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Practice Landscape

@practicelandscape

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Practice Landscape is evolving. Because where we work matters as much as how we work. We’ve spent the past years developing an approach to landscape that values direct engagement with the landscapes we design and steward, one that questions status-quo project making. Variation, change, lifecycles, seasons, and the feeling of not really knowing how something might develop — as we like to say, practice makes imperfect.

Our office is now structured in two parts: a home base in Brooklyn and trial landscape in Vermont. Practice Brooklyn is our “studio,” a business and administrative office setting where our team can access archives, conveniently host meetings, and expand our publishing and non-profit businesses. Practice Vermont is our “land,” a nursery and garden setting where our team can test plants and regularly experiment with design methods. This decentralized structure helps us continue to engage directly with the landscapes we design and deepen relationships with the people and places we work with.

As our office structure changes, so does our team. We recently welcomed Connor Jacobs and Chloe Kellner as Junior Landscape Designers and wrapped up the summer with our Intern in Resident Lauren Kim.

“I placed the portrait of a landscape I knew intimately alongside the stereotypical way of seeing that world—as it was represented by outsiders.” ~ bell hooks

#practicelandscape #landscapegardening #landscape by @practicelandscape

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12 days ago

Landscape designers and gardeners are often handed a site plan that outlines the property lines, building footprints, and path system. The rest of the site is white. A site plan without any indication of plants creates the impression of a landscape devoid of life. As a result, our first act of design is to put the plants back on the map.

A plant inventory charts long-term change and unveils the puzzles of horticulture, but they are not a standard in professional practice. The objective of an inventory is to document and describe the current status of a collection. Over time, the inventory can be compared to past iterations, revealing landscape change.

We recently completed a tree inventory in Dutchess County, New York for the Beloved Community for Engaged Spirituality at Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery (BCES) with arborist @williambryantlogan

The present-day forest condition has been shaped by decades of land fragmentation. Patches of woodlands and wetlands are bisected by fallow pastures, homes, and roads. The tree inventory revealed a stunning variety of successional oaks and maples, paired with a growing preponderance of aggressive species like Berberis thunbergii (Japanese Barberry), typical of a fragmented landscape. BCES is setting out on a path to repair and stitch together its landscape in the foothills, cultivating community through nurturing the land.

Read more about our approach to plant inventory in Rosetta’s article in Arnoldia
“An Impermanent Inventory: Plant Collections for a Changing Climate” through the link in our bio. by @practicelandscape

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a month ago

Jardin de bord de mer, or Shoreline Gardens are not permanent, they ebb and flow with the lifecycles of Leymus arenarius (Sea lyme grass), a psammophile. What a great word! Pronounced SAM-uh-file, meaning a plant or animal that adapted to sandy areas and thrives in the loose, shifting, grains. L. arenarius helps fast-forward ecological succession, reducing erosion and taking up nitrogen at the same time. We start by planting seed in winter greenhouses. By May, plugs are planted by a host of volunteer humans. The following year, roots dive deep. Within two years, banks are stabilized and we begin to see woody plants, saplings taking advantage of the newly captured and improved soils.

This year Practice Landscape worked with photographer Christine Fitzgerald and @jardinsdemetis to celebrate the cycles of Lyme grass and help the community “read” the landscape of retreat. By hosting a cyanotype workshop for local camps, children explored the character and beauty of plant structure. A cyanotype is unique because it creates an image without mechanical support—almost as if the plant was helping take its own portrait.

Practice Landscape continues to collaborate with the Municipality of Sainte-Flavie, and Les Jardins de Métis, in Québec to reimagine the landscapes left behind after homes were relocated. More on this ongoing collaborative practice at the link in bio.

A special thank you to Christine, Alexander Reford, Noémie Pomerleau-Cloutier, PL Intern in Residence Lauren Kim and Jardin de Métis for making this community event possible.
@noemiepcloutier @jardinsdemetis @birdeatsfry

Photo credit: Practice Landscape and Christine Fitzgerald

#practicelandscape #gardens #landscapesofretreat by @practicelandscape

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2 months ago

Lauren (@birdeatsfry): As Practice Landscape’s 2026 intern in-residence, I spent a month in Gaspésie, Québec to work on a shoreline adaptation project and historic garden.

Having grown up in Montréal, it was transformative to explore my home province from a newfound perspective. My tasks, from mapping shoreline retreat, to cataloging regionally significant plants, to a community workshop, focused on the restless coast. The shoreline presented as a confluence of interlocking questions of ecology, culture, and infrastructure.

In the field, some days were spent collecting land use data, others spent collecting seaweed. While the breadth of work across the region of La Mitis called upon skills that bridged on-site mapping with the digital documentation.

———————————

Practice Landscape’s interns in Residence program blends approaches to apprenticeship and the artists in resident model, offering emerging professionals a temporary space to immerse themselves in practice and get hands on training. Each summer, graduate student interns are paired with project sites and given opportunity to work closely with the land and delve deeply into a specific, ongoing project.

#practicelandscape #landscape #gardens #landscapegardening by @practicelandscape

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3 months ago

We are thrilled to announce the winners of the fifth annual Practice Grant. The Practice Foundation (501c3)
is our environmental nonprofit that works to advance alternative land-based practices. Our mission is to champion grass-roots projects that contribute to the health and well-being of people, their communities, and the environment.

More on the award winners on our website soon.
#practicegrant #nonprofit #landscape #practice #grant

[2026] Chickahominy on the Powhatan + Little Bluestem [Virginia] “Heritage Forest: A clearing in the woods for food and community.”

The Chickahominy Environmental Department and Little Bluestem are renewing the relationship between people and the land through food. The Heritage Forest begins with the establishment of a grove of woody and herbaceous plants at Chickahominy on the Powhatan. Planting will prioritize culturally traditional fruits, nuts, dyes, and medicines that have sustained the Chickahominy people from their earliest roots in the region, with Little Bluestem growing local genotype plants for the project. A novel practice emerges in the reuse of debris on site for everything from mulch to infrastructure. The project is led by Chickahominy citizen and Tribal Environmental Director Dana Adkins in collaboration with Victoria Moyer and Ben Kessler from Little Bluestem @littlebluestemva

[2026] Jimmy Riordan, Alaska “Young Hermit Park Willow Grove”

A new public space for plant experimentation created from formerly residential lots in Anchorage, Alaska. Young Hermit Park begins with a novel approach to municipal zoning that opens once private land for community use in partnership with the Alaska Bookmobile @ak_bookmobile . Collaborators include the Anchorage Park Foundation @ancparkfoundation Anchorage Museum @anchoragemuseum and Friends of Fish Creek by @practicelandscape

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5 months ago

A landscape strategy is an actionable long-term planning document that replaces the fixity of a masterplan by providing scenarios that vary over time, acknowledging shifting plant communities and maintenance regimes and integrating the cultural and ecological landscape. It outlines the practices that contribute to the landscape’s ongoing adaptation, typically in the form of a manual or guidebook, to be used by clients and future caretakers to inform site operations. Critically, it integrates landscape history and present-day practices and experiments, while anticipating future management goals and challenges.

Working over time is a cooperative endeavor between the people who care for the land and the landscape itself. This involves a conceptual shift from ownership to stewardship. Stewardship acknowledges the reality that systems, materials, and organisms are constantly in flux across parcel boundaries and that any person’s control or guidance extends only as long as their life. Stewardship implies and anticipates the transience of the individual and conscious preparation for future conditions and future stewards.

Practices are acts of repetition, asserted over time and across place, that establish the character of the landscape and the human-plant connection. It is through these acts, through practice, that landscape extends beyond form and instigates process, fostering radical collaboration between people and plants.

#practicelandscape #landscape #plants #gardens #landscapegardening by @practicelandscape

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6 months ago

Excerpts from Rosetta’s review “Species Revival” of Ferns: Lessons in Survival from Earth’s Most Adaptable Plants By Fay-Wei Li and Jacob S. Suissa for Landscape Architecture Magazine, February 2026.

We are living in a time of lament for the loss of words related to nature. The roots of this began in 2016 when Oxford University Press announced the removal of terms such as “cowslip,” “bluebell,” and “catkin” from its children’s dictionary due to the need for entries that more accurately reflect everyday life. The additions included “blog,” “voicemail,” and “database.” In landscape architecture, plant diversity is similarly being edited out of practice, with only modest lament. This loss is not merely reflected in words redacted from reference books; it is starkly revealed by the increasing absence of species from planting lists, trade directories, and nursery catalogs, which have shrunk to accommodate commercial demand. As with most prevailing styles and customs, the use of particular plants comes in and out of fashion and reflects the culture of the times. It is up to us as designers to rediscover species that are no longer on the list. Imagine a world where landscape architects are devoted plant enthusiasts who counter such redaction by reviving diversity in planted public spaces. So how do landscape architects learn an expanded language of plants?

Ferns: Lessons in Survival from Earth’s Most Adaptable Plants
By Fay-Wei Li and Jacob S. Suissa: Berkeley, California: Hardie Grant North America, 20225; 192 Pages, $45
@letsbotanize @landarchmag

Images selected from the book:

1. With the ability to thrive in dense forest understories, Dryopteris wallichiana is one of the most common types of ferns.
2. Crested fronds helped fuel Victorian-era “pteridomania,” or fern fever.
3. Landscape Architecture Magazine, February 2026
4. Lecanopteris ‘Tatsuta’ from Southeast Asia has a symbiotic relationship with ants, which form nests within the plant’s rhizomes by @practicelandscape

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7 months ago

It is time to value and appreciate the water around us. Slowing its movement is one way to appreciate water on its own terms. Restoring the natural flow of water as it travels across the landscape is the most effective way to reduce flooding, while creating healthy ecosystems.

This case study is offered as a guide, and a hopeful first step in paying attention to the movement of water around you. This report explains the benefits of addressing two issues: water quality (pollutants, chemicals, bacteria) and water quantity (erosion, crop loss, flooding) by redesigning an existing retention pond to connect with a restored wetland, slowing water.

Report available at link in bio and at our website: Lake County > Slow Water: Common sense solutions for adapting retention ponds and restoring wetlands

Contractor @encap_ecological by @practicelandscape

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8 months ago

“To be part of nature herself, rather than foreign to the general character of the place.” - Frederick Law Olmsted

Practice Landscape along with @pamelasandlerarchitect, David Hamilton of @geobarns, Foresight Land Services, and the Vanderbilt Berkshires Estate have proposed a site plan for the historic Elm Court in the Berkshires.

Elm Court, still the largest Shingle Style residence in the United States, was designed in 1885 by Frederick Law Olmsted and architects Peabody & Stearns as a summer residence for Emily T. Vanderbilt and her husband, William D. Sloane.

Our proposed landscape design centers on the Olmstedian principal “Genius of Place,” or a celebration of the site qualities to be enhanced and preserved. In this case, those qualities are the incredible existing topography of the Berkshires as well as the endemic plant species. The project preserves 70% of the landscape, including forest and wetland, as well as the historic Olmsted grounds and views.

#landscape #olmsted #gardens #historiclandscape #practicelandscape by @practicelandscape

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10 months ago

Practice Landscape has been consulting for the Huyck Preserve in Rensselaerville, New York, one of the oldest continuous biological research stations in the country. Their commitment to field research stretches back to 1938 (including the early work of Eugene Odum, the “father of ecosystem studies”) and offers a careful record of how the landscape has changed over nearly a century.

Arborist and author William Bryant Logan writes, “Trees are neither inanimate nor stationary. They are constantly creating and recreating themselves. Trees respond moment to moment, year to year, century to century to the world around them.”

On a recent visit to the preserve, the solitary “wolf trees,” like this Pinus strobus in the first photo, are indicators of just that change. The old trees move overtime, growing out of former pastures, slowly surrounded by the successional forest. These outsized and irregular individuals mark the traces of long-ago gateways or stone walls of a once open sunny field. They are themselves a way to read the history of a place.

Learn about and support @huyckpreserve
And read more from @williambryantlogan

#practicelandscape #landscape #huyckpreserve #ecosystem by @practicelandscape

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a year ago

Honored to share some kind words for the Second Edition of Landscapes of Retreat. Available at @ideabooksnl @printedmatterinc @headhi_ny @assemblylineshop

With @k_verlag

A very special thank you to:
Peter Del Tredici @peter_del_tredici
Rebecca McMackin @oroeoboeococoao
Elizabeth K. Meyer @elizabethkmeyer
Kate Orff
Tim Waterman by @practicelandscape

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a year ago

Let’s talk about companions.

Marigolds (Tagetes patula) are one of the greatest companion plants, best known for its strong scent, and astringent properties in the veggie garden. But Marigold is also a friend to many other plants. Look to Marigold for many perennials, especially small plants that are trying to get going, like a fresh grid of small plugs. Plants have a tough time with environmental issues or nematodes and whiteflies. Enter Marigold! Try them near chrysanthemums, salivas, veronicas and a host of other ornamentals. English herbalist John Gerard mentioned Marigold as a companion in Chapter 174 of The Herball Or Generall Historie of Plantes (1636), remarkably it is on a page describing lavender where he writes:

And then she’ll Spike and such sweet herbs infold
And paint the Hyacinth with the Marigold.

Want to have marigolds forever?
Pinch off deadheads while color remains
Pull petals from dry seed pod
Seed pod should be brown, not green.
Pull out the bundle of achenes.
Save in a dry spot to grow later.
Enjoy the petals, sprinkle on salads or cocktails,
Or grind into a fine powder.

#practicelandscape #landscape #gardening #landscapegardening #marigolds by @practicelandscape

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a year ago