Licensed
Landscape Architect
Landscape Architect
Our Vision
As designers, we begin by listening to you . . . to your dreams, your connection to your property, and to your personal sense of how a garden can come alive for you. We offer our clients a co-creative design process, empowering them to participate in envisioning and designing a deeply personal garden that radiates a strong spirit of place. This approach has resulted in delightfully satisfied clients for almost three decades.
A garden design process requires an artistic awareness of how the inherent qualities of a site move and enliven us. The special innate qualities of the landscape along with the architectural elements come together to inform the shape of a garden. By seeing the natural elements and living qualities, we can then recognize the potential character inherent in our clients’ spaces, and then bring them to life and create cohesion. We also work with the archetype of a garden . . . the living image which imbues us with a deep sense of tranquility and a joyful connection to the heart and soul of nature. Water and stone often are essential and prominent participants. In this co-creative process, we blend Nature's mysteries and delights into a garden that holds you in its embrace, and where plant, water, and stone resonate in harmony.
Living Qualities
It takes a deeply appreciative and skillful eye and hand to recognize, honor, and emulate Nature’s ways and to blend them with our needs and desires into a garden. Here the foundational essence of the land, the wind and water-sculpted earth and rock, shines strongly, and we can come to recognize the spirit essence of nature in its simplest, strongest forms. Such gardens become gateways of reverence and gratitude for the small, the quiet, and the dramatic gifts of the natural world. They literally invite us to co-create with nature’s deeper mysteries and can lead us up into a joyful recognition of her soul and spirit
With the turning of Spring into Summer, the multitude of flower colors and leaf textures peak, and we can lose ourselves in the sweet dreaminess of summer's warmth and its bounteous floral displays (fullness). Where better to lose ourselves than in the garden, in the shade of a grove of trees looking out onto an open meadow, hearing the soft babble of water flowing over rock? As the sun ripens the garden, we rejoice with the triumph of all that nature has to offer in her fullest expression. With the climax of Fall we see a final burst of foliage color, before a light winter blanket of snow covers the ground. This is when our landscapes come to express the elemental nature of the forces that shape the land. Boulder outcroppings with dry winter grasses illuminated in the low angle of the winter sun and the bright luminescence of red and yellow twig dogwoods coming forth from drifts of snow are among the pleasures of deep Winter. And what can be more beautiful than icicles forming in our rock and water features?
Homes, Estates, Corporate Spaces, Rooftop Gardens, Neighborhood Greenbelts
We enjoy designing for all scales of garden and landscape spaces. Even the smallest garden offers an extraordinary opportunity to replicate the essence of a larger landscape in an intimate setting; perhaps an entry courtyard with a touch of water, rock and the ephemeral nod of a fern, all in the shade of a multi- stem dwarf flowering tree. We enjoy designing spaces that lead to other spaces, creating a sense of mystery and a gradual revealing of what is to come. Surprises abound in following the path from one space into another, drawn by glimpses of a grander view and the sound of water, bringing a garden to life for our enjoyment.
When we seek to be held in the floral mystery of nature, nothing better provides us with such profound daily and seasonal nourishment then the smallest of garden spaces. Knowing we are held within a tiny oasis of peace and serenity, and having a partial view into what lies just around the corner and off into the distance, we feel at peace.
Soulful Observations
When a garden is conceived and created from a place of inner harmony and balance, it radiates a strong spirit of place and expresses who you are in the context of the special character and potential of your property.
Soulful observations of the many elements that are used to create a fine garden can guide us deeper and deeper into the mysteries of nature.
As poet Robert Frost noted while observing water:
See how the brook in that white wave runs counter to itself.
It is in this backward motion toward the source, against the stream,
that most we see ourselves in; the tribute of the current to the source.
It is from this in nature we are from . . .
It is most us.
As designers, we begin by listening to you . . . to your dreams, your connection to your property, and to your personal sense of how a garden can come alive for you. We offer our clients a co-creative design process, empowering them to participate in envisioning and designing a deeply personal garden that radiates a strong spirit of place. This approach has resulted in delightfully satisfied clients for almost three decades.
A garden design process requires an artistic awareness of how the inherent qualities of a site move and enliven us. The special innate qualities of the landscape along with the architectural elements come together to inform the shape of a garden. By seeing the natural elements and living qualities, we can then recognize the potential character inherent in our clients’ spaces, and then bring them to life and create cohesion. We also work with the archetype of a garden . . . the living image which imbues us with a deep sense of tranquility and a joyful connection to the heart and soul of nature. Water and stone often are essential and prominent participants. In this co-creative process, we blend Nature's mysteries and delights into a garden that holds you in its embrace, and where plant, water, and stone resonate in harmony.
Living Qualities
It takes a deeply appreciative and skillful eye and hand to recognize, honor, and emulate Nature’s ways and to blend them with our needs and desires into a garden. Here the foundational essence of the land, the wind and water-sculpted earth and rock, shines strongly, and we can come to recognize the spirit essence of nature in its simplest, strongest forms. Such gardens become gateways of reverence and gratitude for the small, the quiet, and the dramatic gifts of the natural world. They literally invite us to co-create with nature’s deeper mysteries and can lead us up into a joyful recognition of her soul and spirit
With the turning of Spring into Summer, the multitude of flower colors and leaf textures peak, and we can lose ourselves in the sweet dreaminess of summer's warmth and its bounteous floral displays (fullness). Where better to lose ourselves than in the garden, in the shade of a grove of trees looking out onto an open meadow, hearing the soft babble of water flowing over rock? As the sun ripens the garden, we rejoice with the triumph of all that nature has to offer in her fullest expression. With the climax of Fall we see a final burst of foliage color, before a light winter blanket of snow covers the ground. This is when our landscapes come to express the elemental nature of the forces that shape the land. Boulder outcroppings with dry winter grasses illuminated in the low angle of the winter sun and the bright luminescence of red and yellow twig dogwoods coming forth from drifts of snow are among the pleasures of deep Winter. And what can be more beautiful than icicles forming in our rock and water features?
Homes, Estates, Corporate Spaces, Rooftop Gardens, Neighborhood Greenbelts
We enjoy designing for all scales of garden and landscape spaces. Even the smallest garden offers an extraordinary opportunity to replicate the essence of a larger landscape in an intimate setting; perhaps an entry courtyard with a touch of water, rock and the ephemeral nod of a fern, all in the shade of a multi- stem dwarf flowering tree. We enjoy designing spaces that lead to other spaces, creating a sense of mystery and a gradual revealing of what is to come. Surprises abound in following the path from one space into another, drawn by glimpses of a grander view and the sound of water, bringing a garden to life for our enjoyment.
When we seek to be held in the floral mystery of nature, nothing better provides us with such profound daily and seasonal nourishment then the smallest of garden spaces. Knowing we are held within a tiny oasis of peace and serenity, and having a partial view into what lies just around the corner and off into the distance, we feel at peace.
Soulful Observations
When a garden is conceived and created from a place of inner harmony and balance, it radiates a strong spirit of place and expresses who you are in the context of the special character and potential of your property.
Soulful observations of the many elements that are used to create a fine garden can guide us deeper and deeper into the mysteries of nature.
As poet Robert Frost noted while observing water:
See how the brook in that white wave runs counter to itself.
It is in this backward motion toward the source, against the stream,
that most we see ourselves in; the tribute of the current to the source.
It is from this in nature we are from . . .
It is most us.
©2019 Altgelt & Associates