life,” he explains.

“Traveling rocketed my interest in landscape and design into orbit. Seeing where the concept of lawns came from (Castles in the UK wanting clear lines of sight) to boxwood hedges (French royalty

Ward Dilmore has been landscaping private estates since he was a teen. Photo by Aaron Alvarez Mendoza.

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wanting to control nature) is an interesting lesson in landscape history. Many towns and municipalities in Europe,especially in the Mediterranean countries,value public gardens.This brought tremendous inspiration to me to see creative ways to beautify even parking lots.”

In the south of France,Ward toured large estates and studied some of the world’s most opulent gardens.“It is an area that takes landscape to an incredible level,”he says.“If you can picture Roman decadence with seafront views you can get the picture, though this is the 21st century so just add gold ceilings, private raves, helicopters, and armed guards on golf carts to be more accurate.”

In 2015, Ward moved from Boston to California to exercise his horticultural education year-round.“After years of travel, I have yet to 昀椀nd a place with the same unique energy and feel as the Bay Area, especially the Peninsula. Even sitting in traf昀椀c on 280, I feel like I’m a part of an ambitious community of frustrated commuters all vying to express their inner drive.Yes, it’s expensive, though pick any location on a planet and if you imagine most people want to live there, it’s bound to drive up that housing market.”

With Ward’s hacker shack days behind him, he is now a resident of Woodside which he observes has a unique mix of residents. “When living in Woodside you can 昀椀nd some retirees in a charming cottage home that they’ve owned for most of their lives, living next to the founder of a company that can in昀氀uence the entire US economy based on their mood that morning.”

In the broader world of celebrity in昀氀uences, Ward shares that chef Anthony Bourdain’s perspective on art, culture, and travel inspired him enormously.“He elevated an industry that was in the background and not very well known or considered interesting by the general public and made it universally engaging,”Ward explains.“I feel a similar exposure has yet to be done in the landscape world and it is primed to become the next sexy, cool industry.”Ward also admires astrophysicist Neil deGrasseTyson.“He took an industry that had once been hidden under a veil of academia and intense scienti昀椀c study and made it accessible for all to appreciate through his communication style.”

Private Estate Gardenings

There is an entire industry devoted to maintaining large estates that is largely unnoticed by the general public, explainsWard. In places where high net-worth estates are concentrated

such as Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, the Hamptons, there lies a thriving network of people who maintain these homes.Ward is one of them.

Starting from that 昀椀rst position at age 15,Ward has honed his skills as the head gardener at many private estates. “The private estate world is a very underground one, and in the Bay Area there are some particularly impressive estates. I tend to think of them as feudal kingdoms with their own worlds of staff, NDAs, politics, and extraordinary architecture. When it comes to their landscapes, there are world-class designs, and gardens that the public seldom sees, it can feel a bit like gardening atArea 51,”he quips. “Especially working at many higher pro昀椀le clients' homes, where seeing them in person is a strangely validating feeling of ‘Huh, I guess they’re not just an avatar in the news, they’re a real person after all!’”

It’s rewarding that many of the gardens Ward creates appear in the background of news interviews that take place in Silicon Valley tech titans’ backyards.“It’s a bizarre thing to experience, when you say, hey, we planted that Japanese cherry they’re complimenting on 60 Minutes! Maintaining estates like these is an art in and of itself. We work with very high-touch gardeners who understand the extreme level of detail that these estates call for.” ”

Ward’s parents are both artists and his father is a former teacher. “This instilled in me the never-ending love of learning and communicating. I believe this is an essential tool when communicating the possibilities of a client's landscape and its beauti昀椀cation. It can be an intimidating ecosystem that we all have right outside our front doors.”

One of Ward’s favorite compliments was from a former client who called him the Ray Donovan of the plant world, referring to the 昀椀ctional character in a television series who can 昀椀x any problem his Hollywood elite clients have.Ward thinks the comment was likely spurred by his work on impossible landscape projects

Photo

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with “hilariously short” installation timelines. “An instant mature privacy hedge around a property 昀椀ve days before a party? Just a day in the life of the underground estate world gig.”

Restoring the Environment Through Landscaping

Ward has worked on high-budget projects to recreate French palace gardens, Mughal architecture landscapes, and formal English gardens. But his favorite projects are re-wilding landscapes and restoring old-growth forests on land exhausted by farming or development. “Nothing is more satisfying than restoring a tired old landscape or turning a barren construction site into a lush garden and witnessing the bountiful wildlife arrive soon after,” he says.“This is a newer concept related to combating climate change, but I think it is one of the most rewarding ways to restore the planet.”

This can be done even on the micro level by homeowners with small front lawns, he says “Lawns are not the most climate-friendly feature in a landscape and instead, we often encourage clients to consider meadows and native plant material.This will be appreciated by the local wildlife while using far less water, fertilizer, and maintenance.”

He adds, “This truly is art with plants as the medium. If one is going to appreciate art, we might as well help the environment and local ecosystem while we’re doing it.”

See more of Ward’s work at petruslandscape.com.