Z Atelier Zeterre

Z Atelier Zeterre Landscape Architects creating sumptuous gardens. Curators of fine antiques/furnishings which blur the lines between indoor&out! Soon floral creations!

Zeterre Landscape Architecture was founded with a focus on creating unique outdoor ambiance and innovative design for exclusive homes. Always site specific and architecturally appropriate, each garden that Zeterre creates is an expression of the homeowner, the architecture, and the interiors of the building. Our goal is to make all of these important elements flow together seamlessly with the garden.

06/12/2026

"I feel as if I'm in a dream sequence constructed by Salvador Dali."

That's Stephen: walking the black tendril road on a project we've been tending for years, narrating what he sees the way only someone who has designed thousands of gardens can.

The scale that disorients. The combinations that shouldn't work and absolutely do. The whimsy so deliberately woven into the bones of the design that you feel it before you understand it.

This is what a long relationship with a landscape looks like. And what it looks like, apparently, is a dream sequence.

06/11/2026

Nearly 15 years ago, Stephen Suzman sat in the audience at a dry garden symposium and watched Jarrod speak. He was already decades into a career that had shaped some of the greatest gardens of our time. He was still taking notes.

Stephen grew up in South Africa surrounded by succulents... then spent years immersed in the British garden tradition, only to return home and see his native plants with completely new eyes.

What drew him to Jarrod was someone who understood that too: using succulents not as drought-tolerant afterthoughts, but as a main event.

We are extraordinarily lucky to have him a part of our firm. This is a small glimpse of what we admire about him (and each other!).

06/09/2026

Yaezakura is a tree you hear before you see. Rain catches in the doubled blossoms, then releases in slow weights onto stone, onto leaf, onto whoever is standing under it.

We placed this one along the path the family walks to the front door. The most considered minute of the garden's year happens above your head.

Architecture:
Colorist: James Goodman

A hot tub tucked under the staircase, half-roofed in plaster, with red flax holding the edge. The instinct in this categ...
06/05/2026

A hot tub tucked under the staircase, half-roofed in plaster, with red flax holding the edge. The instinct in this category is to put water in the middle of a yard, open and visible. We did the opposite. Bathing wants to feel held, not photographed.

Most clients can't name that until they're in it.

06/04/2026

Some designers would have reached for wood. Or stone. Or something else expected.

We reached for stainless steel: curving walls holding planting beds, the metal taking up almost no room, working with the topography in a way nothing else could. Against the grey plants and dusky maroon, it doesn't announce itself. It easily belongs.

There's something about a symmetrical allée that slows your pace whether you mean to or not. Ornamental urns on classica...
06/02/2026

There's something about a symmetrical allée that slows your pace whether you mean to or not. Ornamental urns on classical pedestals, mature live oaks overhead, and a sight line that seems to go on forever. We designed this to feel like a European estate without losing the quiet restraint that makes contemporary gardens so livable. The gravitas is built in. The softness took more work.

05/31/2026

The hydrangeas aren't an accident.

We know what late August looks like to certain people. The white of a childhood summer, a place the mind goes when the body needs rest. We plant for that. Specifically for that.

You might not know why you feel something here. We do.

We don't give you the same fire pit we gave the last client. We don't give the last client's fire pit to anyone.Every pr...
05/29/2026

We don't give you the same fire pit we gave the last client.

We don't give the last client's fire pit to anyone.

Every project begins with the person — their psychology, their memory, the life they're actually living. Everything follows from there.

We are not for everyone. We are exactly right for some people.

05/29/2026

A garden should never give itself away all at once.

Stephen and Jarrod share this conviction. The stepping stones here, set into baby tears, set a rhythm before you've even decided to follow them. The path curves, deliberately, so the eye can't run ahead of the body. And then, just as you come around the corner, painted ferns and forget-me-nots, a plant pairing perfectly suited to a Marin woodland, and not at all what you were expecting a half-step earlier.

Frank Lloyd Wright did this constantly. He'd compress you down through a low ceiling and then release you into an expanse. We borrow that instinct shamelessly in our gardens. A pinch, then a reveal.

It's one of the great pleasures of this work. To design not just what someone sees, but the order in which they're allowed to see it.

05/28/2026

Few people can name what they're smelling in a garden, yet fragrance stops them in their tracks every time.

This Goldsworthy-inspired cairn sits beneath an arbor where Rosa climbs alongside Vitis vinifera 'Champagne' and Actinidia deliciosa, all three competing for light and winning.

We weave edibles throughout every project because a garden should reward wandering, not just looking.

Address

1171 Folsom Street
San Francisco, CA
94103

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 6pm
Tuesday 9am - 6pm
Wednesday 9am - 6pm
Thursday 9am - 6pm
Friday 9am - 6pm

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Z Atelier Zeterre posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Z Atelier Zeterre:

Shortcuts

Featured

Share

Category