
we design gardens that nurture life
Our immersive landscapes harmonize beauty with resiliency, creating spaces where people feel a profound connection to nature and place.

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Lorene Edwards Forkner writes about Richard’s favorite spring plantings in her March 26, 2025 column in the Seattle Times’ Pacific NW Magazine.
“Hartlage has long used his personal garden, executed in bold color and with a playful sense of scale, for trialing plants and building materials.”
We are excited to have Leach Botanical Garden included in the new book, “Contemporary Landscape Architecture: Masterpieces Around the World.” The book, published by Braun and written by Chris van Uffelen, is a compendium showcasing today and tomorrow’s landscape architecture.
We are thrilled to announce that Richard Hartlage has won a 2025 national medal from The Garden Club of America (GCA), the highest honor bestowed upon individuals and organizations for achievements in areas related to its purpose. The Mrs. Oakleigh Thorne Medal is awarded in recognition for outstanding achievement in design, architecture, or art related to the garden.

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With flowers that emerge in early winter and tough evergreen foliage, hellebores are a mainstay of both our public and private gardens, where we always try to design for four seasons of interest. Exquisite on a small scale and sensational on a large scale, they are well-suited for a variety of different settings and styles.
On the Seattle Waterfront, Corylopsis spicata is found growing in the large, raised beds just south of the new aquarium.
Trachelospermum jasminoides, or star jasmine, is a low-maintenance, evergreen vine with fragrant, white flowers. Native to Eastern and Southeastern Asia, it is dependably cold-hardy in the Puget Sound region. It creates a beautiful backdrop when trained up a trellis or over an arbor
Models are a way to provide visuals for the client to see the spatial relationships, scale and the overall aesthetic of a project.
Our boxwood of choice is Korean boxwood, Buxus sinica var. insularis ‘Wintergreen’ or Wintergreen boxwood, a variety that performs well and withstands blight.
This gorgeous mid-spring bloom, also known as the Camas lily or Wild Hyacinth, is in the Asparagus family, Asparagaceae.
Above all, it is the inherent dynamic qualities of plants – the living, ever-changing aspect of garden spaces – that distinguishes gardens from more static structures like houses.
The iterative process of modifying and evolving the design is an important reminder to not get too attached to any one design.
With blossoms rising several feet above a dense mass of basal foliage, Japanese anemones offer both seasonal interest and ground cover.
In our initial design concepts for the central water feature, we show a simplified reflecting pool that creates a balancing element in the gathering space near the Castle
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Landscape Architecture Magazine features our fountain design for Yew Dell Botanical Gardens in its Backstory column.
“We did a lot of fountain designs for them that didn’t resonate. It was the only piece of the project that didn’t make them happy right out of the gate. Then I had the idea: Why are we not just using the millstone? And it occurred to me that we could utilize the millstones in this fountain in a kind of subtle, low-impact way.” —Richard Hartlage