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PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS

Architectural Gardens

BY THAD ORR AND MIKE LUCAS


Each project in Architectural Gardens includes a design narrative that addresses the interconnections between home and land, detailed captions, and a site plan. Readers will learn how to implement features such as landscape windows, breeze-catching grasses, cascading concrete waterfalls, and trees with thoughtfully cast shadows to transform their landscape. The book also includes a roundup of Lucas & Lucas design director Mike Lucas’s favorite plants— those best suited to different types of properties and for different purposes like drought tolerance or fast growth.

As Lucas explains in his introduction, “Architectural gardens create a union between the land and home, the indoors and outdoors, the natural and constructed. The goal of any designer should be to create a landscape that balances these elements in a beautiful and useful way.”

To learn more about this book, please click here.

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GIBBS SMITH PUBLISHING

At Home in the Wine Country

BY HEATHER SANDY HEBERT & CHASE REYNOLDS EWALD


Three projects from landscape architects Lucas & Lucas are featured in this beautiful new book.

Through compelling narrative and stunning photography, the authors showcase the work of many of California’s top architects and designers, with styles ranging from modern farmhouse to refined rustic to updated agrarian to unapologetically modern.  This virtual tour documents a native, terroir-derived style that embraces the indoor-outdoor experience, with sublime views of the scenery from indoors and outside.

PHAIDON PRESS

The Garden: Elements & Styles

BY DR. TOBY MUSGRAVE


Naked flames are an evocative addition to the garden, especially at night, when, as well as providing light, heat and the smell of woodsmoke, a fire will complement and enhance a romantic or convivial atmosphere.

The raised fire feature in this private garden in Sonoma, California, by Lucas & Lucas stands in its own garden room, on two sides of which are benches where one may sit and lose oneself staring into the flames. The fire is at the same time the foreground to the eyecatching planting scene of succulents and perennials elegantly framed by the Boston ivy-surrounded clairvoyée.

To learn more about this book, please click here.

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BOOQ PUBLISHING

The California Style

BY FRANCESC ZAMORA MOLA


Lucas & Lucas is a multi-disciplinary landscape architecture practice deeply dedicated to the integration of architecture and landscape.

With a service-oriented approach to residential design, we work closely with our clients to create highly individual custom projects throughout Northern California. Led by the husband and wife team of Jennifer and Mike Lucas, we bring together deep experience and well-honed skill sets in both land and structures to create holistic indoor-outdoor environments for very special clients.

To read an excerpt, please click here.

SONOMA MAGAZINE

Garden Oasis in Healdsburg

BY ABIGAIL PETERSON
PHOTOGRAPHY BY EILEEN ROCHE


Jennifer and Mike Lucas, principals in Lucas & Lucas, an architecture and landscape architecture firm, met at Cal Poly Pomona, where each was pursuing a graduate degree in design. Their renovated home, where they live with their two children, represents their vision of the classic California indoor-outdoor lifestyle. And in the same way the the home flows between inside and out, the couple moves seamlessly across design disciplines. Often, Mike envisions the big picture, while Jennifer focuses on the practicalities of execution. “It’s important to both of us that the different fields work together, that the land informs the architecture, and the architecture makes sense in the landscape,” explains Jennifer.

For the full article, please click here.

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GARDEN DESIGN MAGAZINE

Modern Mission

BY PAM PENNICK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARION BRENNER


When Marilyn Stocke and her husband, Roland, purchased some 6 acres of farmland in the wine country of Sonoma, California, in 1999, most of the property's pear orchard had succumbed to neglect and fireblight, and a deep tangle of brush and poison oak entwined with native oaks and euca­lyptus rendered half the land inac­cessible. The Stockes had intended to build a country home there but didn't know where to begin. "It was daunting," Marilyn says. For 11 years they didn't build anything, but remained in Sausalito and just visited the property on weekends.

For the full article, please click here.

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CALIFORNIA HOMES MAGAZINE

Healdsburg Hideaway

BY ROGER GRODY
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SUZANNA SCOTT


Since founding her eponymous firm in 2016, interior designer Marea Clark has earned a loyal following throughout the Bay Area and California wine country. At Marea Clark Interiors (MCI), the designer balances her Southern roots with the cosmopolitan qualities of her adopted San Francisco, resulting in timeless aesthetics that honor tradition while accommodating 21st century lifestyles. “Clients appreciate the Southern, traditional flair that appears in many of my designs, but my work is also informed by 15 years of living on the West Coast,” reports Clark, who quips, “It’s kind of a South-meets-California vibe.”

For the full article, please click here.

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HOUSE BEAUTIFUL MAGAZINE

The House That Needs No Walls

BY KAITLIN MENZA
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LAURA RESEN


Patrick Printy Designed This California Home to Bring the Great Outdoors Into Every Room

The Olive groves that surround this Sonoma, California home are quite literally the stuff of legend. “I don’t know that it’s been officially substantiated,” cautions designed Patrick Printy, but supposedly his clients’ orchard was originally planted in the mid-19th century by local military hero and founder of Sonoma Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. “It was one of the reasons why the outdoor element of the house became so prominent: to capitalize on the that orchard.”

For the full article, please click here.

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SUNSET MAGAZINE

Outdoor Windows

BY THAD ORR, GARDEN EDITOR


Outdoor windows let more light into seating areas, frame the best views, and showcase distinctive plants.

For the full article, please click here.

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MODERN FARMHOUSE STYLE

Perfect Vintage

BY SALLY FINDER WEEPIE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTINA SCHMIDHOFER


A renovation finds new beauty in an old California farmhouse

Tear it down! Elizabeth Stevenson heard the advice. She saw the rabbit warren of tiny rooms and the floor-to-ceiling knotty pine paneling. But she also saw the potential in the down-on-its-heels 1940s home, set in an Eden of fruit trees on a bucolic Sonoma County hilltop overlooking the Russian River.

For the full article, please click here.

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BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS

Flagstone Forever

BY LAUREN DUNEC HOANG


Take a fresh look at this landscaping material to create paths and patios that match toughness with personality.

As a hardscaping material, flagstone has a solid reputation. It withstands all climates, lasts decades, and needs almost no maintenance. But these days its versatility is earning it increased respect.

Woolly thyme softens the straight edges of flagstones in a path Lucas and Lucas Landscape Architecture designed to draw eyes through a row of arbors.

For the full article, please click here.

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MARIN MAGAZINE

A Mission-Style Garden in Sonoma

BY ZAHID SARDAR
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARION BRENNER


Landscape Architect Michael Lucas Was Inspired by a Western Wilderness in Sonoma, Where He Created a California Mission-Style Walled Garden.

“I DON’T MISS THE CITY AT ALL,” Marilyn Coon Stocke, a former schoolteacher who is now a bookkeeper in Sonoma, says. “I have a become a country girl.”

Her transformation began inadvertently nearly six years ago, when her architect, George Bevan, invited Healdsburg-based landscape architect Michael Lucas to help design her weekend garden.

For the full article, please click here.

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SONOMA MAGAZINE

Seasonal Harmony

BY KIER HOLMES
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LAURIE AND LEIGH WACHTER


A changing light and color display captured in a couple’s Healdsburg retreat

Given the chance, most of us would enjoy experiencing a free light and color display in our gardens. Yet often, gardens are not planned around the casting of the sun's rays and the magical quality that the changing seasons can bring. These profound shifts of the environment during the year play an important role in the experience of a home and garden space.

For the full article, please click here.

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SONOMA MAGAZINE

Cloverdale Farmhouse Brings Vision of Eco-Friendly Homestead to Life

BY ABIGAIL PETERSON


"Hanging up their suits for overalls was the perfect choice for Manny and Carol Diaz.

While many approaching retirement look to simplify, even (dare we say) downsize, Manny and Carol Diaz did just the opposite. In 2010, after raising their children in Windsor, the couple bought an 18-acre farm in rural Cloverdale adjacent to the Russian River.

For the full article, please click here.

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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT

Narrow Yard Landscape Hillside "Jewel Box Garden"


"This backyard project in Healdsburg, Calif., a small community a little over an hour's drive north of San Francisco in Sonoma County, was completed at the end of 2013. Landscape architect Mike Lucas calls it "a true jewel box of a garden" that creates a series of useable spaces in a snug backyard and responds to the Mediterranean architecture. The space features extensive retaining walls, a built in fireplace, a painted steel pergola that accommodates speakers, heaters, lighting and will eventually have a wisteria cover, a water wall with planted water trough, a bocce court and a discreetly fenced vegetable garden adjacent to the kitchen.

For the full article, please click here.

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REMODELISTA.COM

Rustic Yet Refined, Healdsburg Edition

BY CHRISTINE CHANG HANWAY


"Alison Davin of Jute is making a name for herself in the Bay Area with her “urban earthy” interiors, ranging from a small kitchen makeover in San Francisco to grander projects like this comfortable, subtly luxurious stone vacation house in Healdsburg, in Sonoma County, by Arc Design. Davin’s influences range from the pared-down baroque work of Copenhagen-based Malene Birger to the greenery-infused interiors of California designer John Saladino, and in this project, with its muted palette and skillful mix of textures and textiles, discerning the boundaries between indoors and out isn’t always straightforward..."

For the full article, please click here.

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MOOOOL

Old Meets New by Lucas & Lucas


This project represented a turning point for our firm as a premier commission. We were brought in during the final year of construction of the home and charged with making sense of the exterior spaces, which beyond the locating of the home’s main structures had not been convincingly conceived.

For the full article, please click here.

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MOOOOL

Modern Classic Estate by Lucas & Lucas


Upon first arrival at this inhabited property in 2012, the existing home was already under exploratory demolition and remodeling plans were underway. I was immediately taken by the well-established Olive Tree grove that resided directly adjacent to the home and occupied a major portion of usable ground on this 6 acre site abutting vineyards to the south and wild lands to the north. The place had an excellent sense of prospect and refuge, the ideal setting for true comfort.

For the full article, please click here.

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TRENDSIDEAS.COM

New rural home is designed to look like a renovated winery with a modern addition

BY PAUL TAYLOR


It's one thing to copy a traditional style, but something totally different to recreate a passage of time. That's the guiding principle and philosophy designer Julian Cohen brought to this home he designed in North California wine country.

For Cohen, it's important that clients first identify what's meaningful for them and, in this instance, he aimed to produce a home that tells a story and expresses a sense of history.

What emerged from early discussions was the influence on the owners of a stone building that was one of California's first wineries – and a haiku the owners wrote…”

For the full article, please click here.

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THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Water Yards

BY MEG MCCONAHEY

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BETH SCHLANKER


Whether bubbling, rushing or just shimmering in serene stillness, the most relaxing and soothing of sights and sounds is water.

It’s a comforting primal element, like fire, that we crave in our living space.  Every Japanese serenity garden has water. Roman wall paintings show pictures of gardens cooled with spouting water. Simple fountains or lava’s were placed in the cloisters of medieval monasteries, seen as metaphoric gardens of Eden. 

A fortunate few have the sound of surf or a rain-swollen creek beyond their windows. But most of us aren't blessed with nature's music…

For the full article, please click here.

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SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Country Modern

BY ZAHID SARDAR


Three years ago, Kevin Carruth and Claudia Mendoza found a low, 1950s horseshoe-shaped ranch house high above the historic square in Sonoma.

Even though it lacked the familiar Craftsman details and woodsy warmth of their 1930s home in Sacramento, they bought it "just for its great views," Carruth said.

They hoped to transform it into a contemporary home where they could entertain guests informally.

For the full article, please click here.

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SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Empty fuel tanks full of character

BY ZAHID SARDAR
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAXON HOLT


Twisted old gasoline storage tanks, displayed prominently above ground at the elegant Cornerstone Gardens in Sonoma during the Late Show Gardens event last fall, were not waiting to be hauled away.

They were among several ingenious planters incorporated into an installation called Renewal by Digging Dog nursery owner and plant specialist Gary Ratway and modernist Healdsburg landscape architect Mike Lucas, best known for rectilinear garden retreats such as the one at Sangiacomo Family Vineyards.

For the full article, please click here.

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THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

The Great American Turf War

BY MEG MCCONAHEY
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK ARONOFF


Mike Lucas, a landscape architect from Healdsburg, just ripped out his front lawn and replaced it with more interesting plants like Japanese maples, bamboos and grassy sedges. And yet, with a 2 1/2- year-old, he couldn’t bring himself to remove his rectangular rug of grass in back.

“I’ve been paring down and trying to keep the grass as minimal as possible,” he says.

For the full article, please click here.