New Directions in the American Landscape

Sapna Advani is the Principal of Urban Planning at Grain Collective, where she leads with an unwavering commitment to creating equitable urban environments that are ethnically and socioeconomically diverse. Her approach emphasizes rich public engagement and participatory design to generate communal spaces that are both functional and Meaningful.


With over 15 years of urban design and planning experience in both public and private

sectors, Sapna has spearheaded projects ranging from community visioning, resiliency

planning to strategic development of libraries, and frameworks for sustainable

development. In addition to The Green-Wood Historic Fund, clients and collaborators

include the Prospect Park Alliance, the Brooklyn Greenway in Red Hook, Fifth Avenue

Committee in Gowanus, Brooklyn Public Library, New York City Housing Authority as well as several city agencies.

Charlotte Barrows, PLA, LEED, is a Senior Associate at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. She is a Registered Landscape Architect and LEED Accredited Professional with over 15 years of professional experience. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture with Honors from the University of Virginia and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She has expertise in restoring and rehabilitating cultural landscapes such as the Cedar Dell at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York; Forsyth Park in Savannah, Georgia (GA ASLA Merit Award); Jay Heritage Center in Rye, New York (New York State Excellence in Historic Preservation Award); and multiple projects at Olana State Historic Site in Hudson, New York (ASLA Honor Award for Analysis and Planning).

Charles A. Birnbaum is President, CEO, and Founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF). He previously served as the coordinator of the National Park Service Historic Landscape Initiative (1992-2007) and spent a decade in private practice in New York City with a focus on urban design and cultural landscapes. Since 2020 he has served as a Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He has authored and edited numerous publications and received ASLA’s LaGasse Medal (2008), President’s Medal (2009), and the ASLA Medal (2017). In 2023, TCLF was awarded the ASLA’s Olmsted Medal on its 25th anniversary.

Joseph Charap is a native New Yorker and  grew up in Lower Manhattan. After earning a BA and an MA in English Literature, he began working in a schizophrenia research lab. In his limited free-time, he assisted a professional gardener working in residential gardens around the city. It was during this time that he really began to connect with trees and other plants. Through this work and other projects, it became clear that horticulture was his calling, but that he needed to get professional training. After a chance meeting with New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) Vice President Francisca Coelho in 2013, Joseph applied to and was accepted into NYBG’s School of Professional Horticulture. During his second year of the program, he held an internship at Green-Wood, and upon graduating, he was hired as Curator of Plant Collections. In January of 2017, Joseph was made Director of Horticulture at Green-Wood.

Sara Evans is the Director of the Living Collections and Curator at Green-Wood. Born and raised in Maryland, she developed a deep sense of environmental stewardship and community responsibility through her involvement in Chesapeake Bay, Patuxent River, and Potomac River conservation projects with her church and school volunteer groups. She completed her undergrad degree at Brooklyn College where she earned a BA in Urban Sustainability with concentrations in environmental science and sociology.  At Green-Wood, Sara’s passion for understanding intricate connections between nature, people, and their interactions comes to life. She manages the plant records of Green-Wood’s arboretum, supervises environmental research initiatives, curates the living collections, and oversees the day-to-day operations of the horticulture department. 

Julia Gold joined the SiteWorks team in 2016.  She has since worked on a wide range of projects at a variety of scales, including overseeing plant installation and ongoing plant acclimation at the Ford Foundation of Social Justice Atrium.  At SiteWorks she leads the firm’s contract document production and also supports the firm’s construction administration and management practice. Her project involvement has included project management, construction documentation, takeoffs and estimating, construction administration, and operations and maintenance planning.

Adrienne Heflich, ASLA, RLA, is an Associate Principal with Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates in Brooklyn, NY where she enjoys the collaborative opportunities and problem-solving challenges inherent to making public landscapes. Adrienne manages MVVA’s Dorothea Dix Park planning in Raleigh, NC as well as projects for Green-Wood Cemetery and Bella Abzug Park in New York City. Priorities that are unite her work include integrating a local community’s ecological, cultural, and historic values into built projects; embedding accessibility throughout public spaces; and aligning designs with maintenance resources in support of long-term sustainability.

Thomas Rainer is a leading voice in ecological landscape design, skillfully crafting spaces with a forward-thinking approach. As a registered landscape architect based in Arlington, Virginia, Thomas is an innovator in ecological planting for gardens and public spaces, focusing his efforts on merging ecology with horticulture to create dynamic, high-impact landscapes. His career features signature designs at landmark locations such as the U.S. Capitol grounds, Toronto Botanical Garden, and The New York Botanical Garden. He has designed over 125 residential gardens stretching from Maine to Florida.

Anna Speidel joined Nelson Byrd Woltz as a Designer in June of 2019 after receiving a Master of Landscape Architecture from the City College of New York, where she was awarded the Comprehensive Studio Prize in recognition of academic and design excellence, the ASLA-NY Honor Award for academic excellence, and the ASLA-NY Designing in the Public Realm Scholarship. Anna holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science with a focus in Ecological Design from the University of Vermont. Prior to joining NBW, she was a Landscape Fellow at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy in Brooklyn, New York. Anna brings an interest in using design as a tool for building social infrastructure and inspiring environmental stewardship for more inclusive, resilient, and adaptive places to live. Recent projects at NBW include the Hudson Yards Public Square and Gardens and ongoing implementation of the Georgia Tech Eco-Commons.

Larry Weaner, FAPLD, founded Larry Weaner Landscape Associates in 1982 and established NDAL in 1990. He is nationally recognized for combining expertise in horticulture, landscape design, and ecological restoration. His design and restoration work spans more than twenty U.S. states and the U.K., and has been profiled in numerous national publications. His book Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change (Timber Press, 2016) received an "American Horticultural Society (AHS) Book Award" in 2017, and in 2021 he received AHS’s "Landscape Design Award" and the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) "Award of Distinction."

Photo by Kim Sokoloff

Jenna Webster is a Senior Associate at Larry Weaner Landscape Associates (LWLA) and co-develops educational programming with LWLA’s affiliate, New Directions in the American Landscape (NDAL). She has worked on master plans for a range of private and public projects at LWLA. She is also an instructor in the Mt. Cuba Center Certificate Program, a member of the Professional Advisory Committee for the University of Delaware’s Dept. of Landscape Architecture, and a trustee of the Conway School in Northhampton, MA and the Crow’s Nest Research Center in Stafford, VA. She holds a M.A. from the Conway School (a graduate program in sustainable landscape planning and design) and a B.A. and M.Ed. from Harvard University.