David and Jane

As a designer and builder, I have a keen appreciation for design talent and construction ability. David and Jane have combined their strengths to create exceptional environments. My wife and I enjoyed the collaborative process, Jane’s great design sense, her encyclopedic memory for plants and David’s flexibility in dealing with construction challenges. Our project went smoothly from beginning to end and what an end result. Wonderful!

I grew up in a garden designed, coaxed and honored by David and Jane. What our family received in addition to the pleasure of their low maintenance joyful personalities is a living work of art. Every window in my parent's house frames an ever-changing portrait of a garden as it evolves in color and texture through the seasons. Jane paints with flowers and foliage, David sculpts and builds gorgeous functional objects, such as walls, fences, out-door kitchens, walls, hose hooks and even beautiful drains. They are warm people who you'd expect to find doing earthy things like tending gardens and tending to the people who own them. Best of all their humanity is complemented by an eye for good design and an extraordinary eye for color and texture. ………….So many times I have walked out into a space in my parent's garden that I was in only the day before, but on the next day it looked totally different because something had sprouted or something had bloomed or something had changed color...on those days I wish David and Jane were butterflies on a tree branch overhead, so they could see how much these little surprises that they have planned ahead of time delight and tickle their clients.

The first garden Jane made for me, in Los Angeles, was a sanctuary. You stepped off the busy street into a world with softly bowing acacia cognata trees ("like green hair moving in the wind" is how she described them), splashing water, climbing roses and all manner of bushes and flowers. The new garden in Sonoma, with its large planter boxes and raised beds, has people stopping at my door to tell me how inviting it is. Jane's knowledge and love of plants, coupled with her spatial, sculptural eye results in gardens that are surprising, graceful and poetic, containing both elegance and whimsy.