HDLA was established in 1985 to provides comprehensive planning, landscape architectural, and urban design services. The firm was created to serve a market that demands exceptional care, talent, and motivation in the planning and implementation of built works in our environment. HDLA does not have a style, but an approach; a vision and philosophy that demands authenticity, honesty, and transparency in its creative process. This approach is centered around the simple tenet of listening first. We see each project as an opportunity to create sustainable and memorable places of beauty that foster activity, community, engagement; spaces that foster our innate human need for connection.

Werthan
HDLA led a team of architects and engineers in a collaborative master planning process to study the best long-term use for the 14 Acre Werthan Mills in Nashville, Tennessee. Planning efforts consisted of detailed site history analysis, existing physical site inventory, as well as detailed study of surrounding land-uses and urban fabric. HDLA also worked with an economic development specialist to determine the proper product mix for the present and future market. From this inventory and analysis, HDLA developed a 15-year build-out plan that included a 280-unit apartment site, adaptive re-use of an existing warehouse building, and the potential of a 180-unit condominium building. Of paramount importance to the master plan was creating a development that complemented and enhanced the Germantown/Salemtown neighborhood and made strong connections to adjacent land-uses including existing single family residential, a large neighborhood park, Werthan Lofts condominiums and a mixed-use development. Community green space, public art and creating strong visual site lines were all considerations for the plan. The end result is a large, but intricate development that will re-knit the urban fabric between two neighborhoods and create spaces for the enjoyment of generations to come.

 
Tennessee State Museum
HDLA was commissioned in 2015 to design the new Tennessee State Museum. The museum boasts an expansive gathering lawn designed to accommodate gatherings and events, a Tennessee waterways fountain which mimics the natural waterfalls found throughout the state, a children's outdoor sculpture court and garden, gathering courts, east end west drop off plazas, and a Tennessee physiographic walk to the north. The main axis entry walk aligns with the Capitol rotunda creating a striking visual connection, while the site responds seamlessly with the Capitol Mall. The design theme carries the use of native materials, geology, ecology, and hydrology throughout the site.
Cheekwood Estate & Gardens

HDLA is working with the Cheekwood Estate & Gardens on numerous projects on their 55-acre botanical garden and historic estate including the new Bracken Foundation Children's Garden, Literary Garden, and Parterre Garden. HDLA worked with Garden Designer Tres Fromme of 3 Fromme Design on the creation of the new Bracken Foundation Children's Garden, which opened in 2020. This exciting permanent feature is a destination for children enticed by the numerous areas for play, discovery, and wonder. The Children's Garden weaves together Cheekwood's offerings of play, gardens, nature, art, and history into a welcoming environment for children of all ages that includes water features, expansive plantings, and areas for imaginative play such as a tea house, fairy garden, and wishing well all of which tie seamlessly into the historic estate grounds and speak to the character of the existing gardens and buildings.

HDLA recently completed adaptive reuse of the warehouse building as the phase 2 implementation of the master plan for the Werthan industrial complex. The phase 2 site known as 602 Taylor included an event space and food garden, as well as a dynamic set of steps adjacent to the building with murals echoing the industrial past of the site. The design incorporates numerous elements linked to the historic uses of the property including the steel roller bollards from the bag printing process used throughout the site. The project connects the warehouse building to the greater Werthan site with a set of monumental steps with built-in seating, planting and orchestrated lighting.

Downtown Commons
The Downtown Commons is a dynamic public space that occupies an entire city block in the heart of historic downtown Clarksville featuring the Third Street Pavilion - an elegantly winged structure that forms a natural bandshell with its striking roofline to project sound across the central green of the Commons. The design of the Commons took inspiration from the natural geology of the highland rim by accentuating the site's challenging topography to create a thicket beneath a series of cascading site walls and terraced seating that form a natural basin. The space is nestled in a verdant copse of river birch that invite visitors to relax in their calming, dappled shade. The connective tissue of the Commons is an interactive water feature that is comprised of gently flowing cast stone rills, that intertwine to create a mosaic of distinct experiences along Second Street and Main Street, before culminating in calmly rippling play delta at their confluence. Also along Main Street, a small adventure play area comprised of three limestone boulders, culled from the site during the construction has been tucked into a lushly planted landscape.

The Downtown Commons boasts a well-appointed landscape with a rich palette of native plant material. The striking rain gardens, use the dynamic biology of a carefully selected plant community and uniquely designed soil profile to remove heavy metals, mitigate sediment loading, reduce erosion, and increase the rate of evapotranspiration. Each rain garden is spanned by a generous ADA Accessible boardwalk give visitors the experience of floating over the lush plantings as they move through the site.