Saratoga News

This Paradise Garden took awards at the San Francisco Garden Show for Los Gatos garden designer Chris Jacobson and Saratoga landscape contractor Richard Singletary.

Local duo wins several awards at garden show

By Shari Kaplan

Using just 1,000 square feet, Los Gatos garden designer Chris Jacobson and Saratoga landscape contractor Richard Singletary created their own little version of paradise for the San Francisco Garden Show at the Cow Palace in late March.

Filled with fragrant flowers, shady plants, impressive columns and tiles and even a "waterfall" made of glass, the small respite they call a Paradise Garden earned more than just compliments from the 45,000 or so visitors attending the annual show.

The collaborative effort also earned Jacobson and Singletary two first-place awards-the Edifice Award for expert craftsmanship and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society Award for quality plant material of great distinction-and third place in the Giardino Mediterraneo Category for the best illustration of a Mediterranean-influenced garden.

Both men are native Californians, have a love of plants and an appreciation for touring European gardens, and started in the profession as landscape maintenance gardeners.

Jacobson, owner of GardenArt, has participated in the San Francisco show before. He was inspired to design a Paradise Garden after doing research on the same theme for clients from Iran. According to Jacobson, this is the earliest garden style known to history and originated in the civilization of Persia.

"The Paradise Garden is the prototype of this type of garden for Western civilization," he explains. "The connection between indoors and outdoors can double or triple your living space," he says of one of the garden's benefits, which comes from the use of trellises, arbors, porches and courtyards.

The gardens at many California missions were influenced by the Paradise Garden, he adds, because Spanish missionaries themselves were influenced by Middle Eastern styles from around the Mediterranean Sea.

According to Jacobson, the Paradise Garden was a living metaphor for the Islamic version of paradise, suggesting an afterlife of relaxation and pleasure in aesthetically pleasing, shady surroundings that appeal to all the senses.

Although he wanted the garden to be reminiscent of ancient Persia, Jacobson also added a California flavor by including redwood trees, native to the West Coast region. Among the more exotic greenery are fan palms, New Zealand flax, squirrel's foot ferns, yellowtwig dogwoods, bromeliads and citrus trees.

"Since it's a theme garden, it's more specialized than just a regular floral garden. It's different from the standard English perennial garden. This almost looked like The Ten Commandments movie set," Singletary says with a chuckle.

Coordinating their efforts with carpenters, a mason, outdoor artists and a variety of product suppliers, he and Jacobson had only three days to complete their work--the deadline all garden show participants had to meet.

"This was our first time working together, and we considered ourselves underdogs, but by the end of the show we felt really good," says Singletary, who owns South Peninsula Landscape.

"Within limits, there is a great deal of freedom in creating a garden," he adds. "The creativity is satisfying, and the gratification is immediate when you put something in the ground."

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