Edwina von Gal
Founder / President, Perfect Earth Project

Principal of her eponymous landscape design firm since 1984, Edwina von Gal creates landscapes with a focus on simplicity and sustainability for private and public clients around the world. She has collaborated with noted architects such as Frank Gehry, Annabelle Selldorf, Maya Lin, and Toshiko Mori, on projects for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Richard Serra, Larry Gagosian, and many others in the environmental, design and art communities. Her work has been published in most major publications. Her book "Fresh Cuts" won the Quill and Trowel award for garden writing.

In 2008, while designing the park for The Biomuseo Panama, von Gal founded the Azuero Earth Project, promoting native species reforestation on Panama’s Azuero Peninsula, perhaps the first of its kind to work without synthetic chemicals. In 2013, she went on to create the Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit organization based in the United States dedicated to raising consciousness about the dangers of toxic lawn and garden chemicals, and the importance of planting native species, to protect the health of people, their pets, and the planet. Perfect Earth Project educates homeowners and professionals in nature-based landscape management techniques. In addition to lecturing across the United States and advising individuals, organizations, and communities on chemical-free practices, von Gal is currently working with her local municipalities in New York (East Hampton Town, Southampton Village, Sag Harbor) to explore opportunities and create models for ecologically-based land management.

Having served on boards and committees for a number of horticultural and arts organizations, von Gal currently serves on the board of the What Is Missing? Foundation, Maya Lin’s multifaceted media artwork about the loss of biodiversity, and on the Advisory Council of The Philip Johnson Glass House. She received the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art’s Arthur Ross Award in 2012 and is the 2017 recipient of Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for the Visual Arts. In 2018 she received the New York School of Interior Design’s Green Design Award and The Isamu Noguchi Award. She lectures regularly around the country and gave a TED talk in 2018.

Image courtesy of Edwina von Gal.