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Simple lines and calming colors define the 100-year-old, prairie-style home on historic Swiss. When Jeff and Anja Woodson remodeled their kitchen in 2010, they knew they wanted to stay within the same soft contemporary theme as the rest of the house, and East Dallas-based home design experts Bella Vista Company helped them figure out the rest. The first thing the Woodsons did was knock out the bar area, which was taking up too much space. “It was more a storage area than anything, so we took the bar out, and it opened up this whole area,” Anja explains, indicating, with a sweeping motion, the entrance to the kitchen. While they were at it, they removed a chimney in the corner where the refrigerator is now. Ample windows and a custom-made, extra-wide glass door helped give the room an open, airy feel. “It’s really not very big. We didn’t enlarge it,” Anja points out. But the use of space and colors — soft grays, greens and a hint of purple — seem to lend extra light to the room. Before the remodel, the kitchen floors and countertops were brown granite. “It was pretty. It was a very slick kitchen, but with that and the tiny windows, it was always dark,” she ex- plains. They replaced the countertops with designer concrete, which was cast in molds on site by Designer Concrete & Supply Inc., so the Woodsons were able to pick the color tone and finish. Many of their appliances — such as the refrigerator and dishwasher — are smartly masked as drawers or cabinets by wooden covers. Once the heavy work was done, designer Tiffany Fulmer of Cozy Couture Interiors helped the Woodsons apply the finishing touches to the kitchen with Ann Sacks tiles, Sonneman Bubble Light Pendants from Lights Fantastic, and “floating” shelves. For an extra pop of color, Anja says, she loves to add vibrant flowers and books to the shelves.

—Brittany Nunn

Landscape art

Jimmy Turner says everyone thinks his job as senior director of gardens at the Dallas Arboretum is pastoral, peaceful and fun all the time. And it is fun. Gardening is his work and his hobby, but it’s not all flowers and sunshine, he says. The weather in North Texas in the spring is unpredictable. “Wind, tornadoes, hailstorms, freezing rain, snow, flooding, heat,” he says. “These are things that keep me up at night.” Turner has been directing the arboretum’s gardens for 10 years. He designs Dallas Blooms, which opens March 4. He also masterminded the fall pumpkin village, which drew more visitors to the arboretum last year than the spring flowers. The arboretum used to focus on chrysanthemums in the fall, but that didn’t draw big crowds, Turner says. So about five years ago, he decided to focus on West Texas-grown pumpkins. The first year, they ordered about 1,500 pumpkins and built one house, impaling the gourds with stakes to form the house. It lasted barely two weeks because the pumpkins rotted. But since then, Turner and his staff have refined the building process, using fabricated metal bases to support the pumpkins. “We build a whole village now,” Turner says. Last year they ordered 55,000 gourds, semi trucks full. Dallas Blooms still is what the arboretum is famous for worldwide, Turner says, even tulip growers in Holland know about it. Last November, the arboretum’s horticulturists planted 500,000 tulip bulbs. The spring celebration also in- cludes about 100,000 bedding plants, plus cherry trees, azaleas and flowering shrubs. Turner says he thinks of designing Dallas Blooms as designing a set. Everything has to look wonderful from every angle. “It’s a production,” he says. “It changes on a daily basis.” He plans the color schemes meticulously, even though the results won’t be seen for months afterward. “It’s like painting with invisible paint and then waiting to see what it’s going to look like once it’s visible,” he says. That is something he frets about too, but really, there are no bad color combinations, he says. One year, Southern Living featured Dallas Blooms, and the writer’s favorite color combination was found in a patch of garden planted with extra bulbs. “We mixed them up in a bucket and put them in the ground, and that was their favorite color combination,” Turner says. Turner is a home gardener who first started digging in the dirt as a kid at his parents’ side in East Texas. He says he plants tulips at home, but when asked for tips on planting tulips, he says, “Don’t plant tulips. They’re ethereal. They only last a couple of weeks at most, and they don’t come back. If you want to plant a bulb in the fall, plant daffodils. They’re very hardy, and they will keep coming back long after you’re gone.” Tulips are a lot of work. They don’t do well in our climate, but at Dallas Blooms, they last into May thanks to the rich soil and daily babying they receive from professional horticulturists. “The best thing to do is come here and enjoy them at Dallas Blooms or buy a cut bouquet,” he says.

—Rachel Stone

Jennifer Muller, M.D.

John D. Bertrand, M.D. (front row)

Jane E. Nokleberg, M.D.

Hampton B. Richards, M.D.

Dallas Police Officer Alan Bietendorf says he wasn’t exactly a troublemaker when he was growing up in Lakewood during the ‘60s and ‘70s, but he was still a kid. “Of course, that’s what I laugh about. Back then, not that we were doing illegal stuff, but we were running around and the police were after us,” he recalls with a chuckle, “and here I am a police officer.” Not only is he a police officer, but after more than 30 years with the Dallas Police Department, and he’s made his way back to Lakewood. But this time he’s seeing the neighborhood from a different point of view. Times have changed, he says. “I think crime in general has become so much more prevalent. And violent crimes, growing up, we just didn’t have those kinds of problems. I mean, we weren’t in a utopian society by any means.” But he remembers riding his bike with friends to White Rock Lake and hanging out at parks, particularly the popular Woodrow hangout Woodrow Hill (now T&P Hill). They’d be outside for hours without checking in, and no one would worry about them. “Back then, we didn’t know what gangs were. It was just a group of friends running around, having fun.” Now, he’s afraid ever-rising crime rates are stifling that kind of childhood. Yet Bietendorf believes Lakewood has, in some ways, managed to defy the times and cling to some of those oldfashioned values. “Really, the main problems that we have are property crimes there’s really not a lot of violent crimes.” He attributes Lakewood’s overall success to its family-oriented residents. “It’s still a cool place, to me, even seeing it from where I’m at now,” he says. Bietendorf was hired on with the Dallas Police Academy in 1981 at age 23. Originally, he was assigned to the Northeast Division. After that, he worked the “deployment unit,” doing a lot of search and surveillance in plain clothes. He also worked 13 years in personnel before getting back on the streets in 2010 to do patrolling again. Then, in January 2012, he requested the Lakewood patrol and received it. He says he’s still got a few good years before he retires, and he hopes to spend those years keeping a watchful eye on his childhood neighborhood.

—Brittany Nunn