Cornerstone

While in California, I visited Cornerstone Gardens which has been profiled in Landscape Architecture magazine. It reminds me very much of the local store Jackalope, in that there are a lot of things to see, salvage items for sale, and local art. If you can get past the nine dead olive trees in the entrance courtyard, Cornerstone has a number of stores adhering to the arts theme, as well as a cafe, and is the location for the Sonoma visitor's center. There are also a number of designed gardens, designed by some famous names. At this time of the year, there were few visitors.

Since it was lunch time, our first stop was the cafe called Sage Fine Food (and Provisions), whose BLT and salad were the best I've had in a long time. For $9, the BLT was loaded with crispy thick bacon, the perfect amount of tomatoes and lettuce, and avocado. I don't remember the name of the salad, but it had carmelized walnuts, a sprinkling of cheese (just the way I like it), various very fresh and tasty greens that were not overwhelmed but accented by the light dressing. Topped off with some Izze soda, it made lunch for two about $25. Not cheap, but not expensive either, it was tasty, and heck, we were on vacation.
Fortified, we hit the stores, which, while fun, were way out of my price range. I did lust for the carved wood pavilion from India ($10,000 is what I remember).

Then on to the gardens.

The blue tree has lost about half of its size:
The garden we most enjoyed was the Oehme & Van Sweden garden "The Garden of Contrasts". The two of us felt that it was by far the most delightful.
The plot was divided into 2 areas, with a serpentine path wandering through them. In the front section, the agaves were luscious sculpture, each leaf was perfection, contrasting with the feather grass underneath. Behind, the second area was filled with olive trees, and a large globe was placed under them, among rosemary. Was this a commentary on the influence California or Mediterranean landscapes have on the rest of the world?

The other gardens needed placards to describe what they are about.
Martha Schwartz' garden needed a whole banner to explain it, the garden being a miniature golf course (non-functional) where each hole is labeled with the name of an important landscape architect. The garden was un-navigable and unintelligible without the banner. Was the commentary that landscape architects are holes in the ground of Disneyland landscapes?

Topher Delaney's project was about play in the landscape, and although the placard described a game, and said that there was a set of rules posted, we couldn't find them (only 2 bocce balls). The language of the placard was rich in narrative (although what exactly is a random grid? Isn't a grid regular by definition?), but the result was not engaging.
The Yoji Sasaki project "The Garden of Visceral Serenity" had this steel box that you were supposed to crawl into, but there was no reason to crawl on hands and knees through rock and gravel to get inside. Once inside, what was the point? I did appreciate the paving design, however.

"Stone's Throw" by Marco Antonini, Roberto Capecci, and Rafaella Sini dealth with the concept of scale. In an echo of the movie "A Bug's Life" a concrete form represents a pebble, and large grasses represent the lawn. Unfortunately, the designers then added planting holes in the "pebble" and there were a number of dead plants in them. I felt that it would have been more successful if the "pebble" were solid, and made of exposed aggregate of fine texture. Walter Hood and Alma DuSolier created "Eucalyptus Soliloquy" which demonstrates the use of eucalyptus as a windbreak, but also playing with the idea of "open" and "closed." I felt that the panel on the left, "open" was redundant, since the eucalyptus line beyond that also demonstrated the simultaneous "open" and "closed." Although the high fences framed the view of the grape vines beyond, I didn't feel that this installation was telling me anything new about the eucalyptus windbreaks.

This installation by UC Davis, titled "The Knowledge of Man is as the Waters" was intriguing, though the vinyl adhesive letters in the water feature were falling off and unintelligible. Why the red painted bamboo? Maybe if I were to read the placard...
This garden, by David McCrory and Roger Raiche does not show well in this photo, but I enjoyed the ceramic bamboo and the variety of textures as well as the corrugated steel tube used as a tunnel. I think that the problem with many of the installations was that they did not have understandable commentary without their descriptive plaques, nor were they engaging on an experiential level. Perhaps they were over-designed. Of course, it is easier to be critical than creative. It's interesting that something that might have looked great on paper doesn't translate into the reality of experiential depth.

I didn't see any credit given to the following two gardens, but I enjoyed them thoroughly. They were simple yet dramatic, and had commentary of their own.