We are a landscape architecture practice. By design, we transform and invent, we edit and reveal. We approach design as an art driven by ideas and guided by values. We engage both the shape and meaning of the land. This perspective informs how we see the world and how we drive change through our work. 

While our roots are in New England, our work is across the United States and abroad. We have completed major landscapes at Longwood Gardens, Storm King Art Center, and the grounds of the Clark Art. We have shaped the public realms and parks of New York City, Boston, Houston, Tampa, and New Orleans. We are authors of transformative planning projects for Boston’s Franklin Park and Cambridge’s urban forest as well as climate adaptation strategies for complex sites like the Washington, D.C.’s Tidal Basin. We build homes and gardens in diverse climates, from Southern California to Coastal Maine.

Our landscape architecture is highly visible and widely recognized. Recently completed projects are featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, Art Newspaper, Galerie, Architectural Record, and elsewhere. More than one hundred design awards recognize works by Reed Hilderbrand. 

Our own story begins in a garden. Douglas Reed and Gary Hilderbrand founded the practice in 2001, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after winning the competition to create Arnold Arboretum’s Leventritt Shrub & Vine Garden. Their vision of a practice pursuing and building beautiful, rigorous work grounded in ideas attracted a generation of landscape architects whose collaboration and creativity are responsible for the practice’s achievements. Eight principals lead Reed Hilderbrand today, each bringing a unique voice to a common sensibility. Together we believe in the power of collective intelligence, brought to bear through the art and science of landscape architecture to change the world for the better. Today we are a team of sixty-five landscape architects and designers working from Central Square in Cambridge and downtown New Haven.  

Our clients are artists and architects, curators and entrepreneurs, families and elected leaders, hoteliers and environmental activists. Our design services are expansive. We do our best work when we join a project at its inception, when we can identify opportunities in the land and set forth big ideas. Through planning and design, we guide decision-making. We apply a unique depth of horticultural knowledge in pursuit of performance and biodiversity. We oversee construction meticulously with an eye toward fine details and material craft. It is always our intention to nurture landscapes into resilient and beautiful futures. We achieve this in part by inspiring and empowering communities as advocates of landscape architecture.  

We are teachers and perennial students. Leaders across the firm teach regularly or serve as critics at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Yale School of Architecture, Connecticut College, the University of Virginia, the University of Texas, and elsewhere. Our own education anchors our practice as we engage deeply in new places and communities; we are always learning. Within the studio we actively promote technical excellence and professional rigor at every level, from designers to principals. Our design-led research has established a foundation for work on urban forests and decarbonization, and informs the work of the field at large. We have signed on to the ASLA Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan (2026-2030) to achieve Net-Zero Carbon in practice before 2040. We design the way forward.