• Gresham Lang Garden Design

  greshamlanggardens.com

  Gresham Lang took a circuitous path to landscaping, working in advertising and then architecture before studying horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden. He’s known as an incredibly collaborative landscaper, one who’s capable of substantially adjusting his style to suit each individual client. For one couple who wanted an Asian-style garden, he filled their terrace with wisteria, bamboo fencing, Japanese holly, and a Chinese tree peony. On a rooftop in Tudor City, he created planters for brightly colored flowers, along with space to grow tomatoes. (He won’t be coming by to pick the vegetables himself, but Lang does continue to maintain most of his work after it’s installed.) His prices are all over the place, depending on scale and ambition, but a basic green-roof planting can start at $28 per square foot and planter gardens around $60 per square foot. He has landscaped relatively small spaces—though he doesn’t take jobs covering less than 30 square feet—and worked with budget-conscious clients, but he also recently finished installing a big, lush, luxe garden of sedums, pines, and junipers on a Time Warner Center terrace that stretches around nearly two full sides of the north tower. It is reportedly the highest private garden in town.

From the 2013 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine