If you live in the Bay Area, or have visited within the last 20 years, you’ll remember the many memories designed by Surface Design, a San Francisco landscape architecture firm founded by his partner in life and business, James. Chances are you’ve come across at least one of the remaining outdoor spaces. A. Lord and Rodberick Willey. Breathtaking dune scenery at Land’s End Observation Deck? The vision of Surfacedesign. Is the Bay Area Discovery Museum’s playground inspired by eucalyptus leaves and gumnut nut pods? That’s them, too. The just-completed 5.5-acre Bayfront Park next to Chase Center (home of the NBA’s Warriors)? Yes, you guessed it, it’s the work of James and Roderick.
While the couple, who both earned master’s degrees in landscape architecture from Harvard Graduate School, clearly excel at large-scale public projects, they are also surprisingly attuned to small moments. A perfect example is the intimate, unpretentious and incredibly beautiful gardens in Napa Valley. Not to mention the many amazing residential landscaping projects they directed, and today we’ll spotlight a few of them.
Below, James and Roderick talk about the difficult gardening lessons they’ve had to learn (including an expensive mistake that ruined their entire garden), the opposing plants, and the must-sees in Honolulu that no one knows about. Let’s talk about the garden. .
Photo courtesy of Surfacedesign Inc.
Your first garden memory:
James: Our backyard in Highland Park, Los Angeles, was a steep bank covered in geraniums. In the 70’s, when I was 4 years old, we moved to Palos Verdes. I now know that the reason I found a new home was because I needed to go to the bathroom. My mom wanted to take us out of Highland Park, where the smog was building, so she packed us into the car and drove all the way down I-110. We were driving around looking for a house and I needed to go to the bathroom so she found a construction site for me to use. A new house was being built nearby, so we decided to move there.
Roderick: I jumped over the wall to a eucalyptus grove in San Francisco’s Presidio, a half-block from my childhood home. This was before the Presidio became a national park. At the time, it was a semi-abandoned park inhabited by Western ghosts.
Garden-related books that I read over and over again:
James: “Sunset Western Garden Book” and “The Gardens of Robert Burle Marx”, by Sima Elyofsson. I got it just before he died, before I went to visit him in Rio for two weeks. He is a very kind and inspiring person and has had a huge influence on my career.
Roderick: Yves Brunier: Landscape architect.
Instagram accounts that inspire you:
James: Dan Pearson @coyotewillow. (See quicktake by Dan Pearson.)
Roderick: @le_jardin_robo.
Describe your garden’s aesthetic in three words.
James: It’s poetic, amazing, and crazy.
Roderick: Rhythmic, atonal, dreamlike.
Plants that will make you faint:
James: Dogwood.
Roderick: Davidia Imbolculata.
Plants that make you want to run in the opposite direction:
James: It’s the relationship between Agapanthus and Raphiolepis.
Roderick: Ice plant (Carpobrotus edulus).
Favorite plant:
James: Hellebore.
Roderick: Muhlenbergia capillaris.
Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:
James: We’re not testing the soil. All the plants have died!
Another lesson was when we were young and trying to make a name for ourselves. We participated in the Designers Showcase fundraiser in San Francisco and designed a garden. The garden had a dramatic slope and a patio jutting out. Our idea was to use mirrors to reflect invisible parts of the neighborhood. But we didn’t know that the mirror would concentrate the sunlight and burn some of the grass. We tried all kinds of different methods to hide the burnt areas. That was a painful lesson.
