Thomas Church Thomas Church Landscape architect Contents Life, education, and achievements Design style Professional activities and pictures links credits Life, Education, and achievements Thomas Church was born in 1902 in California. He retired in 1977 and died in 1978. Church was educated in the 1920's at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and in Europe on a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. The timing coincided with a rapidly changing social context in California and a revolution in art and architecture on an international scale.
Gardens Are For People.
But the bulk of his practice was on a domestic scale and it was on garden design that his reputation was based. Church's designs focused on the increasing use of small gardens and the need to reduce maintenance while providing privacy and beauty. He increased the use of hard cover surfaces and ground-cover plantings. During his time the central axis of a garden was abandoned for a multiplicity of view points. The new kind of garden is still supposed to be looked at.