carloftis
Garden designer Jon Carloftis (left) and his longtime partner, Dale Fisher, in front of their Chevy Chase home. photo by: Robbie Clark.
With a new line of Kentucky Proud products and an ever-growing list of local clientele, native Kentucky gardener Jon Carloftis has more and more reasons to stay home
Landscape architect Jon Carloftis has always considered himself a Kentuckian at heart, but much of his illustrious career has been highlighted by work he has conducted outside his home state. Having first made a name for himself as a rooftop garden designer in New York City in the ‘90s, Carloftis has since gone on to design and install gardens on a bevy of notable rooftops –– from Dudley’s on Short in Lexington and the 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Google headquarters in Manhattan.
His green thumbprint can be found on lots of additional commercial and residential gardens as well, including Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate, the Kentucky Governor’s Mansion and L.V. Harkness. For the 2009 holidays, he was granted the honor of being invited to decorate the courtyard of the Blair House (the official state guest house for the President of the United States) by President and Mrs. Obama. Needless to say, this small-town Kentuckian has elevated his brand –– Jon Carloftis Fine Gardens –– to a national stature, having had his work featured in more than 200 magazines. But Carloftis is always eager to highlight the influence his Kentucky roots have played on his career path.
“I grew up with nature, in a beautiful part of Kentucky,” Carloftis said, referring to his 50-acre family homestead in Rockcastle where he and his mother operate a public garden and shop called the Rockcastle River Trading Company. After graduating from the University of Kentucky with a degree in business communication –– and no clear career path –– Carloftis went back to school to take some horticulture classes. It was then that he “fell in love” with the idea of working with plants for a living.
“I worked on a horse and tobacco farm in Georgetown (with the agriculture fraternity Alpha Gamma Rho) and I realized, ‘this is where my future is, with nature,’” he said. “I’m a design person, and so I knew it was going to be with design and with nature.”
Despite these leanings toward nature, Carloftis moved to New York City directly after college. With no real world experience as a garden designer, he made up some business cards that said “Jon Carloftis, Rooftop Garden Designer,” and walked around the Upper East Side of the city handing them out.
“I ended up getting a call from this woman and her husband, and they happened to be big art collectors,” he said.
“She gave me a chance –– I did one little area (of her patio garden), and through her, it was all word of mouth.”
Today, patio and rooftop gardens have become fairly commonplace in larger cities, but when he was breaking onto the scene in the ‘90s, it was still a relatively novel concept. Carloftis said his work stands out in New York because his style focuses on the plants, first and foremost.
“Part of the reason that (my gardens) have been popular in New York is because I don’t have a background in architecture,” he said. “There’s already concrete and glass and steel in everything in New York –– when you come to my gardens, you’re in a garden. It’s about the plants, rather than overbuilding.”
Building off that first job, Carloftis soon developed a steady network of clients in New York City, and grew his reputation as a talented and down-to-earth gardener –– eventually leading him to jobs that have included designing and installing gardens for Julianne Moore, Edward Norton, and Jerry and Linda Bruckheimer.
A large component of Carloftis’ work has been education and outreach –– he estimates that he speaks to 10,000 people a year through home and garden shows and other lectures. He has also organized numerous garden tours of Kentucky for participants from other states. “It’s an easy sell,” he said.
Even though he has always maintained one foot in Kentucky –– and a home in Chevy Chase –– Carloftis spent most of the past two decades in the Pennsylvania office he keeps just outside New York, typically spending no more than a few days a month at his home in Lexington. But when he was commissioned to participate in a major Kentucky project in 2010 –– designing and installing the center garden at the Alltech Experience Garden and the Kentucky Experience tent during the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games –– Carloftis wrote all his New York clients to tell them he would be in Kentucky for two months.
What he discovered was surprising: he relished connecting more deeply with his Lexington roots, and found he could get by pretty well maintaining contact with his New York clients from his Lexington base and traveling there as needed. Additionally, the relationship Carloftis forged with Alltech during the WEG project turned out to be a lasting one –– this season, Jon Carloftis Fine Gardens and Alltech are launching a new line of all-natural plant food, which they have been working in tandem to develop for more than two years. The products are the result of a simple question Carloftis found himself asking Deirdre Lyons, the wife of Alltech CEO Pearse Lyons, during the World Equestrian Games project: “How can we feed our gardens organically and naturally?”
“It started a great conversation –– and eventually launched a mini business of ours with Alltech fueling it,” said Dale Fisher, Carloftis’ longtime partner who has been helping manage the growing business for a handful of years.
Carloftis has long touted the benefits of using natural, organic materials to fertilize plants, but most of the organic products he has encountered are manure-based, which not only carry a less-than-savory aroma, but also pose the risk of tainting the compost. “My clients in New York on Park Avenue having a fancy party didn’t want to smell manure,” he said with a laugh. “It doesn't mix with vodka tonics."
Deirdre Lyons and Carloftis both agreed that they were dissatisfied with the readily available all-natural plant products –– so they decided to create their own. The first two products from the Jon Carloftis Fine Gardens line –– Soil & Root and Bloom & Fruit –– are now available in a number of local garden shops, including Pemberton’s Greenhouses, Landscaper’s Corner and Chevy Chase Hardware.
Soil & Root, applied to the soil while tilling or when planting seedlings, promotes beneficial bacteria, and Bloom & Fruit can be applied directly to the foliage of the plants after they are in the ground.
“It’s similar to Miracle-Gro in that it goes on the plant’s leaves, but it’s all natural, no chemicals,” Carloftis said, “and it’s Kentucky Proud.”
The products are unique in that they are based on bacterial fermentation, a process Alltech has been using on their plant nutrition products since 1993 –– interestingly, it’s also the process used in producing two of Alltech’s other products, bourbon and beer.
Having spent so much time in Kentucky over the past couple of years –– first with installing the WEG project, and then with developing the new product line –– has grounded Carloftis and Fisher in Lexington, Fisher said.
Now spending about half their time in Kentucky and the other half in New York, it seems as though the bluegrass state can be expecting to see even more of Carloftis in the near future.
“As much as I love being in New York –– and it’s exciting, I’ve been doing 23 years of it, and I still want to do it –– but I tell you what I like better. I like getting with my dogs and getting in the dirt. The soil is unbelievable here,” he said. “Lexington is a fertile ground. There is so much beauty here,” he continued. “But sometimes you have to go away to appreciate it.”