My memories of visiting the Getty Center on its hilltop, a year or two after it opened, are more of the harsh, angular warmth of Richard Meier’s travertine-clad buildings and patios. The plants, in recall, were generic soutnern-California fringe, nothing like this stunning (and at the time controversial) water-maze of azaleas, which calls to mind both fingerprints and pond-ripples, each equally apt.
