My Back 40 (Feet): The Garden at the Getty Center

10/12/08

The Garden at the Getty Center

We visited the garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles this weekend. Read about it at the link. Here are some pictures.

And they had some awesome containers.

9 comments:

Les said...: I've read about this garden and have seen some footage. It has always looked very interesting. I like the fact that the link provided a plant list, with botanical names. Did the garden live up to its reputation?; October 13, 2008 at 4:24 AM
chuck b. said...: I'd never heard about it before, so it didn't have any reputation with me.

It was a jumble; I got a little confused.

I liked the path zig-zagging down to and around the "bowl garden", but the water feature felt like it belonged to a different garden. And the azalea maze in the pool at the bottom..? Ugh. Disneyland is down the road in Anaheim.

The uneasy mix of formal and informal elements bothered me the most. It's like, pick one. Informal wood trellises had no place in this garden, yet there they were. And the rebar...I loved those bougainvillea structures, but am I alone in thinking rebar and travertine don't go?

The plant choices were routine and folksy. Verbena bonariensis? Cranesbill? Is that a hydrangea? Where's my apple pie?

The garden was full of color and variation. If "always changing, never twice the same" was the main goal, then it succeeds on that level. But isn't a garden "always changing" anyway?; October 13, 2008 at 6:00 AM
Christopher C. NC said...: I like those rebar trees. I may need one. Should be easy to make. You know how I feel about bougainvillea already. I think rebar would look fine with my native stone.

I have seen this garden online before. While I am fine with the maze, its placement in the middle of a pond seems disturbing, kind of a dangerous temptation. Azaleas? Ick.

In Hawaii putting a pencil cactus, Euphorbia tirucalli, in the ground was a risky proposition. They got huge fast.; October 13, 2008 at 8:35 PM
chuck b. said...: Yeah, I know that Euphorbia is a pest on Kauai. In northern California it's mostly for warm indoor spaces.

The rebar trees were huuuge. And super-heavy I'm sure. Do you have welding skills? Is rebar inexpensive?; October 13, 2008 at 9:00 PM
gintoino said...: I have to tell that I like the maze (don't like the fact that its made with azalea though). I also like the bouganvilea trees a lot.

Are those Echeveria growing in the shade? Or it just looks like it in the picture?; October 14, 2008 at 8:41 AM
lisa said...: I like the rebar structures too, but I agree with your assertion that the mix of informal and formal...rather dizzying.; October 14, 2008 at 9:15 AM
Annie in Austin said...: Love the rebar too - thought it was some kind of roses on steroids at first but clicked and got the story - and you are so right! Those little fences are pitiful - like a paper napkin at a glamorous dinner party.
The form of the building already contrasts so strongly with the material that the travertine-rebar juxtaposition seems okay to me, Chuck. But magenta alstromeria. Blah.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose; October 14, 2008 at 12:05 PM
steelystyle said...: The book, Robert Irwin Getty Garden, was pretty good, done mostly in conversational transcript form. You really get a sense of the thought processes behind the garden. The guy that designed it had never gardened before, which might account for some of the more mundane plant choices...; October 14, 2008 at 3:48 PM
CiNdEe's GaRdEn said...: Wow totally awesome(-:; October 15, 2008 at 3:09 PM

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