6 Strategies for Creating Mindful Landscapes
Have you ever gone for a walk or hike to clear your mind? The outdoors and physical activity have a way of helping us quiet our mind and release our worries and stress. It’s an opportunity to disconnect from screens and immerse yourself in the real world, allowing you to be fully present in your […]
Necessary Nature
There’s not a lot of good news out there lately when it comes to the climate crisis. Despite decades of scientists warning us of a warming planet, our collective response has been relatively too little, too late. Now we’re witnessing many of the most dire predictions becoming a reality. One reason we’re at this point […]
The Value of Design in 3 Cost Scenarios
One of the biggest reasons people choose to DIY their design project, or let a contractor implement a design-build scheme, is because they don’t want to pay for the up front cost of design. But at the end of the day, it’s the design that adds the value to a project. Imagine if you will, […]
3 Strategies for Budgeting Your Landscape Project
While many individuals and organizations start to look at their 2023 goals and budgets, we decided to talk about budgets, money, and value in landscape architecture and architectural design! We’ll kick off by talking about how to create a financial plan in order to realize a successful project. Enjoy! The biggest issues most people […]
Eat & Shop Local Like It’s Your Job – Because It Is!
In my youth, my whole goal in life was to live in a hip, urban neighborhood. One filled with history, beautiful buildings, events, arts, great restaurants, and boutique stores. I envisioned myself living blissfully car-free, riding my bike everywhere, soaking in the culture, and hanging out at a local coffee shop with my F-R-I-E-N-D-S! Eventually, […]
Meaning in Planting Design
There is a growing trend in landscape architecture when it comes to planting design. More and more, Landscape Architecture Magazine and landscape design social media feeds are filled with sublime, flowing meadows, containing a symphony of softly mounding grasses, interspersed with a wild yet refined mixture of seasonal perennial interest. Yet, more substantive than trends […]
Outdoor Rooms: Four Strategies for Great Spaces
Featured photograph is an Io design featured on HGTV’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Read more about the project in our portfolio, and the story in this blog post. The biggest mistake people make when creating landscapes from residential gardens to parks and plazas, is to overlook the design. Too often, the landscape is seen as […]
Perfection v. Progress
I have a confession. We moved into our beautiful Craftsman Bungalow in 2017, and amongst the to-do list of renovation projects, there’s one that is particularly distressing to me: Our garishly BLUE bathroom. Every day for the last 5 years I have walked into this bathroom at least twice a day, only to get punched […]
How to Plant Meadow Grasses
Native meadow grasses are rapidly gaining popularity as both an alternative to traditional turf-grass, or a low-maintenance shrub-border. These grasses are easy to grow, have beautiful ornamental seed-heads, and are very drought-tolerant! A few of our favorite varieties include Grama Grass, Sheep Fescue, Atlas Fescue, or for shady areas, Blue Zinger sedge or Pennsylvania sedge. […]
How to Create a Butterfly Garden
Butterflies evolved into specific species by eating only a few different plants. As human development has expanded, these plants got ripped down or dispersed. Butterflies thrive on large groupings of plants. Many butterflies can’t eat nonnative plants, they need their specific native plant to survive. 90% of insect species can only eat the plants that […]
Planning Your Design Journey: Lessons from ‘Lord of the Rings’
At Io LandArch, we believe that the landscape and architecture design process is a journey through cognition and time to create sustainable, vibrant places. It’s an expedition often lined with challenging obstacles and tough decisions. But it’s also filled with anticipation, magic, and a hero-worthy project as your reward. What better archetype to look […]
Paved with Good Intentions: 5 Reasons Not to ‘Zeroscape’ Your Yard
With the ongoing water crisis, we’re starting to see a lot of formerly lush landscapes suddenly transformed into barren rock-scapes under the guise of water conservation. While these newfound converts to environmentalism are well-intentioned, a rock-only landscape is actually worse for the ecosystem, the climate, and the drought. I know that seems counter-intuitive but here’s […]
Five Lessons for Community Revitalization from Historic Home Restoration
As a Historic Home Restoration survivor, veteran community organizer, Landscape Architect/Architect, and Urban Designer, it has occurred to me numerous times over the past 2 decades just how much restoring a historic home is a microcosm of community revitalization. Historic structures are an essential building block of successful community revitalization, but the parallels go much […]
Washington Square – Site of the Salt Lake City and County Building
Washington Square is the entire 10-acre block surrounding the Salt Lake City and County Building located between State Street and 200 East, and 400 South and 500 South in Salt Lake City, Utah. Washington Square is significant for its historical uses including the original 1847 Mormon pioneer camp. In 1894 the City and County Building […]
Designing for TV: A Crash Course with Extreme Makeover
We recently had the opportunity to volunteer, by providing Landscape Architectural services for two very deserving families, on the hit TV show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”! The episodes are 1002 and 1003 and we are looking forward to seeing them air in January 2020 on HGTV! In case you haven’t seen the show (seriously, who […]
Io & Athena: Inspiring Women
As a women-owned business, whose mission is to create sustainable, vibrant communities while mentoring the next generation of female landscape architects, Io Landscape Architecture is pleased to congratulate Shalae Larsen, Io Principal, on her nomination for the prestigious ATHENA Award . The award recognizes women who have achieved personal and professional success, and who are leaders […]
Trial by Fire: How I Became a Historic Preservation & Community Revitalization Advocate
It was a crisp, late winter evening. We were just settling in to watch a movie at our condo in Logan when the phone rang. It was one of those calls that you don’t ever want to receive. It was the Ogden Fire Department. The house that we had purchased just 2 weeks earlier was […]
Reinventing Community Engagement
Over the course of 20 years of professional and individual community engagement, we’ve been to a LOT of different types of public meetings. The best ones are creative and fun with active involvement of participants. They actually work to make a project better. The worst ones are boring, limit community feedback, or worse–collect feedback and […]
Back to Our Roots
We’re proud to unveil our new logo! The name Io stems from Greek mythology. Io was a demi-goddess represented by a white heifer. As a woman-founded design practice we deliberately chose the name based on its strong female archetype and also its agricultural symbolism. We have both personal ties to small-scale community agriculture and a […]
The Four Types of Historic Landscapes
The documentation and preservation of Historical Landscapes represents a relatively new and frequently misunderstood branch of the preservation movement. Many historic landscapes are being lost before their significance is recognized. Historic landscapes are important because often they provide context for historic buildings and structures. But historic landscapes can also exist without historic buildings, or can […]
Lester Park Design Competition
The results of the Lester Park design competition have been announced. And the winner is… “Community Tapestry” by Io Design Collaborative’s own Shalae Larsen with team members Jake Alex McIntire and James Argo! The competition was held by the Utah Chapter of the AIA Young Architects’ Forum and Urban Design Committee. Many hours of volunteer […]
The Trackline Project
This week marks another milestone in Ogden City’s bid to become the outdoor recreation capital of the West, with the kickoff of the Ogden Business Exchange Project. Nicknamed “Trackline,” the project is a proposed industrial/business park that will serve as a hub of activity for bike, bike-related, and otherwise outdoor products companies. Over the past […]
Stilwell’s Sentinel Trees Bear Witness
This article by Io principal Susan Crook was published in the June 2014 Union Vedette, the newsletter of the Fort Douglas Military Museum. Stilwell Field has played an essential role at Fort Douglas from the founding of the post on October 20, 1862 to the present stewardship of the Fort Douglas National Historic Landmark (NHL) […]
(re)PARK on Historic 25th
Io Landscape Architecture, in conjunction with Carbon Architects, hosted the first ever PARK(ing) Day in Ogden on September 20, 2013. Watch the brief video below, where our Principal, Shalae Larsen outlines the project concepts and goals. Special thanks to Johnson Media Corp. for putting this together. Shalae also appeared in another featured video by Only in Ogden! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSDokLo_gEk […]