“Over the years, Cornerstone Sonoma
has continued to be a source of ideas,
a laboratory of creativity,”

says owner and founder Chris Hougie. “From the uniqueness of each of the 25 garden installations to the twisted picket fence that surrounds the property, to the two giant Adirondack chairs, Cornerstone is a perpetual work in progress.”
Cornerstone Sonoma founder Chris Hougie was born in London, England. At the age of four, his family moved to the States. His father, a professor of medicine, taught at the University of North Carolina, the University of Virginia and at the University of Washington in Seattle, where Chris grew up, finally settling at UC San Diego. Chris graduated from UC Berkeley and received an MBA from Stanford.
After graduation, Chris started a toy company called Great Explorations, creating glow-in-the-dark stars, moons and planets, which became a mainstay in kid’s bedrooms all across America. In 1996 he married Teresa Raffo and the two honeymooned in France. It was on this trip that he discovered what was to come next.
On a day outing, Chris and Teresa happened upon the Chaumont Festival of Gardens in the Loire Valley. Chaumont, considered by Europeans to offer the best in avant garde design not only captured Chris’ attention but his imagination as well. “The Gardens immediately appealed to my sense of play. I can remember oversized watering cans, flying red plastic chairs and giant balls, 4ft in height, covered in a stretchy floral fabric….and you could touch everything. As we spent more time in the gardens I became impressed by the way that each of the 30+ installations contained deep and profound meaning. I had never experienced artistic expression in this way and left determined to bring the concept back to the States”

One garden installation that Chris had admired that first year had been designed by American landscape architect Peter Walker who was the person Chris called upon returning to the US. Unbeknownst to Chris, Walker turned out to be one of the leading landscape architects in the world. He was taken with the idea of creating a Garden Festival in the US and put his stamp of approval on the project. With Walker’s support, , many top landscape architects signed on, including Claude Cormier, Andy Cao, Ken Smith, Martha Schwartz, Pamela Burton, Walter Hood and others.

“In the early stages, building the gardens seemed like one of the easier parts; it was getting everything else online that took so much time – things like zoning, planning and all the legal wrangling”. Three years of careful planning turned into five, and the Cornerstone Festival of Gardens, as it was originally called, opened five miles south of the town of Sonoma in July 2004. The final landscape plan was completed by Ron Lutsko.

While the original intention was to showcase the gardens exclusively, Cornerstone Sonoma had evolved into much more with the unique shops, wine rooms, a café and art gallery.”

“It is my hope that Cornerstone continues to evolve and change, while at the same time remaining a place where visitors can come to experience artistic expression and great garden design”.