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UPCOMING SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS » |
Laura enjoying one of her landscaping projects
Putting It All Together
Ongoing involvement within the horticultural community encourages discussion and responsibility of appropriate garden practices in Southern California. Morton is an active member of the Mediterranean Garden Society and the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (of which she serves as the Greater L.A. District President).
The respect of her peers has led to lecturing engagements on related subjects in her field for the LA Garden Show at the L.A. County Arboretum and the Gardens of the Mind seminar for the Garden Conservancy, as well as for other organizations.
Today, Laura draws upon multiple artistic disciplines, working out of her West Hollywood studio as a garden design consultant, conceptualizing stunning landscapes and cohesive outdoor living spaces for a wide variety of residential clients, who hire licensed landscape contractors to bring her concepts to life.
To learn more about Laura’s professional landscape design background and schedule of speaking engagements, please visit her C.V. page.
Meet Laura Morton
Evolution of a Unique Landscaping Style
Beginnings
Laura Morton is a transplanted Canadian, thriving in Los Angeles since 1991. Based in Paris before that, she enjoyed 15 years of living and traveling around the globe while working in the fashion industry and, later, as a landscape photographer. Her award-winning photography of the Antarctic Peninsula in 1989 has been published and exhibited in museums across Europe and North America.
Building Beauty
As a child, she developed a passion for designing jewelry, which grew during her travels and continues to this day. Collecting ethnic artifacts, rare trade beads, and fine jewels from around the world, she custom-designs pieces with a sense of history and connectedness for an international clientele.
These journeys permitted a rare experience of many different cultures, the study of art and architecture, and an opportunity to develop a style and design vocabulary that is truly her own.
Seeds of the Future
Laura’s formal training with plants and exterior design began in 1995 after enrolling in both the Horticulture, and Landscape Architecture programs at UCLA. Classes with Jan Smithen (Southern California’s garden guru) at the L.A. County Arboretum & Botanic Garden firmly planted in her a broad knowledge of proper gardening practices.
From Jewelry Design to Garden Art
Bringing “jewelry” into the landscape, Laura began to design structures and focal points for her landscape projects which interact with space and light. The Jeweled Reflecting Garden for the Pasadena Showcase House in 2001 featured 5 of her jeweled dragonflies with 3-foot wingspan in flight across a large pond. Espalier structures, towers, and giant stylized insects followed, expressing a commitment to garden adornment.
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Antarctica(Photos by Laura Morton) In December 1989, I boarded the UAP Antarctica in Punta Arenas, Chile. The specially designed support vessel for the Transantarctica Expedition had a month to spare before circumnavigating the white continent to collect the eight-man team of international explorers, manhauling across the South Pole. During this window of time, a dozen artists, scientists, and adventurers had been invited to share with the small crew a rare and intimate experience — our own unforgettable exploration of the Antarctic Peninsula. A turbulent crossing of the Drake Passage led us toward the vast frozen continent at the bottom of the earth. It’s quite another world at latitude 68° south: just a mineral desert of rock and ice, played with by such unfamiliar light. It’s summertime and the sun circles elliptically, barely dipping below the horizon for an hour or two, and then rises again, just a few degrees. My inner timing was off, and senses of smell, touch, and hearing had all but shut down in the cold silence. Except for sight. Every nuance of this frozen paradise appeared to me accentuated...so many textures sculpted into the snow. The drama of the sky and shadow was ever changing, yet the stillness prevailed. I experienced stillness and awe. |
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