Halprin opened his first office in San Francisco in March, 1949. Most of his early commissions were for well-to-do private clients with small-scale gardens or backyards. The first project to include both site planning and architecture was for the parents of his wife, Anna, in Woodside, California. Completed in 1950, it was also his first of many collaborations with architect William Wurster. Four years later, Halprin’s own home in Kentfield, California (another collaboration with Wurster), was completed and became well-known and widely published. Halprin said it was “a choreographed sequence of penetrations leading from the house, through the woods, down flights of steps to the Dance Deck below.”

Laurie Olin, a landscape architect, educator, and author, has described this period as “one of enormous personal, intellectual, artistic, and professional growth” for Halprin.