“All they wanted to see was waving grasses,” said Tom Pritchard, a partner in Madderlake, which started out in 1971 as an elegant plant store with an architectural practice on the side, and which is now a thriving architecture and landscape design firm, with projects from Connecticut to Colorado. “We were trying to take a near landscape and connect it to the far landscape,” Pritchard said. That “far landscape” — of dunes, grasses and flowers like rosa rugosa — provided the perfect means of concealing the pool from view. Or, rather, pools: the 50-foot-long lap pool abuts the undulating wading pool, with its islands of grasses and plants. A weathered boardwalk leads beyond the pool, where it winds its way through the dunes. And around the pool, a sturdy, code-compliant version of the ubiquitous dune fencing creates a subtle but effective safety fence.

The landscape has had plenty of time to mature under the watchful eye of Judy Goldsmith, who is an avid gardener and flower arranger. The pool is obviously man-made, yet it looks as if it had been carved gently out of its beachy setting. “We think of landscape in terms of nature,” Pritchard said. “How do we build a stronger version of it?”

Check out the full story featured on TMagazine  here

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Botanist Patrick Blanc has been bringing the wilds of the rainforests to Parisian walls for over 30 years, most recently at the Jean Nouvel–designed Quai Branly museum. One lucky family, however, doesn’t have to go any farther than their living room to take in the wonders of Blanc’s vertical gardens.

The creator of the “plant wall,” a living canvas for indoor and outdoor vertical space, is in high demand. His trademark technique for a top-down, no-fuss, no-muss irrigation system, not to mention the 30 years of botanical research on three continents under his belt, have made him an urban garden guru. Recent creations include the hip Pershing Hall hotel and the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the swanky Siam Paragon mall in Bangkok, boutiques in New York and Paris, and restaurants in Los Angeles and beyond. With the lavish opening of the Jean Nouvel–designed Musée du Quai Branly in Paris in June, where he created a lush, 8,600-square-foot façade with 15,000 plants, big-scale commissions are flooding in.

Blanc’s work began, however, with homes—notably his own, a tropical rainforest doubling as an apartment on the outskirts of Paris, in Créteil. Even as major jobs began to elbow out most private commissions, some homeowners managed to persuade Blanc to create outdoor vertical gardens, seeking to add a “rural” element to their city views. The indoor vertical garden—Blanc’s true calling as a low-light specialist—however, had to wait until 2004, when Jean-Marc Dimanche phoned 
up from his 4,400-square-foot home, which was under 
construction in the Left Bank’s 14th arrondissement, with an idea for the 20-by-23-foot interior wall that 
was beginning to take shape.

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A cute courtyard garden with a limestone patio,  hardwood deck and framed japanese maple

Seating in this small courtyard garden is provided by a bespoke built-in bench, with an architectural backdrop of bamboo to screen the surrounding walls. The courtyard also features pale limestone paving in combination with bespoke benches and hardwood decking, which continues up the wall to provide a visual frame for the red Acer surrounded by feature pebbles. Nice combination.

Inspiration from Modular Garden

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Hotel in Paris

Bangkok Emporium

“I knew of Patrick Blanc’s work far before I knew of him.  I had happened across a few of his installations during various travels.  Every time, I was stopped in my tracks in recognition of something truly amazing.  His vertical garden walls get me every time. Many are in France, but his work spans the globe.  Each is a textural tapestry of plants that offer green lushness to what is typically a surrounding area in dire need of something soft, living and fresh. The walls provide biodiversity in urban areas, help buildings with heating and cooling, clean the air, and to me, are some of the most beautiful and inspiring arrangements of plants I know.  Patrick Blanc is one of my design heroes – please…enjoy some of his work…”

Re-posted from Studio ‘g’

Each week Studio G profiles a different garden and explores what makes it interesting or special or unique. Not all the gardens they profile are delightful but they’re certainly unique. As we all know, when it comes to inspiration for innovation, creative input needs no reason it just needs regularlity so here it is folks. Eat up and enjoy. For those of you not familiar with Studio ‘g‘ – it’s a design blog written by Rochelle Greayer who runs Greayer Design Associates LLC. (a Boutique Design Firm that specializes in creating luxurious outdoor environments for Spa and Hospitality properties and Private Residences worldwide) based in Harvard, MA. dedicated to sharing landscape ideas, hotel resort and spa gardens, outdoor art and design and the latest in landscape products and services.

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