This sculptural garden overlooking the San Francisco Bay reflects the vision of passionate art collectors whose personal artistic vision includes the idea of the landscape being experienced and enhanced through play and exploration. As a result, their whimsical five-acre garden incorporates distinct spaces that weave together architecture and landscape, providing places for reflection, play, and discovery.

At the entrance, a folding deck projects from the house, merging the building with a landscape of magnolias, grasses, and ferns. It also frames an existing stepping-stone installation by artist Topher Delaney, which spells out a Christopher Marlowe love poem in Braille.

The deck’s warping planes create a threshold for the visitor, highlighting the relationship between the existing ground plane of the house and the sudden change of the surrounding topography. Beyond the deck, a cobbled pathway connects with a shade garden, creating a sense of calm and intimacy around the main entrance. Across from this path, locally sourced river rock conceals the property’s main drainage swale.

Children’s play areas are interspersed throughout the site, starting at the entrance where the folding deck doubles as a climbing wall. Three playfully sculpted green mounds were created to stem hill erosion, then multi-purposed to offer a wonderland of discovery and play spaces: “Rabbit Hole Hill” encourages children to drop balls into tubes of various sizes, without knowing where they will emerge in the landscape; “Jump Mound” conceals a trampoline; “The Hobbit House” gives the children a personal play space in a landscape of native grasses. Similarly, the re-claimed granite curbing and curved lawn embankment becomes an impromptu children’s theater for open-air performances. The garden’s many features were created to continually engage children as they grow.

In addition to creating a backdrop for play, the landscape also serves as a viewing garden for a collection of contemporary outdoor sculpture. One prominent piece is “Roundabout,” a rabbit-inspired sculpture by Travis Constance. Paths meander through both formal gardens and more native plantings, creating a multi-layered and sensory procession, accented by moments of pause to reflect on sculpture while framing views out to the bigger landscape.