Selected Work / 2009 – 2024
A portfolio of 612 completed residential, estate, builder, and restoration projects across USDA zones 2b through 5b — built, observed, and revisited through real northern winters.
See the ProjectsAbout This Index
The projects below were selected from 612 residential and estate commissions completed since 2009. Every one of them was designed for a property that endures a hard winter — usually a long one — and every one of them has been observed on-site by the studio across multiple seasons, including snow cover, leaf-off dormancy, spring bud break, and peak summer bloom. None of the photographs are aspirational; they are documentation of how these gardens actually behave in the climates they were built for.
The index is organized by project family — residential redesign, estate work, builder and spec properties, and native restoration acreage — and each card carries the USDA hardiness zone and the acreage of the property it was designed for. Filter by what you are actually planning, and read the case studies that match your conditions.
Project Families
The studio takes on a maximum of fourteen new commissions per year to protect design quality. Most of them fall into one of the four families shown here.
Residential Redesign
A 1948 bungalow on a tight urban lot, redesigned for a retired couple who wanted a four-season garden they could maintain themselves. The plan centers on a serviceberry grove, witch hazel understory, and a bluestone path sized for a snow shovel.
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Estate · Award-Winning
Eight acres of Lake Superior shoreline redesigned around a primary residence and a detached guest barn. The 2022 APLD Award of Excellence in Residential Design recognized the project's use of dry-stack Lake Superior basalt walls and a layered native shoreline buffer that holds against ice heave.
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Builder & Spec
A builder commission for a six-lot subdivision, with a standardized front- and side-yard planting template that holds its structure through a Michigan winter without supplemental irrigation. Forty-two cultivars, all observed at the Duluth trial garden for at least three winters before specification.
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Native Restoration
A retired hayfield transitioned to a regionally appropriate warm-season grass and forb meadow across three growing seasons. The plan was annotated for spring bulb, summer bloom, fall color, winter structure, and wildlife forage value — the Five-Season Plant Matrix applied at acreage scale.
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How the Work Was Made
Every commission begins with a paid on-site visit — typically in winter, when the site's exposure, drainage patterns, and structural bones are fully visible. The visit is followed by a free 30-minute video walkthrough so the client reviews their own property in snow cover before signing a design contract.
Every planting plan is annotated for spring bulb, summer bloom, fall color, winter structure, and wildlife forage value. Cultivars are selected from the studio's trial garden at the Duluth nursery, where 240+ perennials have been observed through seven winters of recorded hardiness data.
The studio caps new commissions at fourteen per design season to protect the quality of every project on the board. As of January, eleven of the fourteen slots for the 2025 design season are already reserved; consultations are typically booked six to eight weeks in advance.
Hardscape is built by the studio's own stone crew, trained in dry-stack limestone and Lake Superior basalt retaining walls — the two most-requested regional hardscape materials in zones 3 through 5. We do not subcontract the parts of a project that determine whether it survives a February thaw.
The Record
Completed landscape designs since 2009, across MN, WI, MI, NY, VT, and CO.
Average rating across 184 verified Houzz reviews; named a 2023 Houzz Top Rated Designer.
APLD Award of Excellence in Residential Design for the Cascade Ridge Estate project.
Cover of Fine Gardening magazine, March issue, for "Designing Gardens That Work in Zone 3."
In the Client's Words
"The first February after the redesign, I walked out into the garden expecting to see the same bare sticks and salt-stained lawn we'd had for fifteen years. Instead there was structure — the dogwood stems were on fire, the ornamental grasses were holding snow like sculpture, the limestone wall looked like it had been there for a century. We have a garden in January now. I didn't know that was something you could buy."
— Helena R., Cascade Ridge Estate, Lutsen, MN
Next Step
The studio takes on fourteen new commissions per year. Consultations are booked six to eight weeks in advance and begin with a paid on-site visit to your property — typically in winter.
