Approach

Supernature is a Seattle-based landscape architecture practice. We seek to happily layer human needs and wants, nature, beauty, design, art, habitat and ecosystem function into site-specific landscapes. We are here to create gardens with feelings. We craft designs to express the best aspects of a site and its use.

We collaborate with clients, architects and consultants, artists and builders. We have ideas, yet are nimble, flexible team players. We work in residential and public park/ garden contexts.

We seek to do the most with the least effort and cost, prioritize maintenance and ease, and design for now and the future, knowing that like people, landscapes need to evolve over time. We love to work with clients who want to take part in the garden’s fruition and who want to steward the garden over time. The best gardens are a team effort.

“What if I don’t like gardens but have a yard” and other FAQs

I don’t like gardens either.

Well sure they’re fun to visit, but I will never have the British spirit to work hard on tending my garden. Traditional styles of landscape design in the Pacific Northwest set us up for so much maintenance.

But gardens can also do so much more. They can be an oasis outside the chaotic home and away from Zoom; a place for our kids to be in nature; and habitat for birds and creatures. All while looking good.

And that’s why I started a landscape architecture practice here: to design gardens that are manageable and that you love to be in.

Don’t mistake me for a pure utilitarian. It was also to make gardens in a fresh, youthful style. Vanity is at my core. One of my most devastating childhood moments was when my black and white tracksuit got coated in red, staining mud, when I slipped on a hike. I knew it would never be the same.

Despite not liking mud on my favorite outfits, I’m not just a designer, I pull weeds too. I spent about a year pulling a terrible tiny grass weed on a permaculture farm in Maui. Weeds and yoga, weeds and yoga. And putting tourists on our bicycle-powered smoothie blender at the farmstand. I understand the work that goes into building and maintaining a landscape.

I’ve worked in horticulture and landscape design for over 14 years. I studied landscape architecture at UC Berkeley and worked at Lutsko Associates (some of the best in landscape architecture). I’ve designed both NDA-flavor estates and cozy home gardens. UC Berkeley awarded me a fellowship to travel to significant botanic gardens worldwide, to investigate what these gardens can do to stay relevant (back to my point that gardens take too much work and need to do more). While at Lutsko Associates, I followed up on that interest, completing a 1.5 acre new garden in the San Francisco Botanic Garden (SFBG). This new garden hosts events to help raise funds for SFBG, which has a limited staff and required this new space to be equally beautiful and low-maintenance.

So, know that if I show up to a site visit wearing a nice outfit, and it’s winter, I’m risking for you the same mud devastation I experienced as a child. Especially if you have heavy clay soil. But it’s worth it to look my best while getting to learn about your relationship and history with your property, along with your hopes and dreams, and together we see what to change, throw-out and honor.