Inaugural Terry Harkness “Plants in Design” Lecture
Thomas Rainer is a registered landscape architect, teacher, and author living in Arlington, Virginia. As a Principal for the landscape architectural and consulting firm Phyto Studio in Washington, DC, and as a leading voice in ecological landscape design, he has designed landscapes for the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and the New York Botanical Garden, as well as over 100 gardens from Maine to Florida. After receiving an MLA from the University of Georgia, Thomas worked for Oehme, van Sweden, and Associates as a Principal at the landscape architectural and planning firm Rhodeside and Harwell. His work has ranged in scale and type from intimate residential gardens to expansive estates, rooftop gardens, botanical gardens, large-scale green infrastructure, and national memorials and has been featured in prominent publications, including the New York Times, Landscape Architecture Magazine, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and Architectural Digest.
While passionate about design and focusing on details, Thomas is a specialist in applying innovative planting concepts to create ecologically functional designed landscapes. His recent work focuses on the artful interpretation of wild plant communities into designed plantings that thrive in the context of towns and cities. He also continues to love working on residential gardens, enjoying the intimate collaboration with clients and creating spaces.
Thomas teaches planting design in the Landscape Design program at George Washington University. His recently published book, Planting in a Post-Wild World (Timber Press, 2015), was co-authored with Phyto Studio Principal Claudia West and was selected by the American Horticultural Society as one of the 2016 books of the year.
Established through the generosity of alumni and friends, the Terry Harkness “Plants in Design” Endowed Fund honors Harkness’s extraordinary, sustained impact as a designer and educator by helping to foreground planting design in our curriculum and events programming—including an annual lecture to be held each fall semester. This is the inaugural lecture in that series.
This event will be livestreamed on Zoom. To access the Zoom platform, please register.
This is an approved LA CES™ course: 1 PDH. To sign up, contact Prof. David L. Hays.
For more information about this and other events in our fall 2020 series, please contact Events Committee Chair Prof. Conor O’Shea.