Something special in the works

Here's a short video that we made for one of our favorite current projects. Soon we will be sharing our design for the Lake Toxaway Nature Park but until then please enjoy this teaser.

Lake Toxaway Nature Park from Jesse Turner on Vimeo.

Lift[ED] in Landscape Architect and Specifier News

Lift[ED] is proud to have work appearing in Landscape Architect and Specifier News twice in the past six months! We were featured in the October 2016 "Firms of the South" edition and in the March 2017 edition with a two page spread showcasing the Secret Garden. 

Here are links to the publications:
October 2016  
March 2017

Lift[ED] wins NCASLA Honor Award

We are honored and proud to have received an NCASLA Honor Award at the 2016 NCASLA annual awards luncheon for our work on the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden. Jesse Turner, Lift[ED] Director and Bobby Mottern, Head of Horticulture at Sarah P. Duke Gardens were present to accept the award. This award is the culmination of a 5 year effort to achieve recognition for the CBDG, beginning with SITES certification, then several "Best Of" and appearance awards at the local level, and recently getting the project listed on the Landscape Architecture Foundation's Case Study Investigation registry. As a young firm and this being our first professional award submission, we followed lots of advice from friends and colleagues on how to prepare our submission. We re-drew all of the presentation drawings and gathered over a hundred photos to make the graphic components visually captivating and telling of the garden's story. Our writing was a team effort between Lift[ED] principals and staff members from Duke Gardens. We're very proud that all of our teamwork has paid off, and thankful to the following generous and brilliant individuals for their help along the way.

Thanks to:

The Family of Charlotte Brody
William M. LeFevre, Director of Sarah P. Duke Gardens
Jan Little, Director of Education and Public Programs at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
Robert Mottern, Director of Horticulture at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
Orla Swift, Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
Jason Holmes, Curator at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
Kavanah Anderson, Education Program Coordinator at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
Sarah Parsons, SITES Specialist and PhD Candidate at NC State University

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Fish Family Play Area

New opportunities to play just arrived in Houston, thanks to the Fish Family Foundation's generosity and the hard work of SWA and The Natural Learning Initiative. Jesse played a central role in developing the conceptual design for this innovative space while Design Coordinator at NLI. The area offers an introduction to local nature in the Buffalo Bayou area to younger kids and creates a play oasis in a highly developed dense edge of Downtown Houston. This little park is very unique. It takes advantage of an extremely difficult site and was meticulously designed to fit the land and its context. A big congratulations to everyone involved!

BIG Kid Small CITY, a local Houston blog, offers an excellent review of the nature play area!

We've updated our Lifted Landscapes page to reflect the new name. You can see the original design here.

Jesse Turner Landscape Architect

Wow, time flies! It's been 5 years since Jesse started practicing landscape architecture independently and there have been some changes. The first thing that has changed is Jesse. He's a little older, has a few more kids, and feels even more confident in his work. He started practicing under the name Jesse Turner Landscape Architect (JTLA) but in the past 5 years he's realized that growing a business involves welcoming partners and new colleagues. So, he founded Lift[ED] along with Andy Fox. This leads us to another change: Andy. What a welcome change it is to have a partner that cares equally as deeply about clients and is so passionate about his work! This is an awesome change. We're having a blast!

There have been many changes, many new clients, loads of wonderful opportunities, and they have all been AWESOME!

As they say, "the only constant is change". So, to be consistent, we've retired Jesse Turner Landscape Architect's website and redirected it to here.

Things have changed, for the better. Welcome, change.