A tour, a sale and tea, all near the sea
The seventh annual Malibu Garden Club tour will take place Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Southern California landscape designers Jay Griffith, James Dean, Laurel Stutsman, Laura Knauss, Donna Meade and Peggy Harris will be on hand for consultation at the four gardens on the tour; a plant sale and English tea will also be held.
Proceeds from the event will go to the nonprofit California Wildlife Center for landscape and habitat plantings and to other community garden projects. Admission is $25. No children, pets or cameras are allowed. For reservations, call (310) 457-3005.
“We try to pick four gardens that are different rather than having a theme,” says tour organizer Donna Lemkin. In addition to the Haft garden featured here, other properties open for viewing include:
The Beebe-Yudell garden
Created by architectural colorist Tina Beebe, this Tuscan-inspired multi-terraced garden in the Malibu Park area incorporates orchards of citrus and guava trees, more than 100 rose cultivars, and flowering plants such as honeysuckle, lemon verbena and sages. The garden complements the house designed by Beebe’s husband, architect Buzz Yudell.
Though visitors may already be familiar with the grounds from the 2001 book “The Gardens of California: Four Centuries of Design From Mission to Modern” by Santa Monica designer Nancy Goslee Power, Beebe is constantly tinkering with the landscape, which was once a tomato farm. One recent addition is a koi pond surrounded by rocks.
The Buckley garden
Economist William Buckley and his wife, Jeannie, designed this Point Dume garden for their three young children.
It consists of two main areas: an outdoor living room with a fountain and bordered by salvias, dahlias, wisteria, climbing roses, columbines and geraniums; and a playground that features a treehouse, tire swings and a wooden bridge spanning a large sandbox. The play area is ringed by Mexican primrose, ornamental grasses, Shasta daisies and a vegetable garden.
The Hayman garden
Retailer Fred Hayman of Giorgio fame in Beverly Hills has a cliff-side Malibu garden created by James Dean, a Westlake Village landscape architect who has been designing the Reagan Library grounds for the last two years.
Dean has worked on the Hayman estate for more than a decade and recently added two new low-to-the-ground perennials from Japan’s Suntory company -- bidens, loaded with yellow flowers, and the orangish-red million bells -- to a garden that includes palm trees, potted cymbidiums and an Isamu Noguchi sculpture.
The highlight, however, is the garden’s huge collection of ‘Henry Fonda’ hybrid tea roses in -- what else? -- “Giorgio” yellow.
-- Andrea R. Vaucher
and Scott Sandell
