Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/566702
landscapes. Her gardens are not all Modernist, however. "The concept I work from is, when you're in the house looking out, it should look like the view, and from the outside, it should look like the house," she says. It's a formula that seems so simple, and yet doesn't even occur to many home owners. "A modern house is not going to get a gate with old twisty branches." And, unless you live in an actual English cottage, she eschews foundation plantings. Von Gal points out that "Masterpiece Theater" manor houses never have flowers cluttering up their foundations. Some of her landscapes look like a village green in Wales, Great Britain. She's done wattle fences, gates and trellises; bee gardens; dogwood-edged lawns; a minimal pool surround worthy of Ken Smith; beach houses with what anyone would insist is no landscape whatsoever. "I like to think my work is unidentifiable—it's supposed to look natural," she says. "Clients laugh about how much it took to look that way. They have a pretty good idea about what we did." Klein is one of her many clients who have signed on for the full von Gal: gardens and landscapes that thrive without extra watering, chemicals, fertilizers or fungicides. "I don't take a job now unless that's understood," she says. Clients often make the mistake of growing their tomatoes pesticide-free, but bathing their surrounding lawns in chemicals. "I wouldn't call it a mistake," she says. "I think it's an oversight. They grow organic vegetables, but they are walking across a toxic lawn. What's the lawn guy spraying on the trees and shrubs? Most of it is unnecessary." Instead, she says, "people should be growing grass longer—cutting it short makes for anorexic grass—and letting clover, even dandelions, grow freely. Water deeply, but not often." She urges people not to fire the "lawn guy," but to educate. Surveys show that 90 percent of respondents use chemicals on their lawns, mostly fertilizer and herbicides for weeds. To counter that, in 2013, she created a movement, the Perfect Earth Project, that advocates for no (or few) chemicals. The organization's website, perfectearthproject.org, provides free instructions, as well as information about news and events. 198 CULTURED Calvin Klein is one of her many clients who have signed on for the full von Gal: gardens and landscapes that thrive without extra watering, chemicals, fertilizers, fungicides.