Bal Harbour

Fall/Winter 2022

Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/1480737

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 215 of 227

214 BAL HARBOUR XXX multiple hats—drafting proposals, picking plants at nurseries, driving a backhoe on job sites—and could only manage a small handful of projects every year. But some of his early projects were published, which meant word of his talent began to spread. Soon he had enough work that he could focus on design while others did the installation. His business really took off in the early aughts, by which time Miami was becoming the sophisticated international city it is today. Developers were hiring starchitects to do condominium and hotel projects and some tapped Jungles to be part of their design teams. It was like "someone pulled a cork out of the bottle," Jungles says. He uses the same approach whether he's starting with a clean slate (as is the case for Bal Harbour Village's new waterfront park and town hall,) or refining an existing landscape (he's a longtime consultant for Bal Harbour Shops, swapping native plants for ones already in place and has been helping plan for the Shops' expansion for the last 10 years.) First comes a clean, sculptural "hardscape," which is what landscape architects call manmade features like walls and paths. Native plants are added in profusion because they grow well in the local climate, without requiring lots of pruning and other finicky maintenance, and they also provide habitats for birds, bees and other wildlife. His goal: a landscape "as close as possible to what was there before humans ripped everything out." His emphasis on native plants has been influential. Miami is still filled, in Jungles's opinion, with too many mow-and-blow landscaping crews and homeowners who think sophistication means pruning plants into tortuous shapes. But the city also has a thriving native plant industry today. "I like to think I'm part of the change," he says. Jungles and his staff of about two dozen work out of a four-story building in Coconut Grove that he bought and gutted in 2016. His wife, Gina Jungles—an interior designer and a principal in Raymond Jungles, Inc.—brought in clean-lined, white-upholstered seating and other furnishings that focus attention on the greenery visible through large windows. Jungles works standing at a drawing table, looking out at a live oak tree that is part of the extensive landscaping the firm did, not only around the building but up and down the block. Jungles was similarly unconstrained by property lines at his nearby house, which was designed by Arquitectonica and is painted a charcoal color so that it recedes behind its forest of native trees. He took pains to landscape the street side of the property and also portions of the historic Commodore Trail. Jungles has no intention of stopping there, either. "I have the habit of improving wherever I can." Jungles's plans for Bal Harbour Shops expansion includes extensive native foliage around the entranceway to the Shops. PHOTO BY STEPHEN DUNN

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Bal Harbour - Fall/Winter 2022