Behind The Pink Walls: An Estate Transformation

The Annenberg Estate in Rancho Mirage could be one of the most well known private pieces of property in the Coachella Valley, but few people have been behind the pink wall.

In a year, the property will be open to the public, with the addition of a new visitor center.

“There’s this great ‘Ah Ha!’ moment when you look at this mountain through this glass, and is essentially a framed landscape painting,” according to Janice Lyle.

Lyle is describing what you see walking through the doors of the new center at the Sunnylands Estate.

She’s the center director and gave News Channel 3 a personal tour.

Watch Friday night as Emilie Voss takes us inside the Annenberg’s Rancho Mirage home

Sunnylands was originally a 200-acre estate built by Walter and Leonore Annenberg in the 1960’s.

Ambassador Annenberg made a name for himself in media. He created TV Guide and Seventeen magazine, launched American Bandstand and published the Philadelphia Enquirer.

Over the years, the Annenberg’s estate played host to seven presidents, the royal family and some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

“I think there’s tremendous pent up curiosity about what’s behind the pink wall,” Lyle said.

For the first time ever, the estate will be open to the public and host retreats for leaders in many fields ranging from politics to arts and education.

The new 15 acre center and garden sits adjacent to the original estate.

It features a great room, theater, gift shop, cafe, multi-purpose room, along with gallery and exhibition space.

The new project was designed to fulfill all of its own energy needs through solar generation.

Solar panels – 284 of them – are meant to generate enough power to meet 100% of the needs for the center.

“The way this works is it generates the power, it gets fed into the grid, we get it back from the grid,” Lyle explains. “And, in fact, if we get more than we need, we’re simply supplying power to the grid for this region.”

The new 9-acre garden surrounding the center has more than 50,000 different kinds of desert plants.

The Annenberg’s extensive collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings became the inspiration for the desert garden at the center.

“This garden essentially takes the idea of swaths of brush strokes that are Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, and it places them on the ground and uses each of those areas to be a different color or shape or size of plant,” Lyle said.

Beyond the layout, what sets this desert oasis apart is the sustainable design.

There’s a clear difference between the garden at the center and the lush green landscape at the original estate.

Not only does the new garden use desert plants, they require very little water which will come from cutting edge irrigation systems.

“This garden is planted with a real concern for how water gets used,” Lyle explained. “So there are two kinds of systems. One is a regular drip irrigation system. Every plant has it’s own little emitter that will keep it wet.”

The other system was designed in Australia and is entirely underground. No water comes to the surface. Instead, there are pipes with fabric, and water comes out and stays on the fabric and basically feeds the roots of the plants.

There are also 1.2 miles of walking paths winding through the gardens.

While the new center is close to being completed, it wont open until next fall in order to have a simultaneous opening with the historic house which is in the middle of renovations.

They hope to open Sunnylands to everyone next November on 11/11/11.