Garden and design enthusiasts! If you haven't been to Cornerstone in Sonoma, you MUST go. I went way back when they first opened several years ago, then again a few months ago. I was thinking this morning how very difficult and rare it is to have a project that exudes a sense of place. A project that is its own thing and cannot be mistaken for another. Gardens that are just weird match this description and are usually the product of a particular person's eccentricity....and very often, I find them amusing but not an emotional draw. No real sense of seeing something important, I suppose you could say.However, when I was last at Cornerstone, I saw the Garden of Contrasts by Oehme and van Sweden for the first time. WELL! Spikey, beautiful green Agaves sit solidly among ever-swishing Stipa tenuissima and the flower heads of Allium caeruleum and the occasional California Poppy. The scene doesn't stop moving, revealing those little teensy hits of pure blue (the Allium flowers) and orange. I could see evidence of other bulbs having bloomed and finished before my visit, and I can imagine how this garden might change through all 4 seasons (I must visit just to make sure, of course). I wish Sonoma wasn't a couple of hours' drive away or I'd be there all the time. I'd get a coffee and sit near the Garden of Contrasts and write letters, daydream, design, jot ideas. They'd have to kick me out.This garden knows where it is. It knows who it wants to be. It will ebb and flow as the plants mature, bend to the weather, and come back strong and powerful every spring. I love the movement, the shape, the 'architecture' of such a simple and striking set of combinations....and I haven't even mentioned that there is a whole shade component. The shady side with that big ball sculpture is SO not the point of this garden. It merely gives visitors an additional angle to view the Agaves from. There's a bench back there, but if you sit, you can't see the garden as well. Don't sit. Stand and watch, marvel, and enjoy.This garden, despite its famous designer parents, probably wasn't overly expensive. The path material is gravel with a steel edge. The grasses are inexpensive, widely available, and re-seed like bunnies. The bulbs will multiply, the Agaves will slowly get bigger - aside from the Olive trees in the background (were these there before??), the Agaves were prbably the most expensive plant material, and there's probably a dozen of them, tops.A sense of place. This place has it.