By Kirsten Coachman
This past April, Landscape Architecture (LAN) students won the Bronze Medal at the 2024 SF Bay Flower & Garden Show for the “Subsume” garden installation. The award takes five different categories into consideration, including Overall Impression, Design, Execution of Design Intent, Materiality, and Caliber of Installation. “Subsume” was one of the seven show gardens on display, and the LAN students were the only participating student team.
In addition to receiving the Bronze Medal, the students also were recognized with the Association of Professional Landscape Designers Award. They were given the award in part for their decision to use all native plants in their design.
The 2024 SF Bay Flower & Garden show was held over four days in Pleasanton, California. It’s an opportunity for phytophiles to meet fellow plant lovers and for local landscape architects and designers to showcase their work.
Following the inspirational groundwork of LAN alums who previously had success at the SF Bay Flower & Garden Show, students began working on the design prior to the start of this past spring semester.
The team, comprised of online students Christine Gonzales (M.A. ‘24, project lead and fabricator) and Andrew Normand (M.F.A. ‘25, mushroom structures lead designer and bench designer and fabricator) alongside on-site students Yu Meng Tsai (M.A. ‘25, lumber edging lead designer and fabricator), Antje Kann (M.F.A. ‘23, project coordinator, planting design, and plant signs), and Yining (Lynn) Li (M.A. ‘26, project volunteer), held a design charette to develop their concept of “Subsume” back in January.
Developing “Subsume”
Through the students’ respective efforts, “Subsume” began to take shape. Part of Gonzales’s original concept spoke to the “flow of the garden,” Tsai’s concept was a meditative space called “The Nest,” and Normand’s focused on edible native plants.
“We used the forms that [Yu Meng] came up with, which were very vertical in form. It was like a wave,” explained Gonzales over this past spring break at 601 Brannan. “And then we used more of my initial layout and concept of one focal point and a good circulation.”
But what would be the focal point of their garden? The students were initially challenged by what they wanted to represent the whole of their idea before eventually selecting California’s new state mushroom, the golden chanterelle.
“If you’ve seen a chanterelle mushroom, they’re beautiful,” said Gonzales. “They have these vertical slits that come all the way around. And it fit perfectly. [The project] had a great story behind it–being able to help other plants absorb water and nutrients.”
To demonstrate their symbiotic relationship with the California woodlands and fellow native plants, the golden chanterelle mushrooms would be presented as sculptures and placed within the garden.
With a design concept in place, the project timeline for the LAN students moved swiftly. With the spring semester starting in February, much of the month was devoted to finding sponsors to bring their garden to life. In addition to the Academy, “Subsume” was sponsored by local businesses: Lakeside Nursery, which provided all of the native plants that the students used in their installation; Maxi Woodworks for their wood fabrication needs for the golden chanterelle mushroom sculptures, and Castohn Pavers to create their garden pathway.
When Art U News initially caught up with Gonzales, Tsai, and Li on campus over spring break, the trio was focused on building the golden chanterelle mushroom sculptures. Each sculpture had 18-panel pieces that connected to two center wheel-like pieces.
Much like an oversized 3-D puzzle, the students took the custom-fabricated pieces—with the help of on-the-spot sanding—and locked them into place. Once built, two mushroom sculptures stood 3-feet tall, while a third was 5-feet tall.
Planting “Subsume”
Heading into this year’s SF Bay Flower & Garden Show, there were concerns about the rain as the students’ installation would be displayed outdoors. Inclement weather did cause a delay, leaving the students with three and a half days to work on garden construction.
Gonzales shared that the bulk of the work for their garden was completed by the entire team on site on the Monday before the show opened. “And then on Tuesday, we’re all just putting in a lot of mulch to cover up all the plants. And Wednesday was all finishing touches,” said Gonzales.
Among the tasks at hand was placing over 300 plants. The planting plan, led by Khan, resembled a California Woodland environment using 20 California native plants. The plan included Mountain Pride Purple Nightshade, Ken Taylor Flannel Bush, White Sage, Fern Leaf Yarrow, Beach Strawberry, and Coast Live Oak.
The students’ installation also included their three mineral-washed golden chanterelle sculptures, two wooden benches designed and fabricated by Normand, garden lights, wooden edging designed and produced by Tsai, and a stone path.
The Show
Upon arriving at the SF Bay Flower & Garden Show on Saturday, April 6, Art U News watched as a continued stream of visitors walked through the garden, taking in the space, much to the pleasure of the students, who were on hand that day to greet everyone and answer questions about “Subsume.”
“A lot of people are loving our garden. They’re loving the space we created,” said Gonzales. “They’re understanding what we were intending for them to understand of native plants and the relationship between our structure, the mushrooms and its natural environment, the oak woodlands. Everybody’s been saying it’s just a really nice calming space and have enjoyed coming and sitting and looking at the sculptures.”
The garden was divided into parts, with the stone path connecting the two. In front, the golden chanterelle and live oak symbiosis were on display, surrounded by plants like Solanum Xanti and Achillia “Red Velvet.” In addition to the lumber edging, the garden had native border grass, such as Field Sedge and Red Molate Fescue.
Along the stone path were the two wooden benches separated by lumber edging that sat just in front of the second half of the garden. Larger-sized plants were found here, such as Live Oak Coast, Pacific Sunset Flannel Bush, and Ray Hartman Ceanothus. Border plants along the garden’s edge included Little Sur Manzanita and Emerald Carpet Manzanita.
Show attendees queried Gonzales about various things in the garden, but she said one of the most popular features was the flannel bush. “Everybody’s asking about that one,” she said.
Gonzales also mentioned that visitors to the garden picked up several intricate details of their design, from the lumber edging and stumps to the vertical slits in the mushroom sculptures and the use of specific plants. “It’s great to see everybody else walk through and notice those small things that we were so excited to put in the design,” she said.
“This has been something that I’ve just been living and breathing for the past two, three months now, and so to see it come together, especially on Monday with my whole team here. It was incredible. We all felt just amazing and so proud of ourselves for getting it done,” said Gonzales. “This [plot] is a little over 420 square feet of garden we designed with just five people, and to put it together in basically a day was a lot of hard work. And we [ate] our lunches on the benches and high-fived each other, like, “Wow, we created this. We did it.”
Featured photo: The LAN student team: (L-R) Yiling (Lynn) Li, Yu Meng Tsai, Christine Gonzales, Antje Kann, and Andrew Normand. Photo courtesy of Christine Gonzales.