Madison Cox - Garden Designer

Our latest guest on The One Way Ticket Show is world-renowned Garden Designer, Madison Cox. The interview was conducted in September 2024 in the Willis Pavilion, beside the house today known as Villa Oasis which was built by French Orientalist painter, Jacques Majorelle in the 1920s, and later owned by Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé. Adjacent to the home is the famed Majorelle Garden. Madison was born September 23, 1958, in Bellingham, Washington, and raised in San Francisco and Marin County, California.  As a garden designer and author of books about gardens, he has traveled extensively across the United States and Europe as well as to Japan, China, Russia, India, North Africa, and Australia.  Madison’s passion for garden design has also extended to lecturing, leading garden tours in France and Italy, and book publications.  He has lectured across the United States and Canada: at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as at the Portland Garden Club and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Madison Cox is the author of Private Gardens of Paris (Harmony Books, 1989), co-author of Gardens of the World (Macmillan, 1991), and with photographer Erica Lennard, of Artists' Gardens: from Claude Monet to Jennifer Bartlett (Abrams, 1993), and Majorelle: A Moroccan Oasis (Vendome Press, 1999). Cox wrote the preface for The Gardener’s Garden (Phaidon, 2014). He was the first American to design a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in London in 1997, and won a Silver-Gilt Medal.  Madison is a member of the following institutions:  - President, Fondation Pierre Berge – Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, France - President, Foundation Jardin Majorelle, Marrakech, Morocco - Co-Chairman of the American Schools of Tangier and Marrakech in Morocco - Advisory Board Member, The Aangan Trust, Mumbai, India - Patron, American Friends of Blérancourt, France - Board of Directors TALIM (The American Legation in Morocco)  In our conversation, Madison shares his one way ticket destination of choice is to Morocco. His first visit to the country was in 1979.  While he was a student in Paris, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé invited him as part of a small group down to Marrakech for a long weekend. During our sit-down, Madison covers: - The difference between Marrakech in the 1970s and today - The nostalgia for Tangier (where Madison has a home) - The rich backstory behind Villa Oasis and the Majorelle Garden - Yves Saint Laurent’s love for Morocco (he first visited in 1966) and how the country significantly impacted his work - The Pierre Bergé Museum of Berber Arts which is housed in the former painting studio of Jacques Majorelle, in the garden - The Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech - How Morocco has impacted his own approach to designing gardens. Plus, J. Paul Getty, Edith Wharton, Winston Churchill, FDR, and the photographer Horst, all make appearances in the interview.