FEATURES

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The various elements of the new garden seamlessly blend in to the a classic axial layout without looking uptight or formal. An imaginary line runs straight through the front door and foyer and out the back into the rondel through the center of a fabulous 16-foot pool frieze—halving the pool, finally resting on a pedestaled urn that punctuates the scene like a final exclamation. Every single placement in the entire garden is measured and the view is maximized from every angle—yet it never looks stiff.

The impressive setting of the house on a berm required serious excavation, many cement trucks and much ingenuity. Providing the perfect panorama for his imagined garden, Socia utilized all of his resources and good fortune that came with the closing of the Springs Nursery to capitalizing on friends distaste for yews and Japanese hollies that he put to good use. And so he leapt from a guy with good taste in a red pick-up truck to being a major landscape designer.

A Socia garden is impossible to capture in a moment—the relationship of tree to shrub to plant challenges photography as the captivating close-ups of one week morph into unfathomable melanges the next. Trees are transplanted to add yet another layer to the hedgerow, but the trick is that most hedgerows are not rows at all. Instead, they are integrated maximalist tree beds that look as enticing in the bleakest winter months in their evergreeness as they do in the come-hither months when they throb with seasonal life: shrubs flower, perennials leaf out, bulbs surprise in spring and summer—adding to the incredible depth.

There is serendipity to his constant arranging and rearranging. He doesn't just design a garden and walk away, as if it is some static enterprise: a Craig Socia garden is a continual metamorphosis—everyone involved is integral to the process— and he insists that time is one of the most important elements of a garden.