BSLA Fieldbook BSLA 2015 Spring Fieldbook | Page 9

at UMass and skipped happily through the I finally gathered the intestinal fortitude to next three years towards the completion open the doors to my practice 16 years ago of a BSLA degree. I am happy to say that I this January. It was either bravery or the was a member of the first BSLA graduating lack of common sense to do otherwise. I am class from UMass. Granted, there were some also a great example of the old “had I known epic battles along the way with the likes of then what I know now” adage. Joe Volpe, Julius Fabos, Mark Lindhult, but they only steeled my resolve and Other than the I a m h a p py t o strengthened my abilities and I three years after s ay t h a t I wa s a am proud to call them all friends school, I never had today and owe them, and many m e mb e r o f t h e f i r s t the experience of others in that department, a debt working in a larger B S LA g ra d ua t i n g firm. I imagine there of gratitude. c l a s s f ro m UM a s s . I would have made In the late 80’s and early 90’s there my mistakes, and was a recession, not of the magnitude we been guided in the appropriate manner of just experienced, but the job market was LA life. Instead, I started from just above bleak. I was grateful to be able to land a job the ground floor. This path mandated that with a Landscape Architecture and Land I do everything associated with developing Planning office in the Hartford area. After a firm. I have been in the field doing soil three years the recession claimed that work, site analysis, surveying, in the office position and I was forced to find ways to doing design work, marketing, business stay within my chosen field and still make a management, client management, emptying good living. the garbage and doing the dishes... and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. I turned to an arena that I had always been able to fall back on; horticulture. I took a job As I look back on our clients and body of in a small but very well-known nursery in work, I see the foundation of a firm that was western Massachusetts, Windy Hill Farm in its youth and is now maturing to a life of (Michael Dirr has called this place the best adulthood. As I embark on the next 16 years, small nursery he has ever discovered) where things are certainly different now than they I honed my plant knowledge and plant use were back then, and I look forward to our skills (a skill that I believe should be more continued growth and the new projects and prevalent in LAs). This set a path towards clients we have yet to meet. establishing my own practice. Started Out Lenox, MA Education BSLA , UMass Amherst - the first graduating class in the program Now Greylock Design Associates Boston Society of Landscape Architects Fieldbook 7