

“How do garden owners and their landscape architects or designers work together to create a great garden?” This is the question that gets answered in fascinating ways during each one of The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Garden Dialogues. For every in-depth garden tour, TCLF asks the patrons and designers to de-mistify the creative process and explain how the collaboration led to a “great garden.”

This year, the What’s Out There Garden dialogue has expanded, providing opportunities to learn about more than three dozen contemporary and historic gardens across the U.S. The series kicks-off March 23-24 in several locations around Miami, Houston, and New Orleans. The series continues through August. Here are key dates and locations:

March 23-24 – Miami-area & Gulf Coast, FL; New Orleans, LA; and Houston, TX

April 6-7 – Phoenix, AZ

April 13-14 – Southern California

April 27-28 – Southern California; Connecticut

April dates TBD– New York; Portland, OR; Virginia; and Washington, DC

May 4-5 – Dallas-Fort Worth, TX

June 1-2 – New York City

June 15-16 – Kentucky

June, July and August dates TBD – Aspen, CO; San Francisco Bay-area, CA; the Hamptons, NY; New York State; Massachusetts; Minneapolis, MN; and Seattle, WA.

There are 10 tours available in the first set in March. Many look great, but here are a few highlights. In the Miami-area, there’s a tour of the Bacardi Estate. TCLF writes: “This garden features elegantly combined formal and informal elements, hints of English and French garden styles, and a lush, complex plant palette. The geometry of a central rectilinear pool radiates outward through the exquisite use of paving materials, steps and botanical colonnades.” Mario Nievera, ASLA, Nievera Williams, is giving two tours of luxurious residences: Casa de Miel and Magical Mediterranean Garden. In Houston, Texas, there’s a tour of the Weber Estate, a “heavily-wooded, 185-acre estate” that features a 20-acre Japanese-style garden. And in New Orleans, Louisiana, there’s a tour of Lemann Residence, which “fuses traditional New Orleans architecture with mid-century California Modernism.”

These tours are intimate, enlightening affairs. A tour last year of a newly-designed Modern landscape framing a Richard Neutra house in the Hollywood Hills was a memorable experience.

Space is limited. Tickets are $35.00 each. Register Now.

Also, check out TCLF’s upcoming day-long Civic Horticulture conference in Philadelphia, May 17. TCLF writes that the event will “take a look at Philadelphia’s use of horticulture and what that portends for the future of Philadelphia and elsewhere. We will examine issues through multiple lenses – health/lifestyle, environment, economy and sense of place – but this conference will be unique in putting plants first in developing criteria for holistic stewardship.” As always, TCLF offers a great line-up of landscape architects and designers. For this conference, watch presentations by Raymond Jungles, FASLA, Raymond Jungles, Inc; Mia Lehrer, FASLA, Mia Lehrer + Associates; Susan Weilier, FASLA, OLIN; Thomas Woltz, FASLA, Nelson Byrd Woltz; and more.

Image credit: The Bacardi Garden. Sanchez and Maddux, Inc / Photo copyright Robin Hill. Courtesy of TCLF