Our story draws from a legacy of venerable horticultural knowledge and design innovation. Inspired by the rich layering found in meadow communities we challenge conventional notions of what makes a landscape beautiful. Simultaneously, we recognize the importance of providing structure to designed landscapes thus complementing the horticultural richness with meticulously crafted spaces.
Our work celebrates the natural environment and brings that world closer to people. Through research, collaboration, and artistry, we express communal values through landscape. In turn, our landscapes express the communities they serve: dynamic, layered, and ever-evolving.
We believe that designed landscapes are the confluence of natural, cultural, and social systems. With every project, we embrace the opportunity to challenge ourselves and our assumptions. Together we share a passion for creating remarkable landscapes that are of their place, of our time, and transform the built into the living.
Eric D. Groft, FASLA
CEO and Director
Eric Groft, CEO and Director of OEHME, VAN SWEDEN | OvS, is renowned for his diversity in residential, commercial, and institutional work. He prides himself on a sense of regionalism, attention to the vernacular, and his work with cultural landscapes.
Eric’s commissions include landscape master planning and design efforts for residential gardens throughout the east end of Long Island and the northeastern region of the United States. His commercial body of work features the American Museum and Gardens in Bath, UK, the Federal Reserve Campus in Washington, DC, as well as the 2020 renovation of the White House Rose Garden. Eric has a passion for horticulture and is dedicated to shepherding the evolution of OvS’ New American Garden Style. He is widely recognized as an industry leader in ecological sensitivity, environmental/wetland restoration, and shoreline stabilization/revetment. He frequently lectures on these topics and the work of OvS.
Sara Downing, ASLA
Principal
Stacilyn Feldman, ASLA
Principal
Lili Herrera, ASLA
Principal
Robert Johnson, ASLA
Principal
Eva Lin, CPA
Principal
Justin Maglione
Principal
Sheila A. Brady, FASLA
Director Emeritus
Lisa E. Delplace, FASLA
Director Emeritus
Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden launched their partnership in 1975 in the basement of Jim van Sweden’s Georgetown row house.
Their collaboration has been credited with founding the ‘New American Garden’ style of landscape architecture. The style is characterized by large swaths of grasses and layered masses of perennials that boldly celebrate the ephemeral through mystery, intrigue, and discovery. Jim van Sweden said the New American Garden is “Vigorous and audacious…vividly blending the natural and the cultivated.”
Their design credits include the planting along Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Treasury to the National Gallery in Washington, DC; the Virginia Avenue Gardens of the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC; the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC; the Gardens of the Great Basin at the Chicago Botanic Garden; as well as numerous residential gardens in the United States and abroad.
Wolfgang Oehme passed away in December 2011 and Jim van Sweden passed away in September 2013.