Marissa Angell is a licensed landscape architect with degrees from Cornell University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the founder of Angell Landscape Architecture, a WBE-certified practice based in upstate New York. Her projects span the Northeast, from Manhattan rooftops to Cape Cod gardens, always with an emphasis on creating landscapes that feel alive, resilient, and rooted in their surroundings. Meadows are a signature part of her practice—sometimes designed with carefully chosen plantings to achieve a clear, refined look, and other times seeded with native species that are free to surprise with their evolution and seasonal shifts. No matter the approach, Marissa’s work finds the sweet spot between design intention and natural process, offering landscapes that evolve beautifully while staying deeply connected to place.

What does a meadow mean to you—and how do you translate that into design?  

On a personal level, semantics are important, since so much of the emotional impact of a meadow is dependent on how it is curated. For me, legibility and clarity of these types of plantings yield different emotional responses. At its core, a meadow is a matrix of loosely aggregated perennial and annual herbaceous species allowed to evolve to varying degrees. We install two different types of meadows—those that are stylized with live plantings in which we try to impose a layer of willful control to achieve a desired aesthetic result; or, native-species seeded meadows in which we embrace a lack of control that gifts us with species diversity and unpredictability. Both are valuable approaches that provide visual benefit and emotional satisfaction in differing ways.

For our stylized meadow plantings, we rely on iterations of plan and elevation to determine ideal composition for desired vignettes of height and form, which is brought to life onsite as directed plant layout.  We can aspire to a general impact of color and form, which is more closely guaranteed with this approach. There is an immense self-satisfaction garnered when the drawings can approximate something close to what’s installed after the first season. While both types of meadows are developed through site analysis, composition of seeded meadows is determined even more closely by the existing flora and site conditions, in addition to the season in which installation occurs.  Use of either is dependent on the client, the design parameters, and desired maintenance regimes.  A more curated meadow may be warranted closer to structures for clients that like a tidier approach, while seeded, naturalistic meadows provide broader, quieter frames of external views further out into a site. In both instances we cannot treat these as static entities; the allowed amount of evolution of species composition over time for both types is directed through management. The shift over time and season is central to the ecological and emotional richness that meadows impart to us.  

Meadows break my heart in their beauty and unpredictability and heal them in the space of a season. They remind me why I’m more of a species shepherd than a paint-by-numbers planting designer.

If you could only plant five species in a meadow, which would you choose—and why?

‍I am cruel to my plants: if something doesn’t work in a plant community beyond one season and can’t stand up to abject neglect, I will not use it. Similarly, it needs to be able to prove itself beyond its blooms. Species choice for us is always dependent on the existing site conditions. That said, for our typical full-sun, mixed moisture availability site, the following plants have worked well for us.

1. In stylized meadow plantings, I have yet to find a penstemon that doesn’t play well with the rest of the orchestra. Penstemon ‘Dark Towers’ is an improved hybrid of ‘Husker Red’ which we like for its beautiful basal foliage, striking seedheads, and pollinator allure when it is in bloom. P. digitalis can be found happily re-seeding in our native meadows as well, and has long-lasting blooms. P. hirsuitus makes me nostalgic as a millennial for my Lisa-Frank pinky-purple palette days.

2. If a meadow designer doesn’t recommend a grass species, are they even a meadow designer? Beyond the obvious need for it in any northeastern meadow to support fauna and knit together plant communities, Little Bluestem has incredible glaucous foliage. For stylized plantings we love ‘Ha-ha Tonka’, ‘Standing Ovation’, and have started using ‘Little Red Fox’. The stunning leaves and inflorescences that last through the winter should earn it pride of place in any garden.

3. Any Asclepias will do! There are so many interesting milkweeds to suit a range of conditions. You haven’t lived until you’ve smelled swamp milkweed. I love the variety of color and form you can achieve with these plants, from greens to pinks to whites. The adaptability of these species astounds me—some require fire or inundation. A level of resilience that I find enviable.  

4. Echinaceas. Long-lasting, great seedheads. E. pallida is in almost all of our projects and rightly so—you can always find it floating above a matrix of other plants. I like that you can both appreciate the seedhead and bloom on a pedestal without obscuring other species behind.  

5. Geum triflorum. Love the long seasonal interest of this plant—the delicate pitcher-shaped blooms that are followed by plumes of rightly named ‘smoke’ meant to disperse its seeds on the wind. A good doer and tough as nails.

What’s the biggest misconception clients have about meadows?

Meadows aside—the biggest misconception clients have is the myth that any garden is ‘low maintenance’. We will always need to work within parameters of the site to contend with weed pressure, change in species composition, or predation.  The level of desired maintenance must also be a critical factor in the design process, or clients will be left with a gap in expectation and result.  

Tell us about a moment in the field that changed how you think about plant communities.  

I am stuck between two—witnessing the majesty of lobelia siphilitica poking up through sedges in a drainage ditch along route 206 in Chenango County, NY: A moment that clarified the impact of simplicity for me in plantings, or: visiting Wildside Garden this last May in Devon, England. The latter struck a deep chord in how reverently Keith Wiley and his team tend to the planted communities there. I don’t think I realized how much the emotions of the garden-maker can be made implicit to those who experience the space.  Every square foot of that garden has love in it, and it’s stunningly beautiful. In both instances the factors of time and patience were quite explicit—to achieve either of these planted vignettes takes a certain amount of restraint and patience I am still working on.

What’s your dream site for a meadow installation—real or imagined? ‍

I love working with sites that have significant constraints: the worst kind of clay soil, blazing sun, deep shade, or rocky ledge. In each of these instances the existing conditions put guardrails on the design and simplify palettes for us in really exciting ways, bringing plant communities into sharper focus.  Fewer species have to do much more.

To explore Marissa Angell's work and get in touch, visit her website at www.angelllandscape.com.

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