The Cultural Landscape Foundation Announces a New Season of Garden Dialogues – Exclusive Access to Beautiful Gardens, their Owners and Designers

Media Contact: Nord Wennerstrom | T: 202.255.7076 | E: nord@tclf.org

The Cultural Landscape Foundation Announces a New Season of Garden Dialogues – Exclusive Access to Beautiful Gardens, their Owners and Designers

New Season follows Successful 2012 Inauguration–One of TCLF’s Most Popular Programs– Events in AZ, CA, CT, CO, DC, FL, KY, LA, MN, NY, OR, TX and WA

Washington, DC (February 28, 2013) - What's Out There Garden Dialogues, a national program inaugurated in 2012 by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) that offers exclusive access to some of today’s most beautiful and innovative gardens, and the opportunity to learn about the creative process from the garden designers and their clients, has been expanded to more than three dozen locations in 2013. Garden Dialogues has become one of the most popular programs in the foundation’s 15-year history, with most Dialogues sold out weeks in advance. The 2013 Garden Dialogues will take place from March through August, beginning March 23-24 in several Florida locations, Houston and New Orleans. Garden Dialogues provides a distinct look at gardens and enables participants to hear firsthand about the collaborative process that led to the creation of each garden. Space is limited and nearly all Garden Dialogues are $35.00 each. Seibert & Rice Fine Italian Terra Cotta and Charles Luck are the national sponsors of Garden Dialogues.

How do garden owners and their landscape architects or designers work together to create a great garden? Garden Dialogues brings together patrons and designers to reveal the creative process, the give and take, and the collaboration that yields a great garden. Garden Dialogues provides unique opportunities for small groups to experience some of today’s most beautiful gardens created by some of the most accomplished designers currently in practice.

Abbreviated Schedule:

• 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.

Detailed Schedule for March 23-24:

Miami-area

• March 23 (Register today) - The Bacardi Estate - Jorge Sanchez of Sanchez and Maddux, Inc., with Rafael Portuondo of Portuondo-Perotti Architects -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.
• March 23 (Register today) - Phillip Hulitar Sculpture & Display Garden - Adam Mills of Morgan Wheelock Incorporated, Landscape Architects - The three-acre Philip Hulitar Sculpture Garden at The Society of the Four Arts features jewel like botanical embellishments, a stunning octagonal fountain centered on the wide terrace and rose and pale green Brazilian quartzite paths that lead to outdoor rooms.
• March 24 (Register today) - Historical Gem - Lewis Aqüi of Lewis Aqüi Landscape + Architectural Design, LLC (LA2d) -This comprehensively restored historic home and garden, originally built in the 1920s, recalls an old European villa. A tile artist from Italy hand-painted the swimming pool tiles and garden benches, complementing the elegant vintage character and plantings of the site.
• March 24 (Register today) - Magical Mediterranean Garden - Mario Nievera of Nievera Williams - Lush fragrant gardens surround a grand Mediterranean revival residence designed in 1928 by Marion Sims Wyeth. The newly created gardens include an elegant pool and fountain amid tall southern magnolias and date palms, with an inner courtyard is especially dramatic.
• March 24 (Register today) - Casa de Miel - Mario Nievera of Nievera Williams -European landscapes inspired Casa de Miel’s gardens. Intricately patterned stone and brick pathways, sculpture, tiled fountains, coral stone terraces and a jewel like orchid house are carefully placed amongst giant Canary Island date palms, royal palms, and cascading bougainvillea. NOTE: This is a special launch event and tickets are $75 each.

Gulf Coast

• March 23 (Register today) - Casey Key Gulfside Garden - Michael A. Gilkey, Jr. of Michael A. Gilkey, Inc., with Clifford M. Scholz, CMSA Architects -Inspired by Old Country Spanish aesthetics, this casual garden was achieved by marrying a resort-style landscape with Mediterranean-inspired paving and accents. The dense, tropical landscape includes sculptural pieces and Spanish clay pots filled with playful, textural plants.

Houston

• March 23 (Register today) - The Weber Estate – Keiji Asakura of Asakura Robinson Company – Keiji Asakura has helped the owners of the heavily wooded, 185-acre Weber Estate northwest of Houston create a 20-acre Japanese style garden, with thousands of exotic and native tree species, footbridges, grottoes, waterfalls, boardwalks, iris bogs, ponds, streambeds, islands and pavilions.
• March 23 (Register today) - Meredith Long & Company - Cedar Baldridge, Baldridge Landscape; Stephen Fox, Architectural Historian; Dillon Kyle AIA -Baldridge Landscape in collaboration with Dillon Kyle Architecture transformed Meredith Long Gallery’s parking lot into an entrance that weds folly and function through the inventive use of a traditional planting palette and photography to create faux topiary.
• March 23 (Register today) - Kelly Residence - Sarah Westkaemper Lake -Designed to complement the Usonian Modernism of the house built by architect Karl Kamrath in the middle of the twentieth century, this woodland garden in River Oaks is a unique largely native landscape of pines and mixed understory in an intimately scaled bayou setting.

New Orleans

• March 23 (Register today) - Lemann Residence, a Robert Royston Garden in New Orleans - Robert Royston - Royston, Hanamoto, Alley, and Abey -The Lemann house and garden is a collaboration between local architect John Lawrence (1924-1971) and California landscape architect Robert Royston (1918-2008), fuses traditional New Orleans architecture with mid-century California Modernism.  Conceived in 1963, the residence surrounds an interior courtyard and is situated between two venerable live oaks, one of which is the entrance court’s central feature. The other is in the rear garden, where a contemporary, narrow exedra shapes the space and mimics a low-hanging, horizontal limb of the tree. This subtle feature connects the live oak with a terraced water feature in the opposite corner, frames plant materials and contemporary sculpture, and unifies the garden’s composition.

About Seibert & Rice
Seibert & Rice is the leading American importer of handmade, frost proof terracotta planters and urns from Impruneta, Italy. For just about 20 years we have provided terra cotta planters and urns to America’s most beautiful gardens, both large and small. We have also placed terracotta pots in some of the most prestigious institutions in this country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Botanical Garden, Longwood Gardens, Biltmore Estate and the Boston Public Library. We are very proud of our reputation as the leading supplier of the highest quality terra cotta in the world.

About Charles Luck
Charles Luck is a leading architectural stone supplier with a global sales and distribution presence through its locations across the mid-Atlantic region. Charles Luck services design professionals and style-minded homeowners through consultation and sales of distinctive natural stone products. At Charles Luck, the experience is marked by tailored customer service for architects, interior designers, style-minded homeowners, masons, landscapers and builders; hundreds of stone products from around the world; and unparalleled expertise from our stone experts and studio consultants. For more information on Charles Luck, visit charlesluck.com.

About The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF)
The Cultural Landscape Foundation provides people with the ability to see, understand and value landscape architecture and its practitioners, in the way many people have learned to do with buildings and their designers. Through its Web site, lectures, outreach and publishing, TCLF broadens the support and understanding for cultural landscapes nationwide to help safeguard our priceless heritage for future generations.