Tara is a San Antonio-based, award-winning landscape architect, garden writer, and educator with deep experience in eco-friendly design and hands-on horticulture. She helps homeowners turn ordinary yards into sustainable backyard retreats that blend edible planting, seasonal beauty, and thoughtful outdoor living. Her plant-first approach gives readers clear strategies for creating landscapes that feel restorative while working in harmony with the land.
Why We Trust Tara
- Hands-on Plant Expertise: Grounded in a family horticulture tradition and years in landscaping, Tara pairs formal design training with practical plant knowledge on real sites.
- Awarded Garden Designer: Recognized with honors including a Garden of the Year Award, she balances creative ideas with the practical limits of climate, budget, and maintenance.
- Mentor and Communicator: As a frequent speaker at international gardening conferences and a long-time mentor to garden design students, she turns sustainability concepts into clear, practical guidance for home gardeners.
Experience
Throughout her career, Tara has focused on designing eco-friendly, people-oriented garden spaces that invite everyday use instead of remaining purely decorative. She has worked on a wide range of residential projects, shaping backyards and larger properties into outdoor rooms that support both relaxation and food-growing. Her work and ideas have appeared in magazines such as Country Living, Carolina Home+Garden, and D Magazine, where she shares practical ways to weave sustainable planting and habitat-conscious details into inviting landscapes.
Early in her training, Tara observed prominent garden architects at work, gaining a close-up view of how strong concepts become built landscapes. That experience now supports her role as a mentor, educator, and guest speaker for garden interest groups and horticulture societies. In each setting, she highlights the delicate relationship between people and the land, encouraging readers to look beyond aesthetics and plan outdoor spaces with soil health, biodiversity, and long-term resilience in mind.
Education
She earned a BFA in fine and studio arts from Texas Tech University and an MFA in design and visual communications from Parsons School of Design, complemented by horticulture and garden design courses and early hands-on work planting trees and revegetating farms in rural Texas.
