Easter influence

My love of nature started with a rock collection I had as a child:  My fascination with the simple beauty of those small pieces of stone hit me early in life and never left. Several years later, my outlook was dramatically expanded when a wealthy uncle of mine paid to have a formal Japanese garden built for his home in Boulder, Colo.  Ever since, I've had a profound appreciation of archetypal Japanese gardens and the way they celebrate nature through landforms, rocks, plants and water.   By the time I was in high school, I had already decided that my career was going to involve working outdoors, and from that time forward, my prime interest was in bringing the techniques and disciplines of Japanese gardens into the greater American landscape both where I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.   For 30 years now, I've worked as a landscape artist in that region - for 15 years in Portland and for the last 15 in Eugene, Ore.  Although many of my designs are not what you could describe as "Japanese gardens" per se, everything I do is informed and influenced by those traditions.  I bear no grudge of any sort against the beauty of gardens in the Western European tradition, but to my mind, there's nothing in landscape design that harmonizes more seamlessly with nature than

My love of nature started with a rock collection I had as a child:  My fascination with the simple beauty of those small pieces of stone hit me early in life and never left. Several years later, my outlook was dramatically expanded when a wealthy uncle of mine paid to have a formal Japanese garden built for his home in Boulder, Colo.  Ever since, I've had a profound appreciation of archetypal Japanese gardens and the way they celebrate nature through landforms, rocks, plants and water.   By the time I was in high school, I had already decided that my career was going to involve working outdoors, and from that time forward, my prime interest was in bringing the techniques and disciplines of Japanese gardens into the greater American landscape both where I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.   For 30 years now, I've worked as a landscape artist in that region - for 15 years in Portland and for the last 15 in Eugene, Ore.  Although many of my designs are not what you could describe as "Japanese gardens" per se, everything I do is informed and influenced by those traditions.  I bear no grudge of any sort against the beauty of gardens in the Western European tradition, but to my mind, there's nothing in landscape design that harmonizes more seamlessly with nature than