Cornerstone Gardens

Sonoma, CA, July 10, 2011: We end the afternoon at Cornerstone Gardens outside Sonoma. Cornerstone features 9-acres with 1,800-square-foot garden installations by international landscape architects and garden designers. The 27 gardens range from the highly conceptual to inviting retreats and practical potagers. One of the gardens is by Washington's Oehme, van Sweden & Associates! Cornerstone also has shops, cafes and the requisite wine tasting. [It's the plus perfect garden club outing.]

Here's what's left of the "famous" The Blue Tree 2 by Claude Cormier of Montreal. Basically a dead tree was covered with small aqua-colored balls and as the tree deteriorated the Blue Tree diminished.














Today was the opening of two installations by Cao|Perrot Studios (Los Angeles/Paris). In Bai Yun (White Cloud), artist Andy Cao used chicken wire to create the clouds omnipresent in Asian art and suspended droplet crystals to catch the sun. Landscape designer Xavier Perot had originally conceived the clouds over a French meadow, which here becames a desert with saguaro:
Their second installation Red Lantern is an homage to the Chinese who built American railroads. A railroad track descends into a pool dominated by a large lotus-shaped lantern festooned with red crystals. The only horticulture is one lotus in the pool.














The trend is to use galvanized stock tanks for container gardening. Here they were incorporated into a potager, but we also saw them in front of stores and shops throughout California.





















A galvanized pipe was used as a garden entrance:
Roofing tiles were used to create a fossil-like vertabrae which draws ones eye through a Mediterranean meadow:















Oehme, van Sweden created a shaded retreat behind a lawn of yucca and grasses:












MIG Inc. (Berkeley) incorporated a small vineyard into a children's garden:




























































The most political was A Small Tribute to Immigrant Workers by Mario Schjetman of Mexico City:
















Art and trees were featured in one space; sculptured grass in another:

Another garden was excavated:

We keep seeing these pocket gardens (left) for sale, but never see them away from the shops: