Hermann Park unveils Houston's grandest public garden

Marley Lott walks in Hermann Park almost daily, savoring the shade trees and lawns and lake that draw a mix of Houstonians to a verdant amenity some call the city's most important public space.

For months she's peered across construction fences at an ambitious re-imagination of the park's northeast quadrant, where the city's first major public garden has finally taken shape.

Preview events this week will give Houstonians a peek at 8 acres of lush themed gardens, a sparkling new pavilion, and a poetic 30-foot perch with a surprisingly panoramic view. Even the parking lot is tree-lined.

Officials hope the new attraction - which has a hefty, $31 million price tag - will be open daily by December. (The construction has been delayed by rains.)

"What's most important is the garden, and we're aiding that garden in a beautiful way," said architect Peter Bohlin, whose team created the pavilion as a gateway to the garden. "It's almost like a garden element - a magic door you go through to enter another world. You go through and the world is different; what a pleasure that is."

Lott will be among the first to enter the new $31-million John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern Centennial Gardens during a donor party Thursday. A free public party Saturday includes tours, talks and family activities.

It's been 100 years since the modest-minded rancher and oilman George Henry Hermann donated 285 acres of inherited, once-rural land to create an urban green space. Unlike rangy Memorial Park, where people go to exercise and sweat, the now-445-acre Hermann Park has always been civilized. Generations of Houstonians have sat on the Miller Outdoor Theatre hill to hear the symphony, ridden the park's miniature train, taken reflective walks through the genteel Japanese garden or just lollygagged while their kids ran loose in the fresh air.

But it hasn't always been idyllic.

Lott, who has lived nearby since 1978, remembers a time when she wouldn't even let her dog play in the reflection pond.

"It was full of mosquitoes and Cheetos," she said.

She helped establish what would become the Hermann Park Conservancy.

The group has raised $100 million in public and private funds during the past 23 years to dramatically transform the landscape - a gargantuan effort that has reached a new peak - literally - with this project.

One of landscape architect Doug Hoerr's most dramatic features for the new garden is a 30-foot-high mount that rises like an inspired work of land art at the end of a long, formal lawn flanked by colorful plants and covered walkways.

8 years in making

Looking for a significant way to honor the park's centennial, the conservancy committed to creating the gardens eight years ago. But after the financial crisis of 2008, conservancy director Doreen Stoller and then-board chair Ann Kennedy thought they'd be lucky just to see its central lawn installed by this year.

"We've pulled a big rabbit out of a very small hat," said Jay Baker, who's led the conservancy's project committee 15 years.

Most visitors will be drawn into the gardens through Bohlin's purposefully calm, 8,000-square-foot Cherie Flores Garden Pavilion, made of glass with an angled, open central wall of dark granite and a ceiling of glowing stainless steel that reflects the colors of sky, earth and water.

That part of the project involved replacing the old garden center - a once-graceful building used by 26 garden clubs that had gone through "bad plastic surgery," as Baker puts it.

But the conservancy didn't start with architecture. It understood a garden should be about space, first and foremost.

Hoerr, a principal of Chicago's Hoerr Schaudt firm, designed the entire landscape before Bohlin was hired. Hoerr collaborated with Houston's Jim Patterson of White Oak Studio, who has worked on various park improvements since the late 1990s.

Moving the 300-space parking lot, which also serves the theater, was necessary to create an uninterrupted expanse of garden, Hoerr said. "The great lawn was something they wanted from the beginning, and it's treated very graphically. It made sense to shift everything around and create these garden rooms around it."

The lawn tapers from 80 feet to about 60 feet, drawing eyes toward the mount.

"That's a very old garden trick to create a false perspective," Patterson said. "We didn't want it to be in your face."

Some trees were removed and replaced, and a few were repositioned - most dramatically the ancient oak named "Tree No. 43," which is now near the relocated Friendship Pavilion given to Houston in 1978 by the city of Taipei, Taiwan.

Baker and others were elated that Bohlin, whose designs for Apple retail stores are iconic, agreed to take on the small pavilion project in Hoerr's plan.

Kids will love it

The pavilion is a simple concept, done with care, Bohlin said. "In places like this it's what's needed," he said. "It's meant not to overpower but to touch people's hearts and minds."

Hoerr wanted a powerful focal point on the other end of the lawn - a piece of the garden, not another piece of architecture. His design for the mount wasn't an immediate hit with the board, but the group came around after learning that mounts are historical elements that have added height to gardens for centuries.

"Kids are going to love it," Hoerr said. "Whenever you can gain altitude, it's more fun. And it's fun for people to get their bearings."

Covered with a base of fig ivy, a hedge of dwarf yaupon shrubs and soon-to-be wavy, unmowed zoysia grass, the mount offers changing perspectives as visitors walk up, leading to expansive views of the garden's pleasing geometry and parkland under wide-open sky. The walkway crosses a granite waterfall as it spirals to the mount's 20-foot diameter crown of scored concrete.

At the top visitors will also encounter "Seed, Trees, People," a sculptural installation of three elegantly curved limestone benches designed by Houston artist Randy Twaddle. Etched into the seats is a quotation by Confucius: "If you think of a year, plant a seed. If you think of ten years, plant a tree. If you think of one hundred years, teach the people."

"It seemed like after you make this journey to get up here, what you need is a place to sit down," Twaddle said. He sees the text as "a parting gift, something to think about before you walk back down."

The garden was among 10 major projects recommended in a 1995 master plan by legendary landscape architect Laurie Olin.

"In 1992, there wasn't much of a park there. It was a dodgy place to go," Baker said. "The zoo, the golf course, the theater and the museum were separate, bottom-line organizations, and the land between them had no identity...Laurie's plan was far-reaching, fantastic and a little scary."

Endowment for upkeep

Stoller is thrilled with the latest project. "If you make your way to the top of the mount, you really get a sense of what a gift it was for all these people to come together and do this," she said.

Not that she's resting on any laurels. The conservancy will be in charge of the garden's staff and maintenance, not something it has done before - although it has a long history of amateur help. Local volunteers log about 20,000 hours a year, doing everything from sweeping pathways to pulling weeds and hauling garbage.

Twenty-five percent of the funds raised for the gardens - more than $7 million - has been placed into an endowment to support the salaries of garden staffers who start work Dec. 1.

Public gardens are an important part of any major city, Patterson said. "It's not just about loving plants, but the space and experience."

Hoerr thinks the garden's impact will be long-lasting and powerful. "It's going to be part of Houston's 'What are we doing today?' conversations," he said.