Located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Clemens & Associates, Inc. is a landscape architecture, contracting, and maintenance firm that has been creating some of the area's most spectacular gardens since 1980. We offer a wide spectrum of professional design, installation and maintenance services for gardens, water features, stonework, and garden structures.
While our landscape design experience ranges from small, intimate gardens to large residential estates and commercial and municipal projects, we specialize in creating and maintaining outdoor spaces for residential living. The basis of our approach is to create unique and beautiful outdoor rooms that are consistent with the historic and regional precedents, as well as sensitive to our high desert climate. The more common approach to this problem is to design in the traditional way and merely substitute drought tolerant plants for more thirsty varieties. Our approach encourages the development of small, highly detailed spaces versus larger areas of less impact. Within this basic design guideline, almost any stylistic avenue can be pursued and the features can be varied according to the client's needs. This philosophy of consolidation of resources put us on the leading edge of sustainable design even before it became a common concept.
We have sought to distill the essence of what is appealing about being in the garden and what makes a successful outdoor living space. The answers have less to do with plants than with site planning for exposure; providing texture; creating vignettes and framing vistas; accommodating personal lifestyles and offering sensual appeal. We believe that current practical and environmental concerns are requiring a paradigm shift for all of us. As designers, we are excited about the possibilities for creative expression that this opens for us as our clients become more willing to explore something new.
