Bay Area landscape designer Janell Denler Hobart is known for her understated presence and refined work, often collaborating with architect Ken Lindsteadt on stately estate gardens that balance classical elegance with modern sensibility. That harmony suits her.
But in the hilly, unbounded garden of a Ross property—originally part of a Bechtel family summer estate—Hobart found herself working without a playbook.
The story began nearly thirty years ago when the owners, a pair of lawyers with green thumbs, bought the former riding grounds. By the time Hobart was invited a decade ago for her expertise with plants, the couple had raised their family there and spent years taming the land. They had transformed the 3-acre property, with its sweeping views of Mt. Tam, into a lived-in landscape: trails lined with stone, a greenhouse for propagating native trees, a vegetable garden, bee boxes, giant swings, a treehouse, and a deep, amoeba-shaped pool flanked by an outdoor kitchen where annual gatherings took place.
“We wanted it to be mostly native,” the owner says. “I didn’t want just a flower garden everywhere.”
Set amid ancient oaks, madrone, and buckeye trees—and anchored by a Japanese-style ranch house—the landscape was already deeply bucolic. So what was left for Hobart to do?
“My role was to fill out the canvas,” she says. “I waved my arms a lot and suggested combinations of plants to paint the landscape with.” Some flourished. Others didn’t. But over time, more of her choices took root, and a creative partnership blossomed.
Oakleaf hydrangeas thrived. Swirling mondo grass now meets clipped lawn and structured hedges. There are “rivers of bulbs” that rise seasonally in a muted choreography of arbutus, salvias, iris, and alliums. Hobart designed a soft bed of brunnera and other low-growing plants to cradle a solid stone fountain by sculptor Edwin Hamilton, who the owners first met when he built their rock walls and pizza oven. They’ve since commissioned larger works, including a piece titled Twist. Their love of stone is echoed throughout the garden, both in material and in form.
When a sleek, lanai-style pool house was completed—just in time to serve as the couple’s home during pandemic-induced delays in building their new house—Hobart replanted the area with drifts of Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’. Later, as the new house rose, she installed bands of gray and greenish bluestone paving that tie the structure to its natural surroundings.
“We worked our way out the door,” Hobart says, smiling—fully aware that she’ll return.
