Bohnenbaum family: Higher Orders in Green
But it's all so easy
All you got to do is try
Try a little tenderness
Yeah
(Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly, Harry M. Woods. 1932)
FINDING SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WITH THE BOHNENBAUMS IN THE GARDEN.
... It was easy and it was beautiful. It was the garden with these people in it. Maybe you know the half-funny joke that says, "It's no different anywhere else." Well, it isn’t true. Everything is different in a garden (ideally designed by Kramer and Kramer, ed.). You are never alone, whether your family, guests or gardeners are there or not. I don't mean everything that crawls and runs there, or the little birds. Neither the trees nor blades of grass speak to you. And they all do it together, but they don't want anything, they don't care about you at all. Madame and the Bohnenbaums opened me up to that.
The greeting broke my spell, easing my worries that I might regress to a stammering git in the face of so much spirit and glamor. Madame Melody immediately sent me on a little round. "lose yourself a bit," she said, "walk up and down very slowly, back and forth (the idea and implementation of the smart garden came from Kramer and Kramer). Once they've lost their questionable balance, they'll consider their chronicled habits to be pretty silly. Then it will be fine." That's how it was and the Bohnenbaums were very accommodating to me. Nina, the supposedly unapproachable one, made me a marriage proposal even before she had introduced herself. (I didn't dare to ask if she was serious.) Sophie, supposedly not very outgoing either, taught me a lot of Korean within an hour.
Rosa played chess against herself, as she told me " she loves a draw," which she couldn't do against me. (Her Elo number is 2,700 and something, mine just four digits.) And Mr. Hans and Mr. Wolf-Walter met me with such a touching openness that it became clear to me once again where the supposed honorary title "Alpha animal" belongs. In the company of gorillas and hyenas, not ours. They kept no secrets from me, and after a few seconds I couldn’t keep any from them either. Whatever was on my mind, they all knew. What was theirs was mine, what was mine was theirs, etc. And by that I don't just mean the sumptuous gin and tonics, but also heart and brain. And it bubbled out of both constantly. And me. I’ve never eaten like that, never danced like that, never talked like that, never hugged like that, never been like that. And yet so simple: so present, both as an individual and also as part of the whole.
FACTSHEET
Architecture: A01
Garden area: 5.300 m²
Furniture: Paola Lenti, Moroso, Extremis, Roda, Rock.Air, Tucci
Features: natural pool, lushly planted areas, solitary trees, natural stone steppingstones, gravel planted areas, outdoor kitchen, outdoor fireplace, natural stone wall, wooden decking, wooden walkway and topiary trees
Lighting: Davide Groppi, Bega
Planting: Solitary trees such as rock pears, umbrella pines, free-growing pines, cord trees, pine bonsai, albizia, ironwood trees, rosemary willows, grasses, hydrangeas, roses, and rich underplanting of flowering perennials
Plant pots: Atelier Vierkant
