COMING FROM ARID AUSTRALIA, BERNARD TRAINOR
MADE HIMSELF RIGHT AT HOME DESIGNING IN CALIFORNIA.
On a sunny, windy spring day, with the California hills already brown after a nearly rainless winter, Bernard Trainor, ASLA, leads the way up
a winding driveway to a ridgetop house with no
other houses in sight. He points out what the cut
for the drive has exposed—virtually no topsoil,
just a thin flling of tan, sandy soil coating rocks
packed as densely as the nuts in a Baby Ruth
candy bar. “The soil is so poor and the weather so
extreme that this is what you get,” he says, indicating
a “pygmy forest” of stunted, windblown oaks.
This is not in a remote badlands but just a few
miles from the gleaming white beach of Carmel
Bay, the craggy cypresses of Point Lobos, and
the vertiginous ocean views of northernmost Big
Sur—a paradise of powerfully visual landscapes. This Carmel Valley landscape is a
magnifcent remnant of the lonely,
wild beauty that used to be seen
throughout much of California—
tawny hills clothed with dense, dark
chaparral, punctuated by solitary,
thick-trunked oaks. The job for Bernard
Trainor + Associates was to preserve
and restore the natural beauty
of the property and to create comfortable
outdoor living spaces for
appreciating it. Trainor did this with
careful grading, selective clearing for
fre safety, and planting thousands of
native plants.
Along the driveway, you can’t tell
what has been planted and what naturally
grew there. Trainor singles out
a tiny-leafed, deep olive green Ceanothus
impressus ‘Vandenberg’ that he
planted next to Arctostaphylos pajaroensis
with its purple-tipped leaves.
The color combination of the foliage
is both subtle and striking. At the top
of the hill is a driveway turnaround
required for fre trucks in the highfre-
risk area, planted with native
coast live oaks and more manzanita
and ceanothus. “See how some of
the plants are struggling? I like to
see struggling,” Trainor says. “That’s
how it is in nature. In 10 years, this
will all look diferent. The ground
covers will have trunks. This project
is where I frst became comfortable
with the California landscape after
growing up in Australia and spending
four years in England.”
How did this near-stereotypical
Aussie—tall, ruddy, with a sunny
demeanor—immerse himself so
deeply in California’s native fora and
customs? And aren’t we grateful that
he didn’t instead adopt some of our
bad habits, such as fxating over our
bodies, not stopping for pedestrians
in a crosswalk, and building gaudy,
tortuously pruned gardens of plants
not appropriate for a Mediterranean
climate?
Trainor grew up in southern Australia,
on the Mornington Peninsula,
just southeast of Melbourne,
with a cool maritime climate suitable
for wine and beach vacations.
In the book Landprints: The Landscape
Designs of Bernard Trainor,
by Susan Heeger, he describes his
background: “Growing up I worshipped
the Australian wilderness.
The honesty of its patterns and landscape
mesmerized me.… Surfing
and sailing in extreme elements on
the unpredictable southern coast of
Australia has taught me to respect
and work with these natural forces.”
Trainor says he “got into design
through the back door.” At the age
of 18, he entered a fve-year gardening
and horticultural apprenticeship
program at Holmesglen College in
Melbourne that was half study and
half work. As he mowed and planted
for the parks department, he learned
that he “liked to put plants together”
and also came to realize that the
English garden model, designed for
a cool, wet climate, didn’t work in
arid Australia. As he says, “It struck
me that I was dousing these temperamental
plants in annual borders
with fertilizers and fungicides so
they’d live where they didn’t belong.” Trainor continued his training by
winning a two-year fellowship at the
Chelsea Physic Garden, the London
botanic garden that dates back to
1673. He worked as a gardener for
the designer Beth Chatto, the master
of choosing the right plants for the
right spot. He says, “I fell in love
with plants, and became enamored
with site design and hardscape, and
the role that plants play.”
In 1995 Trainor was invited to direct a
landscape design frm near San Francisco
and was immediately struck by
the beauty of the California coast and
its similarity to his homeland.
He hiked and explored
the coast, studied its terrain
and plants, and moved to
Monterey in 2002 soon after starting
his own landscape architecture ofce.
Trainor’s projects exemplify what he
sometimes describes as the “spirit of
Monterey”—displaying the forces
of nature front and center but in an
orderly, controlled setting. His planting
designs have relied on California
native plants, including many from
the Monterey area, along with compatible
species from similar Mediterranean
climates, especially Australia.
Trainor says that his appreciation
of California native plants wasn’t
love at frst sight. “There was a lot of
dating frst.” He attributes his knowledge
of natives to observation, trial
and error, advice from native plant
growers (particularly David Fross
of Native Sons nursery), and books
such as California Native Plants for
the Garden by Carol Bornstein, Bart
O’Brien, and Fross. Trainor explains that it took an even
steeper learning curve to fgure out
the best way to use California and
Mediterranean natives in interesting
and useful ways. The exuberance of
Trainor’s plantings of often unruly
species—mini groves of gawky young
live oaks, grids of bristly rush, precise
rows of rangy kangaroo paws—is
framed and magnifed by the crisp,
clean orderliness of paving, walls, and
other constraining hardscapes. This
modernist formality (no surprise that
he is frequently sought by architects
designing contemporary houses)
departs from the long-standing approach,
promulgated by the California
arts and crafts movement a century
ago, to use natives in natural settings
with organic forms and materials.
As we walk through a garden, a plant
combination in a pot stops him in
his tracks. He compliments the striking
look of the pink English lupine
combined with a gray Sedum but is
visibly piqued at the questionable
sustainability and compatibility of
the moisture-demanding lupine
paired with a dry-loving succulent.
COMING FROM ARID AUSTRALIA, BERNARD TRAINOR
MADE HIMSELF RIGHT AT HOME DESIGNING IN CALIFORNIA.
On a sunny, windy spring day, with the California hills already brown after a nearly rainless winter, Bernard Trainor, ASLA, leads the way up
a winding driveway to a ridgetop house with no
other houses in sight. He points out what the cut
for the drive has exposed—virtually no topsoil,
just a thin flling of tan, sandy soil coating rocks
packed as densely as the nuts in a Baby Ruth
candy bar. “The soil is so poor and the weather so
extreme that this is what you get,” he says, indicating
a “pygmy forest” of stunted, windblown oaks.
This is not in a remote badlands but just a few
miles from the gleaming white beach of Carmel
Bay, the craggy cypresses of Point Lobos, and
the vertiginous ocean views of northernmost Big
Sur—a paradise of powerfully visual landscapes. This Carmel Valley landscape is a
magnifcent remnant of the lonely,
wild beauty that used to be seen
throughout much of California—
tawny hills clothed with dense, dark
chaparral, punctuated by solitary,
thick-trunked oaks. The job for Bernard
Trainor + Associates was to preserve
and restore the natural beauty
of the property and to create comfortable
outdoor living spaces for
appreciating it. Trainor did this with
careful grading, selective clearing for
fre safety, and planting thousands of
native plants.
Along the driveway, you can’t tell
what has been planted and what naturally
grew there. Trainor singles out
a tiny-leafed, deep olive green Ceanothus
impressus ‘Vandenberg’ that he
planted next to Arctostaphylos pajaroensis
with its purple-tipped leaves.
The color combination of the foliage
is both subtle and striking. At the top
of the hill is a driveway turnaround
required for fre trucks in the highfre-
risk area, planted with native
coast live oaks and more manzanita
and ceanothus. “See how some of
the plants are struggling? I like to
see struggling,” Trainor says. “That’s
how it is in nature. In 10 years, this
will all look diferent. The ground
covers will have trunks. This project
is where I frst became comfortable
with the California landscape after
growing up in Australia and spending
four years in England.”
How did this near-stereotypical
Aussie—tall, ruddy, with a sunny
demeanor—immerse himself so
deeply in California’s native fora and
customs? And aren’t we grateful that
he didn’t instead adopt some of our
bad habits, such as fxating over our
bodies, not stopping for pedestrians
in a crosswalk, and building gaudy,
tortuously pruned gardens of plants
not appropriate for a Mediterranean
climate?
Trainor grew up in southern Australia,
on the Mornington Peninsula,
just southeast of Melbourne,
with a cool maritime climate suitable
for wine and beach vacations.
In the book Landprints: The Landscape
Designs of Bernard Trainor,
by Susan Heeger, he describes his
background: “Growing up I worshipped
the Australian wilderness.
The honesty of its patterns and landscape
mesmerized me.… Surfing
and sailing in extreme elements on
the unpredictable southern coast of
Australia has taught me to respect
and work with these natural forces.”
Trainor says he “got into design
through the back door.” At the age
of 18, he entered a fve-year gardening
and horticultural apprenticeship
program at Holmesglen College in
Melbourne that was half study and
half work. As he mowed and planted
for the parks department, he learned
that he “liked to put plants together”
and also came to realize that the
English garden model, designed for
a cool, wet climate, didn’t work in
arid Australia. As he says, “It struck
me that I was dousing these temperamental
plants in annual borders
with fertilizers and fungicides so
they’d live where they didn’t belong.” Trainor continued his training by
winning a two-year fellowship at the
Chelsea Physic Garden, the London
botanic garden that dates back to
1673. He worked as a gardener for
the designer Beth Chatto, the master
of choosing the right plants for the
right spot. He says, “I fell in love
with plants, and became enamored
with site design and hardscape, and
the role that plants play.”
In 1995 Trainor was invited to direct a
landscape design frm near San Francisco
and was immediately struck by
the beauty of the California coast and
its similarity to his homeland.
He hiked and explored
the coast, studied its terrain
and plants, and moved to
Monterey in 2002 soon after starting
his own landscape architecture ofce.
Trainor’s projects exemplify what he
sometimes describes as the “spirit of
Monterey”—displaying the forces
of nature front and center but in an
orderly, controlled setting. His planting
designs have relied on California
native plants, including many from
the Monterey area, along with compatible
species from similar Mediterranean
climates, especially Australia.
Trainor says that his appreciation
of California native plants wasn’t
love at frst sight. “There was a lot of
dating frst.” He attributes his knowledge
of natives to observation, trial
and error, advice from native plant
growers (particularly David Fross
of Native Sons nursery), and books
such as California Native Plants for
the Garden by Carol Bornstein, Bart
O’Brien, and Fross. Trainor explains that it took an even
steeper learning curve to fgure out
the best way to use California and
Mediterranean natives in interesting
and useful ways. The exuberance of
Trainor’s plantings of often unruly
species—mini groves of gawky young
live oaks, grids of bristly rush, precise
rows of rangy kangaroo paws—is
framed and magnifed by the crisp,
clean orderliness of paving, walls, and
other constraining hardscapes. This
modernist formality (no surprise that
he is frequently sought by architects
designing contemporary houses)
departs from the long-standing approach,
promulgated by the California
arts and crafts movement a century
ago, to use natives in natural settings
with organic forms and materials.
As we walk through a garden, a plant
combination in a pot stops him in
his tracks. He compliments the striking
look of the pink English lupine
combined with a gray Sedum but is
visibly piqued at the questionable
sustainability and compatibility of
the moisture-demanding lupine
paired with a dry-loving succulent.
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