Called a “landscape guru” by Architectural Digest, and lauded with National and New York Honor Awards by the American Society of Landscape Architecture, Edmund Hollander is one of New York City’s biggest names in residential landscape design. He’s also an alum of NYBG’s School of Professional Horticulture.
Hollander designs gorgeous green spaces of repose from the Hamptons to Hong Kong. His award-winning work is recognized for its attention to detail—both in terms of the design and in the environmental appropriateness of each site. In advance of his October 25 lecture, The Good Garden: Thoughts on Residential Landscape Design at NYBG, we asked him to share a few thoughts on successful garden design.
Wendy Ford in the Landscape Design Summer Intensive in 2015
The New York Botanical Garden puts the “intense” in “Intensive” this summer with accelerated educational programs that get students on their way to achieving career goals, learning new skills, and earning prestigious Certificates in Landscape Design, Floral Design, or Gardening. Three students who completed last year’s programs and are set to graduate this month sat down to talk to us about their experiences and how the Intensives made an impact on their lives.
NYBG Landscape Design student Danielle Faustini is on a crazy mission.
Last week, she started working at a Manhattan landscape design firm, while completing freelance projects and wrapping up her education in The New York Botanical Garden’s Certificate Program in anticipation of graduation on June 7.
Faustini’s education started in last summer’s Landscape Design Summer Intensive, an expedited five-week program that covers half of all required classroom hours toward a prestigious NYBG Certificate. In one year, she finished the required 350 hours, while working full-time as a server in a restaurant and doing freelance design work on the side—hence the crazy.
“Life is short, you know?” Faustini said. “I told myself I would complete the Certificate Program within a year. It definitely wasn’t easy, but you set your mind to something, and you do it.”
Landscape Design students, Danielle Faustini and George Siriotis
Faustini and her Summer Intensive classmate George Siriotis, who also completed the Certificate Program in a year, saw the Intensive as an opportunity to jump into a new career with the support of like-minded, ambitious peers and industry-professional instructors.
Susan Welti, left, and design partner Paige Keck, formed Foras Studio in 2009.
The April issue of Elle Décor magazine features the work of Susan Welti (’96), who runs her Brooklyn-based Foras Studio with NYBG School of Professional Horticulture alum, Paige Keck. A former dancer, Welti now finds a different sort of choreography in gardens and landscapes. We caught up with her to talk about design, careers, and the personal satisfaction that comes from actually changing clients’ lives.
‘For me, Landscape Design is the perfect segue from choreography,” Susan said. “It has space, time, and movement.”
Her Landscape Design classes at the Garden—which she said were “beyond fun”—were humbling and prepared her for an internship with Lynden B. Miller after she completed her Certificate in 1996. She opened her own company, Susan Welti Landscape Design, and started small, but grew rapidly as news of her talent spread.
“I think it’s an amazing field to be in because people here are just desperate to have green, some little bit of nature,” she said. “It sounds counter-intuitive that you could have a really booming landscape design business in the middle of New York City, but it’s true.”
Our spate of presentations from international gardening savants continued in February with British landscape architect Kim Wilkie, who joined us for the second of our annual Winter Lectures. At face value he may seem mild-mannered, but make no mistake: Wilkie loves to play in the mud. He shifts massive amounts of soil to sculpt the landscape in a very literal fashion.
Wilkie began his discussion by explaining how he infuses his contemporary ideas with historical perspectives. One source of inspiration is Mother Nature. He paid tribute to the powerful influence of ice and water, and the role of erosion in shaping the landscape. After this long, punishing winter, most of us will remember ice and water as a combined nuisance, reflecting on the piles of snow that buried our cars and blocked sidewalks. Wilkie, however, had a much more romanticized view of nature, presenting images of graceful contours carved into the land by winding rivers and glacial erosion.
In his quintessentially British Oxbridge manner, Wilkie related the fascinating chronology of both the military and spiritual tradition of moving massive amounts of earth to create man-made fortifications and construct sites for burial, solace, and worship. His slides carried us back in history with a sublime visual tour of this Northern European landscape custom.
Tom Lawson was a massage therapist until he bought a piece of property in the Hamptons.
The land was overgrown and neglected. Tom spent years lovingly redeveloping the landscaping. Then, over time, more and more people said to him, “You need to go do this professionally.”
So he tried. As projects fell into his lap, he realized he needed a language to communicate his ideas. Words weren’t enough.
“Most people don’t have the ability to visualize something that isn’t there,” Tom said.
He needed to learn how to sketch, how to draft. Tom found his way to The New York Botanical Garden Adult Education Program, where he earned Certificates in Horticulture (’12) and Landscape Design (’13), and continues to study.
Daryl Beyers is a landscape designer with over 20 years’ worth of experience who teaches Gardening and Landscape Design for the Garden. However, he first came to the Garden as a student in the spring of 2000 when his employers at a 10-acre estate in Connecticut sent him here to take classes in composting and orchid care. Daryl had earned a degree in Environmental Design, but it was here that he polished his horticulture skills, since, as he explains, “Not all landscape design programs stress plant knowledge, let alone gardening skills.”
The pitfalls facing new gardeners are familiar to Daryl, who built his skills both in the classroom and on the job, first as a laborer—“the guy pushing the wheel barrow”—then as a nursery worker—“the college kid holding a hose out in the container field.” He also had the same amateur gardener’s idealism: “Not knowing any better, my unstated goal first starting out was to keep every plant in my care alive… I share this experience with my Fundamentals of Gardening students because it demonstrates a common thread of how most inexperienced gardeners think. They believe, unhappily, that if a plant dies they have failed, when in fact the death of a plant is just a lesson. I quote a gardener friend who once said, “You don’t really know a plant until you have killed it three times.”
For over thirty years Bill Einhorn has instructed our Landscape Design students, passing on the technical skills and foundational knowledge for creating hospitable and healthy green spaces. As our longtime instructor and the president of the New York chapter of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers, we thought Bill would be the perfect person to ask about the newest trends emerging in the landscape design industry, and the kinds of projects our graduates can expect to see as they venture out into the field.
What recent trends are you noticing in the industry and in designing projects for clients?
In both the public and private sector clients are more in tune with sustainability and the use of native plants. Green roofs and rain gardens are not new trends anymore and the public is much more aware of sustainable practice. However, I have found that the newer regulations in many towns that I work in that insist on sustainable practice, storm water management, and wetland regulations can add prohibitive costs to projects where the client either kills the project or cuts back on aesthetics in order to put the money into following the new rules. Other trends I see in the high-end market are an increased demand for an outdoor kitchen, fireplace, fire pit or a spa. Clients want to extend their enjoyment of the shortened outdoor season in the northeast. It is exciting that I am now designing projects that I would normally see out on the west coast.
This month we feature Elaine Yellen, a Westchester-based landscape designer and NYBG graduate who now runs her own firm in Scarsdale, where she continues to build upon her Garden education.
“I completed the Horticulture Program and the Landscape Design Program,” Elaine said. “Both provided essential preparation that let me feel like a true professional when I presented myself to clients as an expert in my field. Many of my teachers were working professionals and were so helpful in all aspects of project design and implementation. They were always very generous with advice to a budding designer.”
Elaine first came to the NYBG because she wanted to turn her love of gardening into a profession: “It was my creative outlet… so I decided to study it formally and see where that would lead.” In addition to many residential projects in lower Westchester, local golfers might be familiar with her work for clubs and courses such as Winged Foot, Brae Burn, Fenway, Sunningdale, Fairview, and Scarsdale.
Ed. note: We offer many classes here at the Garden in a plethora of disciplines and at many levels, from “just for fun” to professional (see a pdf of the catalog here). But no matter how appealing the subject, the classes would be nothing without the instructors. On Plant Talk, we’ll introduce you to them, and their stories.
Bill Einhorn, Instructor, Landscape Design
The year 2011 marks a milestone in my career at The New York Botanical Garden–it was 30 years ago that I received a call from the Garden with news that it received a grant for a summer internship and if I’d be interested in coming in for an interview. While that began my professional association with the Botanical Garden, my roots here run even deeper. When I was 5 years old, my mother signed me up for Children’s Education classes at the Garden. I vividly remember learning about and receiving a Venus’ flytrap and asking the instructor if it would eat my sister. I also returned to the Garden during my studies in Landscape Architecture at Syracuse University to walk the grounds and memorize trees. My wedding photos were taken in the Rose Garden, and my favorite time of the year was strolling along Magnolia Way when the magnolias were in bloom.
After my summer internship in 1981, the Garden invited me back during my spring and summer breaks, and upon graduation hired me to be on staff. I started teaching in the mid 1980s and to date, by my estimates, have instructed over 3,000 students. Several have gone on to graduate programs, joined or established successful businesses, or completed projects at their own homes.
My affiliation with the Garden has brought me many personal and professional relationships and has made me a better Landscape Architect. My greatest feeling of accomplishment is when I run into students from many years ago who tell me the impact that I have had on their careers. Hopefully, I have another 30 years left in me to enjoy teaching and experiencing the continued growth of the Garden’s programs.
Are you looking to change your life, like Bill did? In just five weeks you can earn almost half the total hours needed for a Certificate in Landscape Design. Interactive classes, taught by professional landscape architects and designers, cover each step of the design process, from site analysis to design development. Other subjects include landscape design history, graphics, and site detailing. Guest lecturers present their own work and discuss design philosophies, professional issues, and presentation strategies. The beautiful New York Botanical Garden is used for design projects and plant study.
Enrollment is limited to allow for individualized attention and comprehensive project critiques.
Called a “landscape guru” by Architectural Digest, and lauded with National and New York Honor Awards by the American Society of Landscape Architecture, Edmund Hollander is one of New York City’s biggest names in residential landscape design. He’s also an alum of NYBG’s School of Professional Horticulture.
