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Andy Cao Hosted by The Garden Conservancy

Andy Cao’s lyrical, dreamlike garden at Cornerstone Sonoma,

Bai Yun : White Cloud represents a stunning transformation of the original Cao – Perrot Studio installation created for the Cornerstone Festival: the Lullaby Garden.

Andy Cao: Bai Yun / White Cloud Detail

As an artist and landscape designer, Cao has achieved renown for dreamlike environments, calling upon vivid memories of his Vietnam homeland, while melding cultural references into aesthetic wonderlands. Having been awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship in Landscape Architecture, and a post at Harvard as a Loeb Fellow, Andy returned to Northern California recently to create two site-specific installations for Cornerstone.

You can hear Andy talk about his work and the inspirations that drive his designs on Thursday, November 17, 2011: an evening hosted by The Garden Conservancy at The Walt Disney Family Museum in the Presidio.

Full details on the lecture - Incidental Placemaking: Beauty and Dreams, along with registration information can be found on The Garden Conservancy web site. A Meadowcroft Wine reception at 6 p.m. will be followed by Andy’s presentation from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

Bai Yun - White Cloud

The event is cosponsored by Cornerstone Sonoma: Be sure to check back for a new post in the days ahead. I’ll share information on an upcoming free event to coincide with Andy’s visit the following Sunday at Cornerstone in Sonoma Wine Country.

: Bai Yun / White Cloud – Photo © Alice Joyce

The upcoming post will feature another new Cao-Perrot installation, in progress at this time: Red Lantern is situated on a site at Cornerstone where visitors may remember the Martha Schwartz design had been installed.

Andy’s work is singled out on the cover of Avant Gardeners

…a book I reviewed when it was first released. It’s filled with a trove of fascinating projects that I often return to when I’m pondering innovative ideas in contemporary garden design.

Andy Cao Photo – Courtesy The Garden Conservancy

Contemporary Landscape Architecture on Amazon…

Read more about the Cao – Perrot Studio 600-acre project in Shenzhen, China:

Guangming New Town Central Park.

International Festival of Gardens 2011

2011 International Garden Festival — Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens

Le bois de biais et sa folie – Through the Wood… Design by Atelier le balto – Marc Pouzol, Véronique Faucheur et Marc Vatinel. Below: The installation’s architectural ‘folly.’

The 12th Edition of The International Garden Festival runs through October 2, 2011. The theme of this year’s festival: Secret Gardens… “a protective space full of emotions, mysteries and wonder connected to the natural world.”

“Le bois…” an installation built in 2006 has now entered its fifth year at the Jardin de Métis. The garden’s lovely framework of willow and poplar trees features a constructed addition — a wooden folly that functions as a lookout tower.

Mirror mirror on the floor, whats beyond the great grass wall…

Habitation Landscape Architecture: David Vago, Simone Marsh, Nick Brown

An installation built in 2010 as “The grass is greener” … which featured grass walls and floors. For the year 2011, the design has been altered in provocative ways, so that the garden visitor climbs a ladder to discover a secluded sanctuary space where they encounter their own reflection together with that of the looming sky.

: Fractal Garden: International Garden Festival © 2009 Louise Tanguay

Fractal Garden: Andrea Legge, Murray Legge, Deborah Lewis

The Fractal Garden has entered its third year at The International Festival. With its grouping of 21 steel planters, this popular installation exhibits the ability to morph into highly varied designs, riffing on references to colorful, lavishly planted historic parterres. And at the same time, it evokes elements of fractal geometry. Thoroughly engaging and delightfully eye-catching in its conception.

: International Garden Festival © 2009 Louise Tanguay

HAHA! Design: spmb -(Eduardo Aquino et Karen Shanski), Ralph Glor, Matt Baker, Martin Gagnon

: Photo © 2011 Louise Tanguay – Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens

A brightly constructed installation from 2009, HAHA! reveals an updated take on the traditional sunken trench of a country estate. The contemporary design pushes the bounds of the HaHa notion further, borrowing inspiration from Roberto Burle Marx, as exhibited by its colorful layout and aspect of tropical plantings.

Rope Ladders Design: relais Landschaftsarchitekten – Gero Heck, Marianne Mommsen

In 2010 this installation premiered as Tree Stands: “Using locally found material” the designers crafted “an infrastructure which offers both a new perspective and a glimpse of paradise.” Reborn as Rope Ladders, the objects reach high up into the crowns of the towering trees to present the chance to experience a space beyond; a verdant fantasy that I can imagine becoming lost in.

International Garden Festival — Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens is located on Route 132 in Grand Métis, on the shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. Link to Directions

Heart of Reeds: Chris Drury Land Art

Lewes: Local Nature Reserve, Sussex

You can discern the sinuous pattern – a double vortex – of Chris Drury’s Heart of Reeds installation that emerges from the landscape when you stand on the project’s boardwalk, or look upon the artwork from the viewing mound. Drury likens the design to a “cross section through a human heart, reflecting the interconnections between man and environment.”

On his web site, Drury includes the Lewes land art project in the category: Growing Works

rather than a Commissioned, Permanent or Temporary Site-Specific Installation, or a Cloud Chamber.

You need walk only a few minutes from the center of town to take in the wetland’s sights and sounds, as a break from the gentle hubbub that Lewes offers residents and travelers.

Designed for the local Nature Reserve in collaboration with the Railway Wildlife Trust and the town council, the work purposefully aims to increase biodiversity in an area along old railway sidings. Designed by Drury in 2004, the artist expected a time-frame of three years would be necessary for the plantings to become established as a reed bed. Visiting in May, 2011, I found a lush, serene landscape filled with bird song.

An in-depth record of the construction, design, and the site’s development can be found on the

Heart of Reeds . org web site.

Visit the National Trail South Downs web site for information on beautiful walking paths, wildlife, and villages in this area of great natural beauty.

A view of Lewes from the balcony of my Bed & Breakfast lodgings. And below, looking across the wetlands to the Chalk Cliff; a heavy grey sky overhead.

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Andy Cao Hosted by The Garden Conservancy

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Heart of Reeds: Chris Drury Land Art

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