Vireo Design Studio, LLC

02/06/2026

Join us for our Annual Meeting Thursday, March 12, 2026, from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM at Shoreline City Hall and learn more about the work we’re doing and where we’re headed next.

We will have a special presentation/tea tasting with Friday Elliot of Friday Afternoon Teas! Friday will be offering a presentation of tea gardens and their history of biodynamic permaculture practices for healthy ecosystems, and offering an immersive comparative tasting of wildcrafted vs cultivated tea.

This meeting will be open to the public, and we’d love to see you there. Come connect with our community, hear updates, and help shape the future of our organization.

08/20/2025

"Designers and builders of the past were ingenious at understanding and using the elements of nature to modify the climate, soothe the spirit, and delight the eye. Their techniques can serve as inspiration for a new order of sustainable climate design, grounded in practical and innovative interpretations of historical methods." ~Chip Sullivan

By Chip Sullivan For most parts of the country, the Hot August Nights are here. Current climate events, including excessive heat warnings and extreme weather patterns, reinforce the need for coolin…

06/30/2025

We're thrilled to congratulate Studio TJP on receiving the Luxe Residential Excellence in Design Award! It was an honor and a privilege to be part of the team and work alongside the homeowners, providing the landscape architectural services that contributed to this project's success. [photo credit: janetklingerphotography]

https://www.instagram.com/p/DLa48mHhjcI/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

05/29/2025

The USDA plant hardiness map now shows Western WA as zone 9a., up previously from 8b. When I first began working in landscape architecture, we were in zone 7a. Plant hardiness zone designations represent what’s known as the “average annual extreme minimum temperature” at a given location during a particular time period. The implications are vast for how it affects native plants, pollinators and biodiversity. 🌿

02/04/2025

This is an exciting example of problem-solving by a visionary designer. Pacific Horticulture awarded this Design Future Award to expose the “inner beauty” of landscapes built to conserve plants and wildlife, treat our water and soil as precious, and hold the well-being of human beings at the center of our gardened environments.

The design is easily replicable, is modest in size, or able to be experienced for intimate neighborhood community use. A jury of highly experienced horticulturists, landscape designers, and landscape architects evaluated the award based on five core themes: Growing for Biodiversity, Drought and Fire Resilience, Nature is Good for You, Garden Futurist, and Sustainable Gardening.

Really well done planting planning.

https://pacifichorticulture.org/articles/in-oregon-award-winning-campus-experiment-reveals-a-new-way-to-maintain-landscapes/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=design-winner-2024

02/22/2024

Amazing wooden quilt doors, New Orleans, Louisiana. Another example of how telling stories and history by creating with building reuse is far more interesting with less carbon footprint than using new materials.
"An artist weaves "wooden quilts" with scraps salvaged from his Katrina-damaged home in Tremé."

An artist weaves "wooden quilts" with scraps salvaged from his Katrina-damaged home in Tremé.

02/17/2024

Inspiring project example about reducing climate impacts of design, reducing costs, being creative, and keeping historical memories alive. “Don’t wipe the slate clean.” ; ,

A new landscape in Hayward, California demonstrates how to reuse materials on a grand scale to save money and reduce climate impacts. Designed by landscape architects at Surfacedesign, the Mission …

02/01/2024

“It’s about reducing car dependency and removing barriers to building walkable and sustainable communities” (Parking Lots Cause More Heat and Flooding)

A new index scores U.S. cities by the amount of land they provide for parking. Sunbelt cities top the list

12/06/2023

Hot news! The USDA just updated the plant hardiness map for the first time since 2012, sending designers, gardeners, and nurseries rushing to the Internet to find their zone rating. Knowing your zone isn’t simply a matter of utility, it’s an indicator of what plants are appropriate for a given site. It's no surprise with increasing climate change indicators, about half of the US has seen a jump in zone designation. Here in western Washington, we were in Zone 7a just a couple of years back, and now we are in Zone 8a.

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11/30/2023

Terminus is a memorial project featuring glaciers of Olympic National Park, and is an artistic elegy and interactive map by some very talented artists. Check this out.

Terminus is an artistic elegy, a river you could skate away on, a love poem to a changing planet. (It's also an interactive map.) Between 1982 and 2009, the number of glaciers in the Olympic Mountains shrank from 266 to 184. We know that number will dwindle further as the climate continues to change...

09/21/2023

Green infrastructure can set off a virtuous cycle of climate action! Due to the limited land resources in cities, the spatial allocation and configuration of urban nature based solutions, often directed by landscape architects, can be optimized to achieve maximum carbon emissions reductions. It's amazing how much carbon reduction (up to 25%) can be realized with these inexpensive solutions.

A new study suggests that greener cities not only reduce carbon emissions, they also can absorb them.

09/07/2023

Not surprisingly the most widespread invasive animal worldwide is the black rat, followed by the water hyacinth.

The authors of a major new U.N. report describe invasive species as a threat to human society.