DEL.ICIO.USThe new art of landscapes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Jeff Doud and Michaelene Conner’s landscape is as much a piece of art as it is a garden. With alternating swirling rock beds of creamy egg rock and black slate to represent water, and sparse beds of mondo grass serving as “islands,” the 200-foot-wide front yard is a Japanese-inspired space for contemplation and visual delight.
And if you ask landscape designer Brendan Butler, the plants were practically an after-thought.
ELISSA EUBANKS / eeubanks@ajc.com
Jeff Doud and his wife Michaelene Conner wanted a Japanese influence in the garden of their Robert Green home. Here is a Semperviverens or Hen and Chick, a drought tolerant succulent.
ELISSA EUBANKS / eeubanks@ajc.com
Granite slabs are used to create a ‘floating’ walkway.
The Artful Garden Tour
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday 5/16; $20 tickets if purchased today, $25 afterward. Purchase online at High Museum of Art, by calling 404-733-4521, or at any of the gardens on the day of the tour. Container gardening workshop for an additional $10. 9 to 10 a.m. Habersham Gardens, 2067 Manchester St. N.E., Atlanta.
See more photos of Jeff Doud's garden
More Garden stories
“It’s a viewing garden. Like a portrait,” said Butler of Tokikata Modern Gardens, who said the space was designed to look like “falling waters.”
Adds Norm Mittleider of Art of Pruning, whom Doud hired to transform the plants into graceful sculptures: “The whole yard is a living structure — not just a collection of plants.”
The Doud-Conner garden in Briarlake will be one of six area gardens on display during Saturday’s Artful Garden Tour to benefit the High Museum of Art.
The couple bought their Robert Green-designed ranch home five years ago in foreclosure and quickly got to work updating the interiors and garden. They called in Butler to transform its existing ivy, azalea and tree-ridden landscape into a peaceful space more befitting the couple’s tastes.
Some 90 tons of granite and rock were brought in to create rock beds, sculptures and retaining walls. Slabs of granite now create a “floating walkway” up to the front door.
Butler created an intricate trenching system to control erosion while alternating rock and mulch beds in the front yard.
Plants were placed carefully throughout the property, with attention to scale and wind direction, ensuring they grow into the space while keeping its spare, Zen-like look.
In the process, Doud, executive creative director for RIOT Atlanta, discovered a love for plants.
“I was never into gardening. I couldn’t care less, but now it seems more like an art piece,” he said.
Indeed, Doud and his wife have collected more than two dozen Japanese maples as well as conifers and funky groundcovers. They saved a few plants from its former state, including a Kousa dogwood and river birch with perfectly peeling bark.
“It’s all about conifers and maples and serenity, a peaceful sensation coming through it,” Doud said.
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