WOOD GARDEN GATES #79

This Garden Gate is Base Price + 14%
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Wood Garden Gates #79 features a pattern that, given the complementing landscape, can help to support an Asian aesthetic.

Sonoma, CA

We see how the Wood Garden Gates and it’s associated landscape are inseparably linked. Japanese maples and a few carefully contained beds dictate an Asian theme for this Garden Gate in Sonoma, CA

Atlanta, GA.
W/scalloped top rail

Wood Garden Gates 79-10 shows a very slight scallop radius along the top rail. As well as open lower pickets instead of the solid panel.

Due to irregular stonework, the jambs are embedded, mounting directly to the block core. The jamb thickness is the distance from the block to the proudest stone, plus 1/2″ to insure swing clearance.

Atlanta, GA.

Shown on approach to the courtyard.
It appears here that they have not installed the pair of wood stops arriving with every gate, and instead opted for a pair of bronze L-stops.

Carmichael, CA

Wood Garden Gate #79-8 near Sacramento, CA shows the lower solid panel with the open mortised slots. And two flanking panel styles #9 to create a foyer courtyard.
Rocky Mountain latch / dead bolt #358.

San Anselmo, CA

The #79-4 Wood Garden Gate in San Anselmo, CA configured as an inviting foyer. Each of the two front posts flare 6″ out from the gate posts to create an entry funnel.

Shown with Fence style #2

San Anselmo, CA

The Foyer Gateway viewed from within the property of a house at the end of a street. A house at the end of very nice street in a very nice neighborhood. A meticulously designed and cared for house.And yet where is the house? A house belonging to Prowell’s fictional Gigi. Gigi’s house.

To the approaching visitor or guest or even passersby, the house is NOT what first greets one upon approach. It is, of course, the Prowell Gate and Fence. The Fence. Exposing itself and the inner garden in all its open, visible glory to the social graces of a home, a neighborhood, a community.

“Well hello. How nice to see you. Won’t you please come in?”

“Why thank you, Gigi. “

Andover, Massachusetts

Our Japanese Wood Garden Gates shown with Fence style #9, just north of Boston.
A refurbished 1952 home with that architectural resiliency allowing us to introduce a defining precedent. An option available to us when given such architecture purposefully without defining details.

Andover, Massachusetts

Viewed from the back yard in the wake of a New England nor’easterly. A Prowell lighted Garden Column #8 leading the way up granite steps to the terrace where there awaits Garden Gate #79 and the accompanying Garden Fence #9

Andover, Massachusetts

Charles visiting with the house munchkins on an east coast swing, drawn by an inimitable weakness for the silliness of young’s.

Kensington, CA

Our Wood Garden Gate #79-6 associated with a 1918 Bungalow motif in the Oakland hills.

Kensington, CA

Shown with the Fence style #9.
An application where we have a small tight lot dominated by the muscular architecture of the house. The fence and gate might easily have fared better painted the white trim color of the house. As it stands, the entire fence and wood gate assembly make for a somewhat pronounced presence. While bearing in mind that this in fact would appear to be our homeowner’s purpose.

Salt Lake City

One of the many reasons people find Salt Lake City a suitable place to live. The wonderful Wasatch mountain range with it’s renowned powdered ski runs.

Occasionally, as seen below, when the gate is flanked by only two panels, the panels will have the same width horizontal rails as the gate. The standard panel, as seen in Gallery #3, defaults to a bottom rail of 5-1/4″W. A middle rail of 3-1/4″W, and a top rail of 2-5/8″W.

Rocky Mountain latch / dead bolt #358.

Tiburon, CA (Marin County)

A 3rd party fence wrapping our #79-2 as the double-gate entrance and single-gate side access to a contained landscape in Tiburon, CA.

Tiburon, CA (Marin County)

Eight years later, the foliage has matured and somehow the homeowners have gone from a solid-body stain to a clear varnish. There is no other way to accomplish this than to strip and sand the gates down to the bare wood. A gutsy undertaking.

The gates face south, overlooking Tiburon Bay, absorbing the brunt of daily afternoon sun and one assumes an effort was made for a more durable finish. But a spar varnish such as this is the worst solution. Thick layered applications that are not absorbent will soon crack and peel and yellow, becoming more brittle and less flexible while the gate continues to breath–to expand and contract with the seasons. The maintenance alone in such an application becomes an almost insurmountable effort. Finishes with top coats and lustrous sealers require the same maintenance as the marine spar varnishes on classic wooden boats.

WoodRX is the only solution. A non-solvent, fully absorbing finish that breathes with the wood. Two sprayed coats lasts 8 years, at which time it simply fades from it’s original color and can be re-coated at any time thereafter. Or not. There are no finishes that prolong the life of the gate by a single day. A result of western cedar and the grades spec’d from the mill in combination with the methodology of joinery and drainage that make any finish a subjective aesthetic decision.

W/O lower open slots

Gate 79-9 is without the lower open slots

Outside the Sanctuary gates, the stranger makes a fuss, knocking and knocking and calling out Zylar! Zylar!. Eventually Charles and his two apprentices wander out to investigate.

Vallejo, CA

Alexandria, Virginia (DC Beltway)

Wood Garden Gates 79-11 complimented by a 3rd-party horizontal fenceline in Alexandria, Virginia.

Alexandria, Virginia (DC Beltway)

Viewed from within the courtyard.

Lower open slots.Top open mortised squares

The original #79 Wood Garden Gates exists today in the Santa Barbara/Montecito area, commissioned and designed long ago for the Robert Mitchum family.

Berkeley, CA

Gate #79-14 with Fence #9 installed on a rental property in Berkeley in 2004.
A site that was discovered quite by accident in 2020, with the below resulting photo.
More of this on How Long Does it Last

As with #79-4. the gate entry features a flared foyer.

At the risk of boring you, a few more . . .

PROGRESS
How to build the wood gate 79

Ben shown boring for the drainage weep-holes.

Golden State Gate Builders
by Ben and Charles Prowell
Featuring gate #79, among others.

Fine Homebuilding April 2016
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