Kettelkamp and Kettelkamp
Not Your Garden-Variety Landscape Architects

By Victoria Scott

Landscape architects Claire and Ryan Kettelkamp create living spaces and outdoor environments unique to each of their clients.

When Ryan and Claire Kettelkamp, husband and wife principals in the firm Kettelkamp & Kettelkamp Landscape Architecture, 1000 Main St., refer to themselves as "country kids," they are talking about their small-town childhoods – his, in Nokomis, Ill., near Springfield, and hers, in Shreveport, La. – and the hands-on gardening they love.

But nowadays their down-to-earth manner and lack of pretension are in counterpoint to a portfolio of sophisticated work that includes Chicago's Michigan Avenue planters.

Whatever their provenance, Mr. and Ms. Kettelkamp show an unspoiled enthusiasm for their work. And just two years after founding their own firm in a spare bedroom, the two have carved out a special niche in a crowded business.

What they do, they say, is to create gardens – "living spaces and outdoor environments unique to each client."

They distinguish themselves from what they call "design/build firms" and from those who provide "landscape treatments" such as foundation plantings. While there are many companies that both design and then realize their work, the Kettelkamps provide an architectural design, let it out for bids and then choose a contractor to construct it.

The process, says Mr. Kettelkamp, allows them to "focus purely on design." It frees them from such worries as finding a way to use an inventory of plants. "We don't have to be driven by that sort of decision," he says. But their services do not fit everyone. "Our model," he explains, "works best for larger projects. There's a threshold where we bring value."

Huge photos of some of the gardens they have designed hang on the walls of their spacious, bright office. They allude to these Evanston, Winnetka and Lake Forest projects in describing what they do.

"Plants," says Mr. Kettelkamp, "are the icing on the cake. First we must build the layers of the cake." Not only must pergolas, walks and fences stand up to the elements, but they also must look good naked, in the dead of winter.

Building one of their gardens "takes as many people as it takes to build a home," says Ms. Kettelkamp. They often begin with soil consultants and proceed with masons, lighting specialists and even irrigation contractors ("our plumbers," she calls them). Only after constructing such a foundation, says Mr. Kettelkamp, "do you allow yourself the icing, the really pretty stuff – the plants." That icing is critical. "You can't be laissez-faire about the longevity of a garden," she says. "It's dynamic – you have to visit it."

Throughout the process, says Ms. Kettelkamp, they don many hats: the artist's hat, the gardener's hat, the hard hat. They say the bases of their work – art, gardening, the out of doors, nature, math – are an uncanny match with their passions, despite the fact that they each started out in a different field.

Ms. Kettelkamp entered Louisiana State University in graphic design; her husband was in pre-veterinary medicine at the University of Illinois. They say they "stumbled into" the profession of landscape architecture – and find it "a wonderful fit for us both."

They met in 1990 on their first job, at a large design/build firm where they say they gained "a good grounding in construction." In 1993 Ms. Kettelkamp became the first employee of Douglas Hoerr, then Evanston-based. The next year Mr. Kettelkamp joined them. Three times a year they redesigned the Michigan Avenue planters created by Mr. Hoerr in 1993. "[The photos] were a fantastic classroom," says Mr. Kettelkamp – "like a store window," she adds.

Ms. Kettelkamp left the company in 2003 to consult, work part-time for Mr. Hoerr and be home with the couple's two young sons. "Things grew and grew," says her husband, and in 2004, he joined her in the spare bedroom.

Beginning with their senior project manager, they assembled a seven-person team of experts with whom they had previously worked. She describes the quick start as "hitting the ground running." The couple talks about the firm's exciting synergy, claiming the individuals are so well-attuned to one another that "we finish each other's sentences."

Their interest in horticulture is apparent in the choice of their eighth collaborator, a perennial grower from Lake Geneva, Wis., whose special interest is in promoting sustainability through the use of plant communities. Well-chosen groups of plants can complement one another ecologically, esthetically and functionally – "a cast of players," says Ms. Kettelkamp, "suited to the place" and, therefore, to saving maintenance and resources.

While involved with projects from LaSalle-Peru to Chicago and the North Shore to Harbor Springs, Mich., the Kettelkamps find special satisfaction in working in their hometown of Evanston.

On their drawing boards are four jobs on Central Street. Designing landscapes for Fire Station #5, an architecture firm next to it, Prairie Place development abutting Prairie Joe's, and a "grandmother's garden" at the historic house next to the former Central Street theaters will let them "be involved in the rebirth of Central Street," he says.

The couple still garden together in their spare time and visit gardens while vacationing. And when friends or family come to town, they enjoy showing off their work.

"One of the best things about landscape architecture is sharing it," they say.