The first time I walked through Alice Waters's garden with her landscape architect Janet Hankinson, about a year ago, I was given permission to eat as many raspberries as I liked. I have to admit, their taste made me lose my mind a little. By the time I was finished, my hands were stained red with the juice of the sweetest, most flavorful raspberries I have ever eaten. Those raspberries are a very old variety. That is why they are so full of flavor," Hankinson told me later. Hankinson's gardens activate all the senses: smells, textures, colors, tastes - she designs with all in mind. But most important, she is "looking for people to connect to their outdoor space." Hankinson brings a varied assortment of skills to her projects. Brought up in England, she earned a degree in painting and etching in Leeds, and a master's degree in landscape architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. Add to this a good 30 years spent in and around the Bay Area restaurant world - she is married to chef and salumiere Christopher Lee, and was dining room manager at Chez Panisse for years - and the result is a uniquely informed eye and palate. Hankinson began working on the garden at Alice Waters's Berkeley home five years ago. Waters's initial request was rather broad: she wanted an "edible garden" designed around an existing redwood tree. Hankinson took one look at the lilac-painted house and said, "nothing is going to look good up against that color." Waters agreed to repaint. Hankinson chose Farrow and Ball's Carriage Green with dark gray accents, both to set off future plantings and to mirror the subtle calming color palette inside Waters's home. She then composed a garden of plants that are both edible and ornamental - fragrant Othello roses from David Austin (you can smell them from a few feet away), quince, lettuces, fraises des bois, Angelica ("the young stalks can be candied") and the aforementioned raspberries - but never too manicured. "Alice likes things a bit wild," Hankinson says. The wildness of another garden, this one in San Francisco, was exactly why Hankinson was brought in to transform it. The owners of a garden on Castro Street, two product designers with a young family, "wanted to be outside as much as they could." Unfortunately, lots of spiky succulents dominated the existing design, and made the garden not so child-friendly. Hankinson proceeded to rip out a fair number of existing plants to make way for softer, more fragrant plantings. Plants native to New Zealand - one of the owners was born there - as well as houseplants from their old apartment, were all incorporated into the design, to give the owners an emotional link to the garden. The result is a space they treat like an additional room in their house. Hankinson's own garden at her home in Richmond, Calif., is one she happily calls "imperfect." Her front yard bursts with cherry blossoms in the spring and bright red foliage on the same flowering cherry tree in the fall. On the side of her house, I noticed huge jugs of what look like wine, sitting in the afternoon sun. "We are making vinegar," she said rather matter-of-factly, as if everybody does the same. I've learned not to be surprised by these things with Hankinson. Experiments happen here often, both in and out of the garden. With my own garden I will rip anything out and start again if it isn't working. You can't stay static. Plants grow. You can't stay on the same page. Learn more about Janet Hankinson at janethankinson.com.