Pink Umbrellas: Bougainvillea Bowers
Pull up a café chair beneath those huge metal umbrellas, and hear how artist Robert Irwin and plant expert Jim Duggan collaborated to create a living work of art.
Central Garden, 1997, Robert Irwin. © Robert Irwin
Transcript
Narrator: Find a place to linger for a moment. Why not under the canopy of some colorful bougainvillea flowers—beneath that structure that looks like a parasol.
Move a café chair to wherever you’d like to sit. … This is a tale about the garden’s creation.
In 1992, Irwin was commissioned to design the garden. The Center’s construction was well underway, ...
and he was expected to provide a visual counterpoint to the stark, all-white buildings.
Jim Duggan: I probably met Bob first in 1996 …
Narrator: At that time, Jim Duggan ran a retail garden nursery near San Diego. One day a customer, a landscape architect, told him about an unusual project he was involved with: a garden designed by an artist. They were having trouble interpreting the artist’s directions, so could he bring Irwin by?
Jim Duggan: That’s how it started. Bob’s coming to the nursery. He sees a plant; he asks me about the plant. Bob had this list of two-, three-hundred plants, he’d picked out of gardening books, would cut pictures out of, make collages. I knew right off the bat that I couldn’t find those plants in San Diego.
Narrator: A year before the garden’s opening, and for years after, they collaborated. Irwin relied on Duggan’s expertise; Duggan came to admire Irwin’s refined vision. Initially, they tested plants at Duggan’s nursery. They traveled around California and the West coast, seeking unique specimens.
Jim Duggan: We went to nurseries and gardens relentlessly. And we would find things ... and I would say how big it was, or would it grow in California. And he would say, “I want to use it anyway.”
Narrator: Together they developed a highly unorthodox approach to gardening.
Experimenting, sometimes flaunting accepted horticultural practices—often successfully. Duggan recalls a moment early-on that demonstrates what they both had to learn.
Jim Duggan: Plants at nurseries are laid out in blocks; large groups of the same plant. He singles this one out and he goes: “Wow, that is really a great looking plant!” I had to tell him, “Bob, that plant’s dead.”
So I had to figure out what he’s seeing. There’s some structure, there’s some pattern. Bob’s looking at the world through an artist’s eye.