Green Jay Landscape Design

10/04/2026

European Cottage Garden 🤝 Northeast Natives

For our #1 project of 2025, our clients’ requested a cottage style garden that still delivered ecological impact.

The existing yard’s expanses of lawn provided no curb appeal and lacked a sense of connection to each other, the home, and the broader environment. The driveway divides the front / side yard, and with no existing landscaping there, it felt like a disconnected empty lot to the clients.

By adding a series of garden beds, we related the side yard to the front yard and created new ways to wander and experience the landscape.

Read more about this project on our blog! Check bio & stories.

16/03/2026

MAILBOX GARDEN 💌📬🌸
The curvature of this driveway creates blind spots and the corner of the landscape was often run over by delivery trucks. It also left little room for staging trash cans for pick up.

GJLD construted an irregular flagstone landing, demarcated by boulders on either side, to create a designated home for the trash cans. It also creates easy access the mailbox, without having to step though the garden.

Lifting the grade around the landing and curb inhibited stormwater runoff from poolinng in this former low spot. Deer-proof, low maintenance plantings create an attractive understory that frames the landing.

This is part three of our #2 Best Project of 2025! More details on this design are on our blog and previous posts 🌿.

16/03/2026

MAILBOX GARDEN 💌📬🌸
The curvature of this driveway creates blind spots and the corner of the landscape was often run over by delivery trucks. It also left little room for staging trash cans for pick up.

GJLD construted an irregular flagstone landing, demarcated by boulders on either side, to create a designated home for the trash cans. It also creates easy access the mailbox, without having to step though the garden.

Lifting the grade around the landing and curb inhibited stormwater runoff from poolinng in this former low spot. Deer-proof, low maintenance plantings create an attractive understory that frames the landing.

This is part three of our #2 Best Project of 2025! More details on this design are on our blog and previous posts 🌿

06/02/2026

Part two - Willow Wood Retreat 🍃

Jay describes how strategic planting can act as a focal point in an awkwardly shaped property, and connect perimeter habitats with safe zones of cover.

The woodland area offers a naturalistic area where children can play imaginatively on the trail, rest on the stump benches, and be immersed in the native bird habitat.

23/01/2026

#2 - 🌿 Step inside the Willow Wood Retreat!

We’re counting down our best project of 2025. See #3 in our previous post.

This expansive landscape comes alive with native garden rooms, extensive grading and stonework, and an evergreen screen that brings privacy and habitat together.

Read all about it on our blog! Check bio & stories.



bestof2025

09/01/2026

When your front yard is flat but lacks privacy, and your backyard is private but lacks flat play space…call your local design build experts!

This project is #3 in our count down of 2025’s BEST projects of the year!

Swipe for before & afters. We turned the front yard into a Living Courtyard with a native evergreen hedge, garden gate and lush, low plantings around the perimeter.

Constructing a wider front walk, with the footprint moved away from the house and a new expansive landing, gives the front entrance the grandeur that the architecture deserves.

In the backyard, we removed an old yew hedge and installed a boulder wall to retain the newly leveled low-mow lawn. Tree wells were built around the existing trees to protect their roots from the new grade.

A Certified Playground Mulch base was installed with cedar fence posts to prepare the corner for a play set.

The existing array patio was repurposed into a rectilinear patio with a half-circle edge. An awkward slope housing the generator was regraded to allow for more circulation space and to make the drop off less severe by the patio. The whole slope was planted for stability.

Full project details are up on our blog! Check bio and stories.

14/11/2025

We are thrilled to announce that GJLD received two Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD - ) awards in 2025!

Silver Award in the Special Projects Category:
Designed by Uziel Crescenzi and Jay Archer.

We took inspiration from cloister gardens, given the existing mature trees that encircled the backyard. We sought to create a therapeutic garden that heightens the senses and offers many ways to interact with the landscape, from an accessible flagstone walkway to strategically sited benches.

Bronze Award in the Residential III ($100k+) Category:
Designed by Kathryn Saphire and Jay Archer.

A complete landscape upgrade to accompany the recent home renovation. We designed a contemporary front entrance planting, leaning into ornamental grasses and airy textures. The existing pond received buffer plantings to preserve water quality while the slope in the back was stabilized and screened with native shrubs.

Thanks to the APLD judging committee for their tireless work! & Congrats to all the talented award recipients!

Full article on these award-winning projects is on our blog! https://www.greenjaylandscapedesign.com/blog/gjld-receives-silver-and-bronze-design-awards-by-the-association-of-professional-landscape-designers/

30/10/2025

Welcome bulb planting season!!
Nothing quite perks up an early spring landscape like spring flowering bulbs!

Sweeps of daffodils punctuated by hyacinths and muscari can make bare shrubs look architectural.

Concentrate on building masses of bulbs around seating areas, focal points and entrances. Our landscapes are designed to draw you outside and encourage intimate moments with nature.

Plus, when the rest of your landscape is still asleep, bulbs are growing, expanding their root to shoot mass ratio and working to stabilize the soil and send nutrients to soil microbial communities.

This is especially important during early spring rains to prevent stormwater runoff.

November is the best times to plant! Contact us to schedule your fall bulb planting! 914-560-6570 or greenjaylandscapedesign.com/contact

Photos by Rich Pomerantz

03/09/2025

Sneak peak of the course Jay Archer will be teaching on Site Analysis on behalf of Go Native U at the Westchester Community College!

Friday September 26th
10 AM - 12 PM
IN PERSON at SUNY WCC
Call 914-606-6830 to register ($57)

Course will cover:
- Watersheds, flow paths, stormwater management
- Topography & erosion
- Assessing light conditions
- Evaluating soil type
- Cataloguing existing vegetation
- Tool box for successful site analysis

We hope you'll join us!

Thanks to our summer intern, Annabelle Bradley, for creating these amazing graphics!

27/08/2025

Discover what it’s like to intern at Green Jay Landscape Design through the eyes of Annabelle Bradley, a SUNY ESF landscape architecture student passiate about building green space and ecological design. From fieldwork to design, follow her 12-week journey of growth, learning, and exploration 🌸🌿

https://www.greenjaylandscapedesign.com/blog/growing-like-a-garden-an-intern-experience-at-gjld/

Discover what it’s like to intern at GJLD through the eyes of Annabelle Bradley, a SUNY ESF student passionate about ecology and landscapes.

13/08/2025

The GJLD Team checked in on the “Serenity and Fragrance Gardens” in South Salem, New York one year after installation and it is living up to its name! 🌿

After a house expansion, the client needed a garden design that would integrate the new landscape and support the adjacent wetland.

This design played with a variety of textures and shades of green with the main goal of creating a living tapestry of grasses, shrubs, and perennials like Aquilegia canadensis (Red Columbine). All of which are weaved together by ground covers like sedum ternatum and tirella cordifolia, to establish harmony throughout the gardens.

Pre-existing boulders embellish the gardens and look bold against this beautiful contemporary home.