ETHOS
A garden is a conversation between what a place already is and what else can emerge from it. That tension evolves over years, between the land and the person standing in it.
Native plants are my primary medium, chosen for their ecoregion, for what they feed and shelter, for how they behave over a decade rather than how they photograph in June. But ecology alone doesn’t make a garden. Beauty, function, and a deep sense of place have to land together.
So a garden moves between wild and tame, hidden and revealed. It thickens at an edge, then gives way. In ecology the richest ground is the ecotone, where one community meets another and the most life gathers. I design at those edges, and for the whole body: soil after rain, grasses in wind, bark worth touching in February, bees working a summer meadow. That is what makes a place somewhere you have been rather than somewhere you have seen.
Lauren Salas Schuman
Lauren Salas Schuman grew up across France. A daughter of French soil, Chilean music, and gardens, she felt early on a deep belonging to the earth and its inhabitants, which led her to study landscape architecture, ecology, and the arts.
She interned at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, worked in public and civic design at Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners, and spent over five years at Grace Fuller Design, helping build the company from its early days to AD100 recognition in 2025.
She founded her own practice to bring ecologically inspired designs and a high level of craft into the same room. Her continuing interests are agroecology and native plant ecology. Having moved between countries, languages, and disciplines, she has found a sense of home in the landscapes she makes.
COMPLETED PROJECTS CHRONOLOGY
2026
Brooklyn Townhouse Garden, NY (in progress)
Development, Phoenix, AZ, Residential Building
2025
Upper East Side Townhouse, New York, NY, Private Rooftop
Upper East Side Townhouse, New York, NY, Private Home
Bedford Corners, NY, Private Estate
Upper East Side Townhouse, New York, NY, Private Home
2024
The Row Store, Amagansett, NY, Entry Garden
New Milford, CT, Private Home
Washington Depot, CT, Private Estate
Upper East Side Townhouse, New York, NY, Private Home
Cobble Hill Townhouse, New York, NY, Private Home
Tarrytown, NY, Private Home
Nolita Townhouse, New York, Private Courtyard
2023
Croton on Hudson, New York, Private Estate
Stonehill Farm, VT, Private Estate
Development, Phoenix, AZ, Residential Building
Puerto Rico, Private Property
2022
Development, Nashville, TN, Residential Building (in progress)
Upper West Side Townhouse, New York, NY, Private Home
Clinton Hill Townhouse, New York, NY, Private Home
West Village Townhouse, New York, NY, Private Courtyard
Upper East Side Apartment, New York, NY, Private Garden
Guerlain Tables for The New York Botanical Garden's Orchid Dinner
2021
Casa Lever, New York, NY, Restaurant
Chelsea Townhouse, New York, NY, Private Home
E 88th Street, New York, NY, Co-Op Building Streetscape
Southampton, NY, Private Garden
Coahuila, Mexico, Private Home
Mumbai, India, Private Home
Southampton, NY, Private Home
2020
Hartford, CT, Private Home
Litchfield, CT, Private Home
Upper West Side, NY, Private Rooftop Terrace