CRAIG REYNOLDS, RLA

Principal Landscape Architect, Florida RLA #6667084

Craig Reynolds believes a well-designed garden should change your perspective when you experience it, if only a few degrees. The ultimate goal when someone encounters one of his spaces is for the tension to leave their shoulders, for them to relax, for them to want to stay.

“I don’t feel I have a single style as a designer. I’m not inclined to just put a stamp on a property,” says Craig. “Rather, I respond to each place individually. Every property has a fingerprint, a timbre, an underlying identity. I start sketching and keep sketching and until I find the lines, shapes, forms and colors that best suit the design.”

“At the end, I want a garden to feel like it’s always been there,” he says.

High quality and natural materials are paramount, as are a seamless integration of hardscape and landscape.

Craig was always interested in the arts growing up, drawing and sketching at first, then immersing himself in pottery and ceramics. When he graduated from Ohio State University in 1991 with a Bachelor in Fine Arts he wanted to find a profession that had a creative side. He found landscape architecture, graduating from the University of Florida in 1996 with a Masters of Landscape Architecture.

He interned for Raymond Jungles while in school and continued to work for him for six years after graduating, starting in Miami and moving with the practice to Key West.

He started Craig Reynolds Landscape Architecture in 2002, working mostly on local properties, but has since expanded his geographic scope to properties in the Upper Keys, Miami, Jamaica, the Bahamas, New Orleans, Saint Kitts, Curacao, and Saint Vincent.

Favorite Plant?

My favorite plant is a composition. A tall multi-trunked Cabada Palm anchored by single, low, husk-covered Old Man Palm. The Old Man Palm is standing out amidst a bright chorus of Bromeliads, and they are surrounded by a few large-leaf climbing Philodendrons. Oh, and there should be a tall American Oil Palm in the background for substance. Composition is always more important to me than the individual plant.