Filippine Garden

Across the street from the Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse, painter Valerie Jaudon created an environment that is a work of art, as well as a beautiful and pleasurable garden. She applied the precise pattern language that distinguishes her paintings to the layout, and the result is a contemporary interpretation of European formal gardens. In recognition of U.S. District Judge Edward Filippine’s enormous contribution to the project, Jaudon titled her work Filippine Garden.

The central focus of Jaudon’s design is the elegant formal garden composed of manicured grass parterres defined by interlacing stone dust pathways trimmed with white stone. Plane and redbud trees along with benches designed by the artist reinforce the symmetry established by the parterres and pathways. An additional grid of plane trees creates a structural transition between the ordered garden parterres and the pastoral setting of the bordering park area. Here, the absence of established pathways, coupled with the deliberate irregularity of tree plantings, recalls the picturesque tenets of nineteenth-century British landscape gardens. Jaudon also designed a serpentine planting bed to run along the length of the nearby industrial building that forms a screen to preserve the identity and tranquility of the landscape.

The garden complements the architecture of the courthouse designed by Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum. In Jaudon’s words, “The artwork—an abstract garden—acknowledges the nature of the courthouse by echoing the symmetry, geometry, and proportions of such architectural elements as the steps, entrance, and dome, and by aligning the center axis of the garden with that of the building. Once the larger geometry was in sync with these, I let the garden develop its own character and focus attention on its own more ornamental geometry.”

Jaudon’s interest in European formal gardens informed her design for Filippine Garden. Interlaced parterres and walkways were a central feature of early seventeenth-century French gardens. Since these gardens were originally designed in tandem with chateaux or other grand buildings, the patterns formed by parterres and pathways were meant to be seen from a height. Likewise, the overall design and structure of Jaudon’s garden becomes clear when viewed from the upper stories of the courthouse. Unlike the French precedents, which illustrated a monarch’s authority and wealth, Jaudon’s garden celebrates the principles of equality and freedom protected by the American judicial system.