Gardeners at Heart
The team at Jeni Webber + Associates is comprised of experienced and knowledgeable landscape architects. Our focus is on design and master planning, but we also have hands-on involvement with our projects. We are avid gardeners at heart, and can often be found working side-by-side with homeowners, school children and urban farmers with our hands in the dirt and smiles on our faces.
We are also artists, and have taken our love of art into the world at large. The landscape is our canvas, and promoting the health and well-being of people and our planet is our passion. In this time of rapid change, we work to foster greater environmental advocacy, agency and resiliency in a light-hearted manner, yet with a scientifically fact-based approach to decision making and evidence-based practice. We believe that every project, every garden and every person makes a difference.
JENI WEBBER | landscape architect
After studying painting at Boston University School of Fine Arts, Jeni took time off to hike and bicycle through America, Mexico and Canada. It was during this time she developed an appreciation for the many ways in which gardens can improve the quality of life in a community. Jeni's original job in the profession was helping James, a 70-year-old African American landscaper to garden and cut lawns. Working with him, she developed a passion for planting and the joy of creating in the landscape. Having become obsessed with gardening, she was delighted to find that she could develop a career in landscaping.
With an expanded vision of how to work creatively with nature, she enrolled at the University of Maryland, where she avidly studied horticulture and landscape design. Then she packed her bags, bike and skis, and headed to the University of California at Berkeley to complete a Master of Landscape Architecture degree at the College of Environmental Design. Over the past 25-plus years, Jeni has built a design firm that creates personal gardens for homeowners, learning gardens for all generations and urban farms for our communities. A long-time organic gardener and proponent for sustainable design from the get-go, she is a founder of Earth Ethos (a non-profit organization that inspires ecoliterate, civic-minded stewards of the earth) and a Certified Green Building Professional. She is also the author of Taunton's Front Yard Idea Book and several articles in Fine Gardening magazine. And, yes, you can still spot her biking in the Berkeley Hills, backpacking in the Colorado backcountry or schussing the slopes on a blue bird day. [State of California Registered Landscape Architect #3490]
CAROL MAXWELL | ECOLOGICAL DESIGNER
Carol also hails from an artistic and gardening background. She studied arts therapy, worked as a teacher, and spent more than 10 years creating high-fire, atmospheric, porcelain ceramics and paper sculpture—both mediums that integrate science and craft—while serving as artist-in-residence at the Women's Studio Workshop, The Banff Center, the Penland School of Crafts and other locations. Along the way, she was also an organic flower farmer, gardener and garden designer. Since then, however, Carol returned to school for a Master of Landscape Architecture and Ecological Restoration degree at Temple University, where she learned to "read" a landscape by its vegetation and soils. Her work has focused on educational landscapes, river islands and freshwater mussels, and she has presented at numerous ecological restoration conferences on climate change, ecological restoration and design. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Society for Ecological Restoration International. Now working with Jeni Webber + Associates, she finds that the weave of her education and work experience provides a range of knowledge that greatly contributes to the breadth of the firm's projects.
At Jeni Webber + Associates, we have established a network of like-minded architects, landscape architects and educators with whom we often collaborate. They bring additional engineering, curriculum development and fund-raising expertise to public projects.