Jennifer Horn’s interest in botany stems from time spent as a child living in Malaysia, where she played in a garden full of mango trees and orchids, and later in Turkey. A high school job at a nursery rekindled her love of plants, inspiring her to earn her undergraduate degree in horticulture followed by a master’s degree in landscape architecture.

“Growing up as a government brat exposed me to different climates, cultures and landscapes,” Horn reflects. “These influences still inform many of my design ideas today.” After practicing in New York for 11 years, she moved to the DC area and launched her eponymous firm in 2010.

Horn and her team collaborate with homeowners to create designs that are “a natural extension of the house, the personalities of the clients and the environment,” she says. The firm takes a long-term view, considering how a family’s use of their landscape will change over time. “Garden design is temporal,” Horn observes. “We think about how gardens change in spring, summer, fall and winter. But we also think of how a garden will change over years or even decades.”

Embracing sustainable practices is a priority for Horn and her colleagues, who even offset their carbon footprint with a third-party company. “We also know our projects wouldn’t exist without the manual labor of people who implement our designs,” Horn notes. “So we have started an annual scholarship with Virginia Tech for individuals pursing degrees in horticulture-related fields.”

JHLA received a Virginia ASLA Merit award in 2021 as well as Silver and Gold APLD design awards in 2018, 2019 and 2020.