What did you know about landscape architecture before starting the magazine?
George: I golfed. That's all. When I got the first job (at "Western Landscaping News" in 1981), the guy said, "Hey, do you golf?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Alright, well, we'll put you on the landscape magazine."

So, learning about landscape architecture started day one of your career?
George: Yeah, I really started learning about it with the other ["Western Landscaping News" (WLN)] magazine because [Landscape Architects] were just starting to get recognized. I worked with WLN for about 3 ? 1/2 -4 years. This guy, Bob Stover, was there, they sent me to the ASLA meeting in Indianapolis, and we tried to do an expo for the Landscape Architects and get involved with them and the CLASS Fund because we saw the potential. CLASS Fund was setting up an endowment fund. [Side Note: In 2010, CLASS Fund reached its 30-year goal of attaining $1 million in its endowment and is now on track to reach $2 million.] Now, they're giving away like $50,000-$60,000 a year, every year. That's pretty good. Guys like Landscape Contractor Klaus Ahlers, Francis Sullivan of Sullivan Concrete Textures (Sully was a pioneer in the stamped concrete business), and Mort Hermann of Hermann & Jensen Nursery were big supporters of CLASS Fund at the start.

[After WLN was sold (see page 62)], the new owner of "Western Landscaping News" didn't understand the potential of Landscape Architects and CLASS Fund, so I got lucky with the Landscape Architects, I guess. Right about when I started LASN, I also produced the first brochure for CLASS Fund, which put me in the room with guys like Cort Paul, Bob Cardoza, Bill Cathcart, John Hourian, Jim Hogan, Rob Sawyer, Claus Ahlers, and so many others. That opened the door to meeting many of the leaders of the profession at the time, all over the world. Over the years, I've come to appreciate how lucky I was.

What or who is a 'Posy Planter'?
George: Right away I interviewed the first Licensed Landscape Architect, Raymond Page. Ray Page was "Mr. Beverly Hills" and, at 97 years old, he was as sharp as a tack. He did all the landscapes for Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and a bunch of other movie stars and famous people. The Beverly Hills Courier Newspaper back then called him "Mr. Beverly Hills." He was a Landscape Architect ... well ... he was working as a Landscape Architect all the way through the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and then he got called as a professional witness. The lawyer said, "What do you do for a living?" He said, "Well, I'm a Landscape Architect." And the lawyer goes, "Are you licensed?" He goes, "No, we're not licensed." And [the lawyer] goes, "So, you're really nothing more than a Posy Planter." Well, that didn't sit well with Ray and a couple of his friends, who decided at that moment that Landscape Architects needed to be licensed. If they were going to go to court and make big decisions on land development, they needed to be licensed.
So, Ray and a couple of his friends spirited thru state legislation and became licensed, but Harry Shepard was ceremonially given license number 01 because he was terminally ill at the time. Raymond Page was given California Landscape Architect license number 02 - the second licensed Landscape Architect in the entire nation - and everything came from there. Ray, he was adamant about development ... He used to work on big properties in the Hollywood Hills. For him, yeah, plant selection was important, but so was engineering, fire protection, and erosion control - all the while making it look really good and be a functional, entertaining part of the property not just in the daytime, but also at night when his clients had parties that made the news. It was a big thing, and those guys were working not only on private properties, but on local civic and commercial properties, too, and any development that came in through the area had to be sculpted and designed. Ray and many others were involved in all that. Some were very big projects, so it was worth it for Landscape Architects to
be licensed.

Who had biggest impact on the magazine in those early years?
George: That's easy ... Donald Milton Roberts, PLA, FASLA. About three or four years into it, I get a knock on the door of our office. I go to answer it, and there's this short, grey-haired guy with a slight smile on his face. He goes, "Are you George?" And I said, "Yeah." And first thing he says - he doesn't even introduce himself - he says, "You don't know s*** about Landscape Architects." I go, "Okay?" And he says, "I'm Don Roberts, and I'm here to teach ya." Then, Don sat me down and mentored us for a long time.

 
Don was one of the OG Landscape Architects and one of the first to teach landscape architecture at UCLA in the 60s. Because he was at UCLA in the 60s, he was at the forefront of a lot of things. He had this big pacemaker - one of the first pacemakers ever made - but that didn't slow him down. He took me up to ASLA meetings and the school and even to the archives at UCLA. We saw some really cool stuff, like 1,300-year-old books and ancient artifacts. We even met with the Russian delegation of Landscape Architects in a small room off Olvera Street in L.A. He also gave me the bios of about 30 of the world's greatest landscape architects written by UCLA grad students. They sit in our library, and we still reference them. One of his things was that there's a difference between land planners, designers, environmentalists, and Landscape Architects. That was a big thing then, too, about whether or not to call them Environmental Architects. A whole bunch of people wanted to change the name a bunch of different times, but Landscape Architects are really what they are.

Whenever Don would design a freeway overpass or something like that, he would put in big Pepper or Weeping Willow trees because that would give a place for the homeless to live. So, he was always thinking about the whole landscape and how it was going to be utilized by anybody and everybody. That's the anthropometrics - the human element - of Landscape Architects. Is the gate wide enough to go through and still hold a wheelbarrow? Is there a place for people to be safely, where someone's not hiding with bad intentions or where they might get hit by a car? At the same time, some people are down on their luck, and they deserve some kind of area to live in. He was all about how people interacted with the landscape. Don was a pretty cool guy.

What were some of the ways Don impacted LASN as a publication?
George: To begin with, he made us start thinking about the projects more than the news. Don took me up to this ASLA meeting at Lake Arrowhead with all the chapter people. They all sat me down, and Don goes, "You don't have any details in your magazine." I go, "What are you talking about? That's all we do. It's all facts."

I thought [they were] talking about facts. I said, "No, every page is all details. We fact check every detail in that thing, every single fact. There's no gossip; there's only laws, legislation, and the details are specific." They let me defend myself for about 10 minutes about our facts, and then they go, "No, we're talking construction details." Ok ... I was a rookie. Don was right, I didn't know anything about the projects or the details. So, that was kind of funny, but he began to teach us how to look at a project and see the actual - and potential - influence of the Landscape Architect.

How did your trip to Yellowstone and Yosemite in 1993, influence LASN?
George: One of the biggest impacts on me in regard to the profession was when Kim and I took a trip in '93 where I interviewed Eleanor Williams - the Chief Landscape Architect at Yellowstone National Park - and then we turned around and interviewed Don Fox - the Chief Landscape Architect at Yosemite National Park - on the way home. Those were two great trips packed into one. That's where I really saw so much of the sustainability, regenerative, and biodiversity stuff. All of that was in play in Yellowstone and Yosemite back in 1993 (and still is...).

There were so many natural elements in play, but the caveat was that both of those Landscape Architects were so aware of the people experience. People are going to go to Yosemite. People are going to Yellowstone. They are going to be there. By the millions. If there were no Landscape Architect, if there were no trails, if there was no organization, the parks would be trampled, right? Landscape Architects there know that everything they do, they do so it stays as pristine as possible while accommodating millions of people. In Yosemite, it's non-stop. Don would say that people come in the valley and spend on average 2 ? 1/2 hours in the park. People come in and they'll camp, but they are very few compared to the number of people who get on a bus or drive in and go through the whole in-and-out experience. It's a big circle, and everyone moves in that circle. They made that circle - and Don was involved in all this - so you could see the various microclimates of Yosemite at every little stop. Trails take you to views and landscapes that you'd almost swear you were the first to see. When you get to the concessions and all that, the woods used in the building materials were natural and the colors blended in. There wasn't anything in weird colors; it was all about blending in with nature.

In Yellowstone, we got there not that long after some big fires. We pulled in, and Eleanor took me to this one section where they had to make a fire break. Because it's Yellowstone, though, instead of just bulldozing all the trees in one direction, they had to knock one down this way and another the other way so it would look natural after the fire passed. They went randomly to make this big fire break. It took forever, but they did it to preserve the randomness. Even though they get ten-plus feet of snow in Yellowstone, ten feet of snow is only a few inches of water - it's not really that much. And they only get a few inches of rain, which permeates and evaporates quickly. It's so dry out there, they say that if a truck drove across the prairie in Yellowstone, those tracks would be there for decades. They can't have that. When they did the fire break, they knocked down trees, but they had to take extra time and extra resources to make it so that when the fire was over, it would have the ressemblance of nature.

Eleanor was also very aware that fire is super important to places like Yellowstone. Fire clears out the canopy. Then, the heat activates the seeds to grow again, so it's a natural process. Think about climate change. Back when there were no real humans around, a forest fire would last for months, and it would throw an awful lot of smoke and carbon into the air. There were unchecked forest fires going continually all around the world all the time, right? So, the amount of smoke in the air today is kind of relative, in a way. And that's one of the points: fire is super important. Right now, with development, humans need to come in and do controlled burns, because we stymie fire so much that the landscape grows unnaturally. Then, we have these really outrageous fires - like the ones we just had in California - and that's because, if the burns were happening naturally or regularly and controlled (aka if the grounds are properly planned to allow for fire), that wouldn't be the case. It wouldn't be so devastating every time.

On another note, if you look at all the roadways and the retaining walls at Yellowstone, they're all made out of rocks and blended in. You can't see the roadways, so it's kind of like a Zen garden, in a way, where there's always something hidden. That's the experience of the visitors: you can drive through it, you're safe, you have wide roads, it's safe for the animals, and there are clear markings, but you can't really see them until you need to see them. That was one of the coolest things I learned on that Yellowstone leg of the trip.

At Yosemite, Don gave me the book on the Yosemite Report by Frederick Law Olmsted. It must be a required reading for every university. If you're a student or you haven't read it, you should read Frederick Law Olmsted's Yosemite Report ("The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove," 1865). It really was the precursor to Yellowstone becoming a park. He wrote about Yosemite, but Yellowstone became a park - there's a little bit of irony in that. Anyway, in that report, [Olmsted] was talking about how important the randomness of nature is for humans. We need nature. The human psyche needs nature to break the monotony of the developed land.

You can't develop something and build buildings and have everything be square and rectangular. You can't have that. It's bad for the human. What's good for the human is the randomness of trees, the biodiversity, the birds flying by, and the animals running through. It's this grass there, and a little river going that way. His whole report to Congress was that we have these areas that are the best examples of what humans need to see in landscape, and we need to preserve and protect them. We need to preserve and present them because they're so important to the human experience. With how intense the cities are and how intense jobs are, your mind needs to have the release of the randomness of the landscape. And landscape is what Landscape Architects do. They key is understanding how people interact with the land, wherever it is.

That report is something everybody should read, and it's one of the foundations of landscape architecture. If you get a chance to go to the parks, go to Yellowstone. Look at all the various ways they hide the amenities yet accommodate millions of people. Same with Yosemite, where they hide the amenities but still have wayfinding and all the amenities you need to accommodate literally millions of people without destroying the landscape or the experience.

Was all your learning about projects?
George: Not really, it was about the people, too. When Kay Tiller came along, because we started reaching out to the east, she would say, "Honey, y'all gotta come down to Texas." Kay was awesome. Kay was about 5 foot - maybe. She smoked cigarettes, drank Cutty Sark by the bottle, and she talked with a Texan accent that should be on the disk they send into space when describing Texas. She was "The PR Gal" for the Texas ASLA Chapter, and she was connected to virtually everyone in the society by name or reputation. So, when I went down to Texas, she took me under her wing and ended up becoming Aunt Kay to me and my kids (including Nathan and Aaron). She went to every single ASLA meeting - something like 30+ in a row - she knew everybody in the ASLA, and introduced us to all these great people. We have a picture of Nathan, Kim, and I in the booth at the National ASLA Show in San Antonio in 1994 (See page 71). Kay Tiller was our adopted ambassador, and she loved connecting us with all the past presidents, current officials, and the up-and-coming PLAs across the country. We just kept getting exposed to the people doing the best work, literally, in the world.

Who were other notable OG influencers?
George: One of the first people I met was Frank Manwarren. He was building rock and waterscape systems using a new technology to form and shape concrete. He worked all over the world, and he worked with some of the era's more artistic Landscape Architects and developers. If you get a chance, checkout the Ritz Carlton on Kaanapali Beach in Maui. He was one of the pioneers of rock and water features. He started out as a fireman, so when they were fighting fires in California, they would see all these cool rock formations. He and some friend got the wild idea to make rubber castings of those rock formations, and then they would build those formations out of concrete to make waterfalls and grottos. Really huge. Now, they're in everyone's backyard, and every hotel has them. He and a couple other guys, like Lance Friez, were traveling all over the world building zoos and hotels. Frank's son is in the zoo industry now because, everywhere you go, all those exhibits are concrete. They're all concrete, and they're all made with that technology. Now you see that everywhere, even in erosion control applications along roadways.

Don got Bill Swain, FASLA to start writing me, critiquing the magazine, sharing his philosophy, and directing me to other trend setters. Joe Yamada and David Lunstrum came along and helped us put together a student competition that we carried on for years. They also connected us with the students and schools across the country.

We also connected with Scottie Wienberg of the University of Georgia. Scott was in charge of the landscape architectural department's technology center. This was right when CAD and other design programs were starting to become mainstream. We would have advertisers send Scott their newest programs. He would have the students test them and deliver back reports to the vendors and us, and we would run the review in the magazine. I can't tell you how many design programs went through that phase with LASN and UGA. It was awesome. Technology is still one of the most requested article topics for LASN. It's been so exciting growing up as all these new design technologies were being introduced, and now with AI and XR, the sky isn't even the limit anymore ...

As seen in LASN magazine, July 2025.