GMD is a small landscape practice specializing in ecological design, implementation, and management.

 

We work across a range of scales and project types, integrating ecological understanding with clear planning and careful execution. Our work is best suited to clients who value collaboration, long-term thinking, and landscapes that evolve over time through intentional design and stewardship.

 
 

Leah Gardner

co-owner/designer

Drawing on a background in landscape architecture and decades of field study and experience, Leah brings a balanced approach to landscape design informed by both practice and place. She creates spaces where beauty and function coexist, designed to foster a lasting connection between people and the natural world.

Her commitment to increasing environmental awareness by design is evident in the types of projects she’s been drawn to throughout her career. Before GMD, she co-founded service-learning studios, designed and managed community-based public landscape demonstration projects, and developed outdoor learning initiatives and interpretive sign series for parks and schools. 

Leah’s conceptual design work is attentive to how people move through and connect with their environment. Her deep love of nature, observation of how plant communities thrive as natural systems, and eye for beauty guide her complex planting design. She is heavily involved in on-site layout, guiding plant placement and composition with long-term management and stewardship in mind. Leah is instrumental in client and crew communication, ongoing site assessment, management coordination, and molding the creative direction and visual expression of GMD. Through hand sketches and renderings, she shapes how design ideas are developed, refined and communicated, and collaborates on conceptual and graphic design across projects. Leah further shares her appreciation of nature and native plants through artwork available on Fine Goods.

  • B.S. in Horticulture and Landscape Design - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

  • Master of Landscape Architecture  - University of Georgia, Athens  

Joan Monaco

co-owner/designer

Joan draws on her background in architecture, landscape design, and project management to shape the way she approaches design and landscape implementation.

Her early work in the green building industry (green infrastructure studies, environmental standard development, and lifecycle analysis) informs her approach to design as interconnected systems—considering phasing, site dynamics, and long-term performance as part of the design process.

Joan is directly engaged in grading and site construction, making sure projects develop logically so that each seasonal intervention on a given site lays a foundation for the next. 

With more than a decade of experience in landscape design and implementation, she works directly on each project site to make sure construction is carried out in a thoughtful way that preserves visual design goals while integrating functional decisions around water movement, soil building and preservation, and creating or preserving space for native plant communities. 

She is particularly interested in how native plants can be woven into cities and neighborhoods, creating everyday opportunities for interaction with ecologically complex landscapes that remain sustainable because people value and therefore want to care for them. 

  • Bachelor of Architecture with a Landscape Design Minor from The University of Tennessee