For more than fifteen years, W. Gary Smith has specialized in master planning and garden design for botanical gardens and arboreta. His work explores the intersection between ecological design and artistic abstraction.
Smith received a 2004 Design Merit Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects for “Peirce’s Woods,” an art-form garden of native plants at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, and in 2002 received the Award of Distinction from the Association of Professional Landscape Designers for his work on three public garden projects: “Enchanted Woods” at Winterthur in Delaware, “Peirce’s Woods” at Longwood, and the “Stopford Family Meadow Maze” at Tyler Arboretum in Pennsylvania. He has also designed conservatory gardens for Callaway Gardens in Georgia, and the “Tropical Mosaic Garden” at the Naples Botanical Garden in Florida. In 2005 he completed the Gardens Master Plan for the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas.
Currently, Smith is working on master planning and garden design for the Southern Highlands Reserve, a private foundation for the preservation of native plants of the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina. In addition to ongoing consulting at Longwood gardens, he is working with Winterthur’s garden staff as the restoration landscape architect for their historic gardens.
Formerly an Associate Professor of Landscape Design and Construction at the University of Delaware, he most recently has been a Senior Lecturer in the Master of Landscape Architecture program in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.
Smith received his Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and his undergraduate degree in Ornamental Horticulture from the University of Delaware. He is a member of the American Public Gardens Association, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and has been appointed an honorary lifetime member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers. He also serves on the Board of Directors at Tyler Arboretum in Pennsylvania.
