Quick Takes With: James A. Lord and Roderick Wyllie

If you live in the Bay Area or have visited sometime in the last two decades, you’ve likely encountered at least one of the many memorable outdoor spaces designed by Surfacedesign Inc, the San Francisco landscape architecture firm founded by partners in life and business James A. Lord and Roderick Wyllie. The breathtaking dunescape at Land’s End Lookout? A Surfacedesign vision. The Bay Area Discovery Museum’s playground inspired by eucalyptus leaves and gumnut seedpods? That’s them, too. The just-completed 5.5-acre Bayfront Park next to Chase Center (home of the NBA’s Warriors)? Yep, you guessed it—a James and Roderick production.

Clearly, the couple, who both earned Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design, excel at big, public projects, but they’re also incredible attuned to small moments. Case in point: their own intimate, unpretentious, and incredibly beautiful garden in Napa Valley. Not to mention the many swoon-worthy residential landscape projects they’ve helmed, some of which we’ll spotlight today.

Below, James and Roderick share the hard gardening lessons they’ve had to learn (including the costly mistake that killed an entire garden), the divisive plant that finds them on opposite sides, and the must-visit garden in Honolulu that nobody knows about.

Photography courtesy of Surfacedesign Inc.

Your first garden memory:

James: Our backyard in Highland Park in LA was a steep bank covered in geraniums. In the ’70s, when I was four, we moved to Palos Verdes. I just learned that we found our new house because I had to use the bathroom.My mom wanted to get us out of Highland Park where all the smog was collecting, so she packed us up in the car and drove along 110 to the end. We were driving around looking for houses and I had to go to the bathroom, so she found a construction site I could use. There was a new house being built nearby and that was where we ended up moving.

Roderick: Jumping over the wall to the eucalyptus grove in the San Francisco Presidio, half a block away from my childhood home. This is before the Presidio became a National Park. At that time, it was a semi-abandoned park inhabited by the ghosts of the West.

Garden-related book you return to time and again:

James: Sunset Western Garden Book and The Gardens of Roberto Burle Marx by Sima Eliovson. I got it before I visited him for two weeks in Rio, just before he passed away. He was a very kind and inspirational person and had a lot of influence on my career.

Roderick: Yves Brunier : Landscape Architect.

Instagram account that inspires you:

James: Dan Pearson’s @coyotewillow. [See Quick Takes With: Dan Pearson.]

Roderick: @le_jardin_robo.

Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.

James: Poetic, surprising, crazy.

Roderick: Rhythmic, atonal, dreamy.

Plant that makes you swoon:

James: Dogwood.

Roderick: Davidia involucrata.

Plant that makes you want to run the other way:

James: It’s a tie between agapanthus and rhaphiolepis.

Roderick: Ice plant (Carpobrotus edulus).

Favorite go-to plant:

James: Hellebores.

Roderick: Muhlenbergia capillaris.

Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:

James: Not testing the soil. All the plants died!

Another lesson was when we were young and trying to make a name for ourselves. We participated in a designer’s showcase fundraiser in San Francisco, designing the garden. The garden had a dramatic slope with a patio that jutted out. Our idea was to use mirrors to reflect otherwise unseen parts of the neighborhood. But we didn’t realize that the mirrors would concentrate the sunlight, and they ended up burning some of the grass. We tried all sorts of different ways of covering up the burnt patches. That was a painful lesson to learn.

Roderick: The heartbreak of a broken irrigation line.

Unpopular gardening opinion:

James: No bamboo.

Roderick: Yes bamboo.

Gardening or design trend that needs to go:

James: Zen gardens.

Roderick: Chromaphobia [a fear of colors].

Old wives’ tale gardening trick that actually works:

James: Talking to the plants.

Roderick: Astrological planting.

Favorite gardening hack:

James: Put a boulder on it!

Roderick: Prune with care.

Favorite way to bring the outdoors in.

James: Big windows.

Roderick: Compose a view to garden that emphasizes the depth of the space so the viewer feels enclosed in the garden.

Every garden needs a…

James: …tree.

Roderick: …fragrance.

Favorite hardscaping material:

James: Recycled materials, like ground concrete. We always use reclaimed materials in our projects.

Roderick: Reclaimed stone sidewalks.

Tool you can’t live without:

James: My brain.

Roderick: Felco clippers.

Go-to gardening outfit:

James: 501s.

Roderick: Head wear is essential

Favorite nursery, plant shop, or seed company:

James: Flora Grubb. [See Quick Takes With: Flora Grubb.]

Roderick: Trees of Antiquity.

On your wishlist:

James: Visit every garden on the planet. Some of my favorite memories are garden memories. When Roderick and I visit gardens it’s usually us and the old ladies.

Roderick: Smyrna quince.

Not-to-be-missed public garden/park/botanical garden:

James: Koko Crater in Honolulu has the largest collection of plumerias in a giant volcanic crater. The flowers are used to make leis. When the plumeria trees lose all their leaves, and they look really weird naked. You can’t pick the plumeria flowers at Koko Crater unless you’re a part of this Hawaiian association that makes leis from them. There are also these crazy, giant cactuses there. No one knows about the botanical garden because it’s behind a golf course and equestrian stables.

Roderick: I love gardens that are immersive, that are simultaneously of the place and transport you to another world—gardens such as Lotusland, Garden of Ninfa, and Allerton Garden.

The REAL reason you garden:

James: Gardening gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Roderick: Gardening is a conversation with the wild—time apart from the logic of our commitments in the world.

Thank you, James and Roderick! (You can follow them on Instagram @sdisf.)

For our full archive of Quick Takes, go here.