TCLF’s Excursion to Eye-Popping Pasadena
For the past twenty years the big successes of The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s (TCLF) events held in tandem with the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) annual convention—a daylong excursion and a silent auction—have been due to the avid participants in each and the generous support of sponsors. In 2026 TCLF thanks the sold out group who attended the excursion in Pasadena and the hundreds that participated in the auction, the excursion’s Lead Sponsors Stone Curators and Vermont Quarries, and the auction’s Presenting Sponsors ABC Stone, Bartlett Tree Experts, Summerhill, and Victor Stanley.
Southern California is replete with outstanding cultural landscapes and significant works of landscape architecture; but the two private residential sites on this year’s excursion were notable for their stark contrasts in design materials and scale, and their similarities: impassioned and indefatigable stewards.
The day began at the unassuming sounding “The Hill,” a once barren landscape transformed by the entrepreneurial Paul Casebeer over the past 40 years into a living work of art. In the spirit of Noah Purifoy and Simon Rodia, who turned salvaged materials into magical landscape installations, Casebeer designed and built by hand an array of fantastical architectural elements - sinuous walls of tile and bricks with a spouting, copper-encrusted dragon; roads composed of mosaic tiles and hundreds of found manhole covers; and secret alcoves with views across the San Gabriel Valley. The landscape reveals itself along a roadway with numerous switchbacks that ascends a vertiginous hill and culminates in a series of early twentieth-century bungalows.
It’s remarkable to learn the site had once been populated by dilapidated buildings and broken water lines and infested with poison oak. Now, along with the cornucopia of disparate and brilliantly reconceived and recontextualized design elements—including the use of scores of ceramic telephone pole insulators as jewel like ornaments—the property has been completely reimagined as a lush garden filled with rare and exotic plants, including South African cycads, many varieties of aloe, mature specimens of Phoenix reclinata, and hundreds of other hard-to-find succulents and drought-tolerant species. And Casebeer is still adding to his creation.
The excursion next went to the Athenaeum, revered as the crown jewel of the Caltech campus, it was designed by English-born architect Gordon B. Kaufmann in 1930 as a place for renowned thinkers and scholars, including Albert Einstein and several other Nobel laureates, to gather and share ideas. Before sitting down for lunch, the group toured parts of the campus with its ornate Mediterranean-style halls and lush grounds—created by landscape architects Florence Yoch and Lucille Council. For nearly a century the Athenaeum has hosted countless formal dinners, philanthropic events, and celebrations, cementing its reputation as the premier heart of academic camaraderie.
The tour’s final destination was the Hindry House, a 1910 Mission Revival home originally designed by Heineman and Heineman, with a landscape thoughtfully revitalized by landscape architect Lisa Gimmy and her team at LGLA. As the present owners architect Kelly Sutherlin McLeod and her husband Steven noted, the site is also home to two owls, one of which watched over the group’s visit. The Hindry House was an important commission for LGLA and highlights many distinctive design features that would become common in future projects. While Heineman and Heineman were responsible for thousands of projects throughout California, the Hindry House is one of only twenty in Pasadena. In 1970, the owners, Dr. Albert Hibbs and his wife, Marka Hibbs, commissioned Courtland Paul to design a swimming pool. The naturalistic swimming pool, designed to be a place for the family to learn to scuba dive, was critical to the evolution of the style. According to the California Preservation Foundation, “The Hibbs pool is considered pivotal in Paul’s career, a landmark on his path to becoming a globally recognized resort designer.”
LGLA was commissioned to prepare a Cultural Landscape Report (CLR). Landscape historian Steven Keylon researched and documented the evolution of the garden. Using that report as a jumping off point, LGLA was able to balance this site’s history with the contemporary needs of the current owners, including addressing drainage issues and creating a more drought-tolerant landscape that honors the original plant palette. The thoughtful CLR and project work won this project a 2018 Preservation Design Award from the California Preservation Foundation.
Finally, TCLF's 22nd annual online silent auction featured 83 works created by landscape architects, architects, artists, and photographers, along with several vintage books. As in past years, the auction was hosted exclusively online and featured an array of art by landscape architects Roberto Burle Marx, Lawrence Halprin, Tiffany Beamer, James Wines, and Michael Van Valkenburgh, and nationally renowned artists Michael Kenna, Jeffrey Milstein, Millicent Harvey, and Elyn Zimmerman. Proceeds benefit the foundation’s education and advocacy initiatives.
Next year’s ASLA convention will be held in Chicago. We hope to see you there.