All of Barb’s projects start with listening to the land. Before any formal design begins, Barbara looks closely at what the land is already saying: what it can support, what it resists, and how it wants to connect to the larger environment. She believes every site has its own logic, limitations, and rhythms, and that sensitivity has shaped a career spanning everything from campus plans and complex developments to prairie restorations and intimate garden spaces.

Barb often describes herself as an advocate for the site at the table.

In a profession where buildings can sometimes dominate the conversation, she brings a different perspective — one focused on how architecture and landscape work together, and how development decisions ripple outward across ecology, circulation, and human experience. Her role is often one of integration: helping align land planning, feasibility, entitlement, and site design with the broader goals of a project.

Barbara’s connection to landscape began early, shaped by childhood memories of gardens and time spent outdoors with her grandmother — especially around an apple tree that anchored those moments and the pies that followed. Those experiences instilled in her a lasting understanding that landscapes are alive: not static compositions, but environments that grow, shift, and evolve over time in ways buildings cannot.

That dynamic quality remains one of the things she loves most about the work.

As a registered landscape architect, Barbara brings expertise across land planning, real estate strategy, due diligence, feasibility studies, campus planning, and entitlement processes. She helps clients understand not just how to build on a site, but whether they should — and how to do it in a way that respects the place itself.