2007 San Francisco Flower and Garden Show
"A New Arcadia: The Perpetual Pastoral"

In collaboration with Elizabeth Boults, our goal was to create new ways for people to think about and see the landscape. Traditional landscape views, reminiscent of those composed by 17th century artists, were brought to life by a combination of living plants and painted scenery. Poussin, in his paintings, employed exacting principles of composition to represent the New Arcadian landscape. By exploring a formal language of theatrical frames and shifting planes, and by animating space with plants and dioramas, we built a garden where the contemporary viewer can participate and interact with the spatial vocabulary of the new, perpetual pastoral. The visitor is drawn from one plane to the next, engaged by effects of light, shadow and texture, and leaves the garden transformed by the experience of strolling through a 21st century Arcadian vision. The "secret gardens" hidden behind portals were a particularly big hit with children.

Our design was awarded the bronze medal by the Show judges, and we were pleased to be mentioned in the SF Chronicle (3.31.07) for our "effort to bring painting and art into landscape design, a useful reminder that good landscape design is as much art as anything else."