I was born and raised in and around New York City. Growing up in this exciting metropolis with its architecture, urban gardens, art museums, music, and theater gave me an appetite and yearning to develop my creative expression. Attracted by the visual arts, my friends and I would often spend hours at the Met, the MOMA, the Guggenheim, and the gardens of Central Park. I was fascinated to learn the ways that ancient and modern visual thinkers influenced the physical environment. I had an ever-expanding portfolio of my own works of visual expression.
With a desire to take this thirst for artistic expression to a professional level, I attended the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and majored in landscape architecture. Upon graduating, I became aware of and attracted to the diverse ways of thinking that emanated from the west coast. I traveled west to see what was in store, and landed a job writing environmental impact statements on the Monterey coast. This led me to another position designing solar heated homes.
Living near the San Francisco Bay area, I also became fascinated with the Asian culture that was so prevalent there. I joined an aikido school. The sensei of the aikido school told me stories of his training in Japan, both in martial arts and acupuncture. It wasn’t long before I knew this was my path. My young, adventurous curiosity led me to move to another metropolis where I could experience first hand the ancient healing systems based on energy flow, as well as the artistic, serene gardens that arose from the sensitivity and harmony of the people who developed both. This was Tokyo in the 1970’s.
Back in San Francisco, while I practiced Japanese acupuncture and healing arts for fifteen years, I also had a yearning to return to my other love, environmental design. I took night courses in horticulture, and learned the plants that thrive in the Mediterranean climate of the S.F. Bay area. I started Mediterrasian Landscapes in 2004. For the past 19 years, It has been an excellent channel for sharing my love of environmental design with so many wonderful people, the perfect venue to arrange natural materials in the most stunning and useful ways to enhance people’s lives and properties.
