A longtime relationship built on unwavering trust fosters an expansive New Orleans garden in a posh neighborhood and showcases the city’s subtropical appeal—especially as summer gives way to fall.
A serendipitous encounter very early in her career yielded the project of a lifetime for landscape architect Kim Alvarez. Her design, with bold tropical trees and traditional Southern plantings, gives the home in one of New Orleans’ most sought-after neighborhoods wide appeal.
Across from Audubon Park in the Uptown neighborhood, Audubon Place is a street lined with grand mansions, most built at the turn of the century. Kim’s opportunity to create a New Orleans garden at such a wonderful property came on a chance meeting about 25 years ago with a friend who was a photographer for a local magazine. “He asked me if I had any gardens that could be published. I came up with a garden,” says Kim, who now works for Landscape Images. As fortune would have it, the Audubon Place homeowners saw the article and contacted Kim about doing their yard, a relationship that has grown through the years.
With a subtropical climate that allows palms and banana plants to thrive, this New Orleans garden doesn’t undergo the dramatic changes in foliage found in other areas of the South at this time of year. “We have two seasons: summer and a milder summer,” says Kim.
One of the easiest ways to change the look of such a garden is with annuals and hardscapes. Unusually spacious for the city, the lot inspired Kim’s vision of “a place to stroll” that offered a variety of experiences along a meandering route.
A path of Pennsylvania Lilac flagstone starts at one end of the pool terrace and makes a graceful loop through the back of the grounds. Camellias, live oaks, cypress, and other traditionally Southern plants mingle with dramatic tropical palms and banana plants, which thrive in New Orleans’ subtropical environs.
As the walkway winds back toward the house, the beds brim with textural philodendron, giant elephant ears, mondo grass, mahonia, Ligularia, ferns, and the artful pieces that infuse a fanciful spirit.
At the front of the stone-façade dwelling, a live oak between the street and the sidewalk casts shade on what was once a straightforward lawn with foundation plantings. Instead of the de rigueur row of formal boxwoods, Kim created a soft rolling hedge, adding texture and a loose painterly air with azaleas, ferns, and more. Mixed annuals like petunias, caladiums, torenias, and impatiens freshen the beds each season. A treasured pair of antique terra-cotta urns on pedestals flank the entrance, always with a graceful fern.
One advantage of working on a project over decades is the ability to edit the plan as elements present surprise appeal or, in some cases, overwhelm. Several times plantings had to be trimmed back or replaced when they grew too large. “In my wildest dreams, I never would have imagined watching all of these plants grow to the scale that they did,” says Kim. “It’s just been lots of fun to be a part of that every step of the way, and to have a relationship where the trust is so great that they say, ‘Just do what is best.’”
Find this story and more details in our September 2021 issue.
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