Orchard House
Terraces cut into an old pear slope, with a kitchen garden that actually gets used and a long view left alone.
Landscape architecture — Hood River
Gardens that remember the land they sit on. 123
We design grounds, courtyards, and working landscapes for people who want a place to last — not a look that dates.
See selected workThe studio
A small practice with a long view.
Vale is two designers and a horticulturist working from a shop above the Hood River orchards. We take on a handful of landscapes each year — private gardens, courtyards, and the grounds around houses that are meant to stay in a family.
The work is quiet on purpose. We start with what the site already does well: the way water wants to move, the trees that should stay, the ugly but honest views. Then we edit. Paths get slower. Planting gets denser. Maintenance gets honest about the weather we actually have.
“They treated the garden like a building with a fifty-year warranty — not a weekend project.”
Appointments Thursday through Saturday. Site visits by arrangement.
Featured project
Sitka Court
A 1912 bungalow in Hood River needed a courtyard that could hold a dinner for twelve without looking dressed for a magazine. We kept the old apple, dropped the lawn, and built a shallow basin that borrows the sky on still days.
Planting is mostly evergreen structure — Osmanthus, yew, and native sword fern — with a seasonal wash of Narcissus and later, meadow sage. The client mows nothing. They sweep the gravel twice a year.
Work
Selected landscapes
The Long Meadow
Five acres of dry-side grass, a single gravel drive, and a wind break that will take a decade to look inevitable.
Cedar Rim
A woodland garden on a steep lot: switchback paths, a hidden bench, and almost no imported plants.
Photographs
From the last few seasons
Approach
How a landscape gets made
01
Walk first
We spend a day on the site before we draw anything. Weather, soil, the neighbor’s trees, the ugly view that might be the honest one.
02
Edit, don’t invent
Most of the work is deciding what to keep. New planting has to earn its water and its Saturday mornings.
03
Stay through a season
We come back after the first summer. Plants move. Grades settle. The drawings are a starting point, not a contract with the weather.
On looking
A morning in a mature garden
Before we change a site we watch one that already works. This walk through the Japanese Garden at The Huntington is the kind of looking we ask of ourselves: slow, un-narrated, and more interested in edges than in spectacle.
Studio
Who you work with
Mara Ellison
Principal
Mara trained in landscape architecture at the University of Oregon and spent eight years in a larger Portland office before opening Vale. She still draws by hand for the first pass.
Jonah Reed
Horticulture
Jonah sources plants, writes the maintenance notes, and is the reason our lists don’t pretend a Japanese maple wants the gorge wind. He grew up in a nursery in The Dalles.
Visit
Come by the shop
The studio is above a former packing shed on Cascade Avenue. There is no reception desk. If the kettle is on, sit down. If we’re on a site, leave a note on the door — we call back the same day.
Vale Studio216 Cascade Avenue, Suite 2
Hood River, Oregon 97031
| Studio | Thursday–Saturday, 11–4 |
|---|---|
| Site visits | Monday–Wednesday, by appointment |
| New work | Taking gardens for spring 2027 |
studio@vale.example 541 555 0142