Humanature Design - Custom landscape design, installation and maintenance for residential and estate gardens in the San Francisco Bay area by Emily Hatfield

"For the past ten years Emily Hatfield has functioned to transform our home garden and surrounding redwood forest area in Mill Valley from a forgotten, uncared-for five acres to a multi-use natural restoration of the native forest we so enjoy. The subject area includes a fenced cutting garden, which includes 100-yr.-old camellias, to the majority of the land cultivated to a restored hillside of Mt. Tam.

The projects over the years included redesign of the garage and its area, pushing it into the hillside to minimize this building, creating graceful walks to the garage and down to the cutting garden without disturbing the native areas. Emily installed lighting to ensure it was minimized and made non-intrusive. The choice of workers was very good and her design of the whole effort well-done. Emily is a hard-working, creative and well-founded person."

-- Robert G. McNeil, Ph.D.

Emily

Training: "Immediately after graduating from Mount Holyoke College with a BA in Environmental Studies, I began working on a membership farm in western Massachusetts. My hands-on education in soil biology, cultivation techniques, organic pest control, greenhouse culture, and crop rotation impressed upon me how deep the art and science of farming and gardening goes. It's a life-long process, constantly expanding my skill set to include landscape lighting, irrigation, erosion control & drainage, and other practical skills makes me a true designer, not just concerned with aesthetics but total interaction with the land.

Style: The deepest consequence of the agricultural life is the absolute necessity of seasonality. There's a time to seed, transplant, fertilize, spray and to rest. Enjoying the fruits of your own labor, at the exact peak of ripeness strikes such a deep chord. My landscaping business is built around celebrating seasonality and bringing people into a closer relationship with their land. Whether it be through hands-on lessons in pruning a favorite tree, or planting culinary herbs, or just enjoying coffee on a sunday morning while gazing at some fantastic blooming plant, it's all important.

Inspiration: The gardens at the Green Gulch Zen Center near Muir beach are a place I return to year after year for inspiration. The combination of cultivation and wildness creates the experience of being in a lost, secret garden. For a small-scale organic farm which supplies produce to farmer's markets and Greens Restaurant, it feels utterly remote and magical. In my heart of hearts, the unplanned elements of farms and gardens with limited budgets and dedicated gardeners always win out over professionally-landscaped spaces.

Visiting the Martin Luther King schoolyard in Berkeley, California re-orients my aesthetics toward joy and practicality at the same time. The one-acre garden and kitchen classroom serves the dual purpose of engaging middle-school students with lessons in science, arts & humanities, while improving the food that nourishes them on a daily basis. And for someone seeking to re-connect my clients' lives to nature, there's nothing so beautiful as seeing how enlivening the simplest tasks-like harvesting carrots-can be.

Lisa

Training: Lisa has always gravitated toward the green world of gardens, trees and flowers. She interned at Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco fo 2 and 1/2 years while studying horticulture and landscaping. She's taken classes at SFCC and Merritt College in Oakland including the subjects of plant identification, aesthetic pruning techniques, IPM and Glenn Keator's Native Plants and Trees of Northern California. She' currently interested in learning more about greywater systems and rainwater harvesting. She knows gardens are enchanting places; it is her wish that they should appear to be thriving without tending, as if naturally ordered by invisible hands.

Juan Francisco

Training: Working for as long as he can remember on his family's land in Guatemala, tending apple orchards, building his own home, and raising twin boys, has translated into Juan Francisco's hard-working, patient, thoughtful style. With journeyman-level skills in stone work, carpentry, and all aspects of landscape construction, he brings a deep commitment to quality as well as efficiency. Working with Humanature, Inc. since 2005, he's added plant cultivation, organic pest control, and irrigation installation to his impressive list of skills. His fluid craftsmanship is most apparent when he's shaping stone into custom walls, patios and stairs.