With the most subtle gestures and an often inconspicuous plan, designer Bernard Trainor’s plantings work seamlessly with the California wilds. “I love the natural hardscape here, and I’m always working to highlight the seasonal foliage, the rocks and boulders, and the handsome trees,” says the Central Californian, who grew up in Australia with similar rain-free summers and dramatic vistas. After studying horticulture in Melbourne, he moved to England, in 1989, to attend the prestigious English Gardening School, where he learned classic design and history. Then, in 1995, when he was offered a director’s spot at a landscape design firm in the Bay Area, he jumped at the chance. After hiking and driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, he says its beauty “liberated” him. Eventually, he settled in Monterey and opened his own firm in 2002.

His work pays homage to the craggy Big Sur coast, the undulating silhouettes of Carmel Valley forests and the gradations of green in the Napa Valley hills. In his concepts for clients, almost exclusively residential properties in California and Australia, handcrafted indigenous stone walls enclose a terrace, and manzanita branches frame distant views of redwoods and ancient oaks.

Ten of Trainor’s compelling designs, including a ridgetop property in the Santa Lucia Preserve and a rocky patio that clings to the Pacific coast, are presented in his first book, Landprints: The Landscape Designs of Bernard Trainor (Princeton Architectural Press) written by noted Los Angeles author Susan Heeger. Trainor finds that dramatic surroundings—mysterious fog, fragrant oaks and painterly clouds—encourage him to be creative, keep a low profile and let the native elements take center stage. “My goal is always to create and shape a new landscape that is entirely at home in its setting. I like to keep planting very simple and elegant, often using native grasses like Carex and Muhlenbergia that move gracefully in the wind.”

By Diane Dorrans Saeks

 

Pictured: A typically tranquil Trainor garden in the Santa Lucia Preserve.
Photo by Jason Liske / Redwood Design

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