From time to time, we highlight “Our Garden Tour Stars” — landscape architects, florists, and interior designers who have participated at our annual Garden Tour and Showcase Estate fundraiser at The Virginia Robinson Gardens. We want to let you know about these very talented designers, their inspirations, and their creations.
This month, we are honored to feature landscape designer Jessica Viola of Viola Gardens. Jessica’s garden installation by the Lily Pond in our Floral Fantasia Garden Tour and Showcase Estate on May 17, 2025 was a microcosm of the landscapes she creates.
We asked her these five questions:
1. What garden changed your life or made an impact on you?
One of the most transformational gardens I ever created was early in my career in Topanga. I was engaged by a woman to build a true sanctuary — a food forest, medicinal herb spiral, dry stack walls and patios, cut flower beds, grape arbor, and a layered tapestry of native, pollinator-supportive plants. The site originally had only two eucalyptus trees, which we harvested and repurposed into a winding staircase leading to a treehouse that was later featured nationally for sustainable innovation — and into the grape arbor itself.
We amended the soil with local manure, built the terraces and herb spiral using natural dry stack techniques, and planted oak-tolerant native species like currants, mahonia, fuchsia, manzanita and ceanothus. This is the garden where I began to truly explore permaculture principles: stacking functions, recycling energy, creating biological solutions, closing loops — concepts that eventually inspired the framework for my book on patterns in nature and personal + collective empowerment.
To this day, that garden is an oasis — alive with birds, pollinators, butterflies, and people. It is a living example of what is possible through regenerative design with almost zero construction waste. And in many ways, it became the philosophical root system for everything that followed — including The Art & Ecology Studio — reminding me that innovation often begins with small repeatable patterns that regenerate life and meaning as they scale.
2. Who is your favorite landscape designer (living or not living) and why?
I am deeply inspired by Andrea Cochran, Bernard Trainor, Ron Lutsko, and Piet Oudolf. Andrea’s work is sculptural, poetic, and restrained — she creates atmosphere and emotional spaciousness, not just gardens. Bernard Trainor’s coastal landscapes hold a soulful, grounded relationship to place that feels uniquely Californian. Ron Lutsko’s work bridges site, ecology, culture, and sculptural form in a way that is contemporary, regionally intelligent, and deeply expressive. And Piet Oudolf’s naturalistic perennial meadows shifted the global paradigm — his plantings are living symphonies of seasonality, movement, habitat and wild beauty that continue to influence how we design for life, not just aesthetics.
3. Which historical garden in the world is your favorite and why?
It is nearly impossible for me to choose one. The world is so ecologically and culturally varied — every botanical garden is a reflection of its place, its plants, and its people. The botanical gardens I have visited throughout Mexico and Peru have been especially profound — the diversity of habitat, form, and ethnobotanical knowledge there continues to expand my imagination.
Closer to home, I have a deep love for Lotusland. Ganna Walska was a phenomenon — a visionary woman who challenged convention, experimented boldly, and created an immersive plant world that feels alive, theatrical, magical, and utterly original.
4. Can you please share photos of your garden and/or projects you have worked on?
Malibu, CA
Topanga, CA
Hollywood and East Los Angeles, CA
5. What is the book that inspires you the most?
I am most inspired by The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun and the writings of Martín Prechtel. His storytelling is lyrical, poetic, embodied and alive — weaving culture, landscape, history, myth, grief, spirit, and the human condition into one continuous field of meaning. His work reminds me that language itself can be medicine. In permaculture, we design across time and space — cultivating place, relationship, balance, and reciprocity that matures and deepens as we do. Prechtel’s worldview mirrors this approach. His books have influenced how I design, how I see culture in landscape, and how I understand belonging.
Contact information:
[email protected]
(415)-722-0749
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