Land Steward
If Edwina von Gal had her way, we’d all take a page out of nature’s notebook and stop trying to push back against the inevitable march of time. Her naturalist philosophy makes for an excellent metaphor for our movement.
“You see this on people’s faces now. They’re not allowed to age, so they become ever more frightening with the lengths they go to freeze their face in a moment in time,” she told me. “Landscapes are never the same, and my favorite landscapes are those that are designed to allow for that. You’re never going to see the same landscape for two successive moments in time.”
One of New York’s top landscape designers, von Gal has come a long way since she started her practice way back in 1984 in the closet of a building on Park Avenue. That’s an actual fact, by the way. A real estate developer she worked for told her the importance of having a good address, “because banks don’t give commercial accounts to people who don’t have a lease at a good address. So I said, okay, and I found a supply closet that was large enough to put a desk inside. But my address was Park Avenue.”
She built an impressive client list and, a few years ago, when she turned 65 decided not to retire (“I guess people don’t really do that anymore”). Instead she built a nonprofit committed to promoting toxin-free lawns and landscapes. It’s called the Perfect Earth Project and appeals to the “secret hippie flower child in my soul,” as she puts it.