About

As an award winning certified landscape designer, I see what you cannot – yet. Where you see an overgrown or unappealing front or back yard, I envision a beautiful functioning landscape.

philosophy • background • awards • publications • region

Philosophy

Informed by more than 20 years of design, hands-on horticultural experience and ongoing study, I create beautiful, distinctive landscapes and original garden places that are designed for your lifestyle. The gardens invite you to linger, to renew and to play. My landscapes use regional themes and materials of stone and brick with specifically chosen plants. They are places featuring plant compositions of color, form and texture in bloom sequence fused throughout the landscape. My intention is to weave client values and dreams into a tapestry employing the strands of genius loci, the practical, the aesthetic and the environmental into a beautiful garden that ideally evokes our better selves

Garden-making, in my view, is a collaboration between the client, the site and myself. Before the initial consultation, clients are asked to answer a short list of questions. In working to create the ideal place, the questions concern your lifestyle, favorite colors, plants, gardens, preferred views, views that need screening, ages of children and number of pets (if any), maintenance. After the consultation in which have been offered numerous ideas and solutions, a deposit for the landscape plan, I write a detailed description of the landscape I envision based on your expressed desires and preferences. Clients review design idea proposal, I revise if necessary, then the proposal becomes the basis for your landscape plan. My goal is a garden place that is custom tailored to you and greatly pleases each of you.

Whether undertaking a small project such as adding a perennial border to an existing garden or designing an entire landscape, I have the experience and expertise to take an idea or concept, draw a plan and turn it into an oasis that you'll love.

Background

I earned a graduate design certificate from the Radcliffe Seminars Landscape Program, Radcliffe College in 1994 as well as national certification from the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) in 2003 -- one of only seven APLD-certified professional landscape designers in Massachusetts. My work has been featured in Fine Gardening Magazine and Taunton Press’ Front Yard Idea Book. *

Trained also as a fine artist, color theorist and graphic designer, I bring years of critical design thinking to my landscape solutions. Environmentally important, In addition, I studied French Intensive, a method of organic gardening with Alan Chadwick at the Whole Earth Garden at the University of California Santa Cruz that influenced organic farming. I employ those practices in the ornamental garden. My studies of color theory and composition with Wayne Thiebaud and Bill Wiley at the University of California Davis developed my artistic sense. I graduated with a BA. My project management skills, seasoned by my former San Francisco and Boston graphics design practice, prepared me for landscape construction coordination and its challenges.

In addition to my landscape practice, I lecture widely on garden design at Garden Clubs, the New England Flower Show, regional conferences and workshops. I have taught courses at Radcliffe Seminars, lead symposia at Massachusetts Horticultural Society and at the New Canaan Nature Center, and weekend workshops at Rowe Conference Center. My e-column Garden Notes can be read by clicking columns on the web site. Contact me directly for a schedule of appearances or to book a future appearance.

Other professional memberships include: Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD), Ecological Landscape Association (ELA), New England Landscape Design Association (NELDA), Women's Horticultural Network (WHN), New England Hosta Society and the New England Rock Garden Society. I have served as a member and chair of the Town of Sudbury's Design Review Board, Co-President of the Sudbury Garden Club, member of GFC Historical Landscape and Trails, and Trustee and secretary for the Sudbury Historical Society. I authored the History Trail for Sudbury's Historic Town Center. I am a board member of the APLD New England Chapter.

Awards

My award-winning entry, entitled New Home in an Existing Neighborhood, won third place in the 2003 national competition of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers. A start-to-finish design of the landscape for a newly constructed home in Weston, Massachusetts, this project is typical of my ability to create a master plan that takes into account circulation of people and cars, placement of driveways and walkways, as well as solving difficult slope problems. For this client, a unique landscape was created featuring terraces framed by curving stone walls, groves of ornamental trees, play spaces for children, an entertaining area for adults, stunning plant combinations of texture and color with sequenced bloom using many native plants as well as incorporating night lighting to illuminate paths, drive, guest parking, and gardens. (Click here to see the award-winning master plan).

Publications

Region

Full design services and consultation available in the states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Maine and Vermont. Available for lecture in continental US or Canada.

Project locations in MA include: Acton, Arlington, Ashland, Ayer, Belmont, Berlin, Bolton, Boxborough (Boxboro), Brookline, Burlington, Carlisle, Chestnut Hill, Concord, Dover, Framingham, Grafton, Groton, Harvard, Hopkinton, Hudson, Lancaster, Lexington, Lincoln, Littleton, Marlborough (Marlboro), Maynard, Melrose, Natick, Needham, Newton, Northborough (Northboro), Quincy, Sherborn, Shirley, Shrewsbury, Southborough (Southboro), Stow, Sudbury, Upton, Waltham, Watertown, Wayland, Wellesley, Westborough (Westboro), Westwood, Winchester, Weston, Woburn, and Worcester.

Miscellaneous

It's Maria von Brincken with a 'c' (mariavonbrincken.com), not Maria von Brinken (mariavonbrinken.com).