Back in the 90’s I took courses in the Landscape Design program at Radcliffe Seminars. I completed most of the requirements for a Certificate in Landscape Design, except for completing an independent project. Landscape Design is a challenging profession that requires skill in many different disciplines: pure design, botany, horticulture, history, construction, and business management. I greatly enjoyed dipping into it – I learned a lot, and got to use the artistic side of my personality after many decades of working in an engineering field. And we got to go on some really great field trips!

Under this page, I’ll be posting a few of the papers I wrote and projects I designed as part of this program.

The Arts and Crafts Garden

The Wild Garden, by William Robinson

William Robinson’s 1899 book ushered in a new style of naturalistic gardening that nurtured the Arts and Crafts garden style.

Garden Rooms in the Arts and Crafts Garden

The Arts and Crafts garden, with its garden rooms enclosing a series of ever-changing pictures, is a garden of mystery and adventure, a garden greater than the sum of its parts.

Plants in Historic Landscapes

Styphnolobium japonicum: An ancient tree thrives in the city

The story of the Japanese Pagoda tree, as it makes its way from the court of the Chinese emperor, on caravans across Asia, to the gardens of Europe and America, finally to become an ornament on the streets of our modern cities. And did you know that the first botanical garden in America was on the site of New York’s Rockefeller Center?