Gardens of Santa Barbara

The Easton Gallery, 2000
Text by Sharon Crawford
- 168 pages
- over 100 color reproductions

“The early Santa Barbara garden designers Lockwood and Elizabeth de Forest had a significant impact on Santa Barbara gardens. Their views on the qualities of a good garden still ring true:

The uses of a garden are not overcomplicated. First, they are a place to grow
plants for food or flowers for pleasure. Second, they are places to enjoy,
places to walk through, linger in, or live in. They are nearly always places
to look at. We can safely assume that the foremost use of the pleasure
garden is a creation to look at, this use coming through the thrill
its beauty gices to the onlooker. If the garden design, no matter how
splendid, results in a mediocre picture, the garden does not fulfill
its primary purpose. The onlooker’s viewpoint is all important, and we
should approach the garden problem through the eyes of the landscape painter.
(The Santa Barbara Gardener, May 1930)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The purpose of this book is not to approach gardens as “problems,” but rather to present them as finished compositions, portrayed from the viewpoints of twenty local plein-air landscape artists. Their paintings illustrate the undeniable appeal of the gardens of Santa Barbara as creations to look at. The all important role of the onlooker, in this instance, is that of the reader.”