A two-person studio doing whole-yard residential garden design and landscape architecture. We design gardens you can edit, weed, prune, and live with — never the kind that has to be replaced when the contractor leaves.
Most of what gets called "landscape design" today is decorative — a row of identical hostas, a strip of mulch, three rocks, and a calendar of mowing visits. We do the opposite. Our gardens are designed to mature, change with the seasons, and stay legible to the homeowner.
Eighty percent of our planting plans are native or near-native to the Pacific Northwest. We design with the soil and the slope you have, not the one you wish you had. We're slow about it. Most projects span a full year of seasons before we hand them off.
Every garden gets a planting plan you can keep. Every plant on it is labelled with bloom time, mature size, and what to do if it goes thirsty. We treat gardens like recipes — we want you to make them yours.
A small Northeast Portland yard turned into a four-season pollinator-first garden with native sedges and a rain-garden swale.
Read on →A 1920s cottage given a lush front with low-water natives, a dry creek bed, and a side-yard kitchen garden.
Read on →A larger suburban yard reimagined around an existing 80-year-old hawthorn — three garden rooms, a meadow, and an oak swale.
Read on →Full landscape architecture: site analysis, planting plan, hardscape, irrigation. Build & install with our crew.
One zone — a courtyard, a side-yard, a meadow strip. Design + sourcing only; you install or contract out.
Two hours, on-site, with verbal direction. For owner-led gardens that need a designer's eye on a specific question.
Monthly visit by our crew. Pruning, dividing, mulching, soil care. For our clients, and a small waitlist beyond.
Mira trained as a landscape architect at the University of Oregon and worked four years at a Portland-area design-build firm before founding the studio in 2014. Tomás is a horticulturist by training, with a certificate from Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden, and ran a native-plant nursery for nine years before joining Mira full-time in 2018.
Mira does the planning, the drawings, and the client-facing design work. Tomás runs the planting plans, sourcing, and the crew. We're two-deep on every project. We do not subcontract design, ever.
Most landscapers showed up with a clipboard and a list of plants. Mira and Tomás spent an hour on the soil before opening their notebooks.
A native Oregon iris that wants exactly what most yards refuse to give: dry summer shade, well-drained soil, and the patience to be left alone. In return, it offers ten weeks of pale lilac and butter-yellow flowers from late March through June.
This year we're planting Iris tenax in three Wren-style gardens as a low-maintenance border alternative to the more familiar bearded iris. It pairs unreasonably well with western sword fern.
The first of the month, we send a thousand-word note about one plant we're paying attention to — what it's doing, where it likes to live, what to plant it with. Started in 2017. Sent every month since. Free, quietly.
The first conversation is on us — 45 minutes on your property, taking soil samples and listening to what you want. We schedule six site visits a week, March through October.