For the past 30 years, I have devoted my efforts toward creating beautiful, sustainable, and functional landscapes for people to enjoy.

One way or another, my work has always brought me into the dirt. I have managed crews of hundreds as the chief landscape architect on multi-year, multi-million dollar urban parks projects, while I have also dug more backyard bungalow drainage ditches on sweltering July afternoons than I can count.

My interest in gardens began while I was a kid growing up in Burlington, NC. I watched the movement of water after a storm, flowing from gutter to creek, making habitat for crawdads in culverts below. I noticed how the curve of a street helped carve out the path of a suburban kid’s bike. From an early age, I was aware of how our natural and built environments enmesh. Sometimes harmoniously, sometimes not. I wanted to create harmony, and was pleasantly surprised that I could make a career out of that.

While in college, I worked summers for a landscaper in Chapel Hill, where I learned the foundations of residential gardening, and dug those muddy drainage ditches I mentioned earlier.

From there, I was thinking big. I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to earn my graduate degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. For the next sixteen years, I called Oakland my home, working on civic projects that ran the gamut from massive public park revitalizations to stunning streetscapes for cities all over the Bay Area. It was my commitment to consensus building, holding in-depth planning sessions with all involved stakeholders, that helped me design award-winning projects that are universally appreciated by Californians today as they interact with nature from within the urban realm.

As I matured, I felt the pull of my roots bringing me back to North Carolina. I got married, we had a daughter, and we wanted to raise her surrounded by family and pine trees, just as we were. While I had always done residential side projects for clients and friends in California, this change of scenery allowed me the flexibility to get my hands dirty once again with residential design. In 2018, I established my own design firm, focusing on private landscapes.

As a homeowner and gardener, I understand the importance (both spiritually and to the bottom line value of your home) of enhancing the appeal of your yard and making an environment you can entertain in and enjoy.

My goal in working with you is to create outdoor spaces at home that are beautiful, functional and evolving. My extensive background in consensus-building is useful in helping us plan together for a garden that affords “something for everyone” in your family. And, since I have all those years digging drainage ditches under my belt, I will also help ensure the outside stays out, keeping your basement dry and your home protected from the elements.

I am grateful to my clients for trusting me to deliver inspiring landscapes that they are proud of, and I look forward to working together.