Get to know the 2019 Hamptons Innovator,

Edwina von Gal

Principal of her eponymous landscape design firm since 1984, Edwina von Gal creates landscapes with a focus on simplicity and sustainability for private and public clients around the world. She has collaborated with architects such as Frank Gehry, Annabelle Selldorf, Maya Lin, and Toshiko Mori, on projects for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Richard Serra, Larry Gagosian, and many others in the environmental, design and art communities. Her work has been published in most major publications. Her book “Fresh Cuts” won the Quill and Trowel award for garden writing.

In 2008, while designing the park for The Biomuseo Panama, Edwina founded the Azuero Earth Project, promoting native species reforestation on Panama’s Azuero Peninsula, perhaps the first of its kind to work without synthetic chemicals. In 2013, Edwina went on to create the Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit organization based in the USA dedicated to raising consciousness about the dangers of toxic lawn and garden chemicals to protect the health of people, their pets, and the planet. Perfect Earth Project educates homeowners and professionals in nature-based landscape management techniques that provide beautiful, safe results at no extra cost.

Edwina has served on boards and committees for a number of horticultural and arts organizations, and is currently on the board of What Is Missing?, Maya Lin’s multifaceted media artwork about the loss of biodiversity, and the advisory board of The Philip Johnson Glass House. She received the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art’s Arthur Ross Award in 2012, and is the 2017 recipient of Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for the Visual Arts. In 2018 she received the NY School of Interior Design’s Green Design Award and The Isamu oguchi Award. She lectures regularly around the country and gave a TED talk in 2018.