We sat down with Kevin Campion, founding principal at Annapolis-based Campion Hruby Landscape Architects, to discuss the inspiration behind his photo-heavy book, Enduring Gardens: The Tame and the Wild, and how his firm approaches new landscaping jobs. Here’s what he had to say:

We like to do very clean lines. We’ll do a clean hedge, or a line of trees, or, like, a beautiful panel of lawn. So, the armature of our gardens is tight, and they’re complementary to the architecture, and they kind of blend inside and out cleanly. But then, when we think about plants, we think about resiliency, we think about native plants. We think about the right plants for the Mid-Atlantic, or wherever we live, and we often end up covering our strong lines with plants that are natural and organic, and a little bit wilder than the hardscapes are.

 

And I think that’s sort of indicative of our work. We have order in our gardens, but then we soften it with our plantings. We’re not trying to create a garden that is in the moment. Instead, we’re trying to create a garden that is enduring, just like an architect is trying to create a house that endures.

 

You know, somebody once told me, these are handmade gardens. They’re gardens that are meticulously crafted for one family, and that’s really meaningful to me. Like some of the greatest moments of my career are when I go back to a garden, and I see how it’s loved and how it’s used. It’s heartwarming to know that you created something meaningful for a family that’s like the backdrop of their lives and the backdrop of important moments.

 

It goes back to the idea of time that when a house is finished—it’s finished. But when a garden is finished, it’s just starting.