Landscape Design Duo Win Our Award in San Francisco

Since 2010, the Garden Conservancy has presented an award at the annual San Francisco Flower & Garden Show for an exhibit that demonstrates "A Garden That Ages Well."

This year’s winner, Sublimation, shows a serene continuum between hard and soft surfaces and subtle shades of gray and brown. A beautiful neutral plant palette is appropriate to northern California's climate and makes the small space seem more expansive. Gabions, stone work, and decomposed granite provide a strong architectural framework and a showcase for the unusual creative bench and rope archway. The lighting is subtle and very effective. Our judges opined that, overall, this is a design concept and plant palette that could be expanded into a larger space and that would age gracefully.

Sublimation was designed by Nahal Sohbati and Eric Arneson of the Academy of Art University's School of Landscape Architecture in San Francisco.

Special thanks to our judges:

• Marion Brenner, a renowned garden photographer and member of our West Coast Council;
• Jane Freeman, our representative on the Ruth Bancroft Garden board of directors;
• Daniel Nolan, garden designer at Flora Grubb Gardens, which hosts some of our educational programs in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Flower & Garden Show is open to the public through Sunday, March 22.

Photo by Marion Brenner