We Won the CLCA 2023 Beautification Award for Small Design/Build Installation!

Janet Richardson • June 21, 2024

We're so excited to announce that we won the California Landscape Contractors Association 2023 Beautification Award for Small Design/Build Installation!

Two women are standing next to each other holding a certificate.

Our lead designer, Gina, and Project Manager, Lauren, attended the awards ceremony dinner and accepted the award on behalf of Mariposa Gardening and Design Cooperative, Inc.

Our cooperative is so proud of our work on this stunning front yard design and build located in Berkeley, California!

A drawing of a garden with a lot of plants and trees.

We got to install a lot of dry stacked stone and pollinator plantings as part of this design, as well as lots of veggies. Thank you to our clients for allowing us to submit this garden for the CLCA awards, and thank you CLCA for selecting our work!

In every garden, we see a unique opportunity to reconnect a space with its natural systems. Exposing nature’s existing elegant patterns allows us to create artfully designed spaces that complement urban environments. This front yard located in Berkeley is no exception!

Here, we expertly selected plants that provide seasonal interest and support ecological diversity year round. Our gardens incorporate plant relationships that are both beautiful and function as a complex ecosystem.

Stonework is a Mariposa specialty. We often incorporate stacked stone walls and stairs into our designs, as they are beautiful and withstand the test of time. Dry-stacked stone work has been used throughout the world for many centuries to build houses, walls, staircases and bridges. Many of them still stand, hundreds of years later. Carefully selected stones are knitted together using a time-tested technique that forms an interlocking, load bearing structure.

A set of stone steps leading up to a house

A stone staircase leading up to a house with a tree in the background.

These walls can also withstand earthquakes! In the event of an earthquake, properly built dry-stacked stone walls become tighter and stronger than stone bound with mortar, which is always something to think about in the Bay Area!

This basalt planter also draws our clients out to the garden and provides them with seasonal veggies.

At Mariposa, our goal is to strengthen the connection between our clients and the natural world. One of the ways we like to do that is by incorporating seasonal veggie beds into our designs! This helps get our clients into the soil and fosters that attunement with our natural systems.

We strive to help our clients find their home in nature, while creating artfully designed spaces with locally sourced materials that are ecologically sound.

We see each of our gardens as a link in a chain of microhabitats that support birds, butterflies, humans, and pollinators. The recognition from the CLCA through this award further inspires our women-led cooperative to continue on our journey to change the face of the landscape industry to be empowering, both to us and our natural ecosystems.

We're working to popularize sustainable and artful spaces, as well as the aura of shared responsibility and environmental stewardship that comes with being a design/build cooperative.

Two women are posing for a picture while holding a book.

Thank you again to the CLCA for selecting our design for this award! We also thank all of our clients for their continued support and dedication to our mission!

Don't forget to follow us on our Instagram @mariposagardening

and find us on Facebook to follow along on our journey!

< Older Post

Newer Post >

Summer Is Almost Here, Start Thinking About Your Soil

By Andrea andrea • June 9, 2025

CHECK YOUR SOIL! Isn’t it great to feel the longer and warmer days of late Spring? I love the feeling of going outside and seeing the sun, shining brightly on all of the green leaves and beautiful flowers. It is so wonderful to feel the glow of summer approaching. What a joy to get caught up in that glow, while we watch the gardens grow gorgeously. However, that joy makes it easy to forget that here in the Bay Area, we are entering the months long dry season. Our Mediterranean climate shifts this time of year, which can transform gardens from showing lots of flowering and new green growth, to gardens where soils and plants become dry and damaged. This transition can lead to health issues in the garden over the coming weeks and months. While plants are still thriving from the lovely winter rains, the soils are now drying out. We often don’t realize that the soils are becoming too dry because at this time of year, it takes plants longer to show signs of stress. However, if we know what is about to come, we can stay ahead of the dry season and the damage that hydrophobic soils can do to our garden.

Happy Spring!!!

By Andrea andrea • May 3, 2025

With the warmer temperatures and longer days, gardens are literally bursting with hope. New leaves unfurl and early blooms emerge under the lengthening days and warming temperatures. April never fails to inspire me with its magical expression in the natural world. Each year, as this phenomenon occurs, I am delighted by the immense force that nature has to replenish and re-emerge anew. Being able to count on the small miracles of leafing out and blooming helps to give stability in an unstable world. Tending a garden is not only therapeutic for our soul, but also will help heal your local environment.

Spring Cleaning For Habitat

By Andrea andrea • April 28, 2025

Spring is an amazing time of year to witness rebirth and transformation in the garden. Buds are swelling, flowers are beginning to bloom and butterflies are starting the procession of early, mid and late seasonal emergence into the garden! All of the subtle and beautiful change that happens day to day draws us gardeners out into the garden to witness the fullness of spring. During March, we see a chorus of changes in the garden, each element playing in harmony. Paying close attention to how your garden is changing and developing during this season can help you to become a better guardian for habitat protection. In Mariposa’s newsletters and articles , we discuss that in order to protect habitat in the winter garden, one must be very careful. Many grown pollinators and butterflies, as well as their dormant eggs gather protection under the leaves and in the dried stems of flowering perennials such as Echinacea (purple coneflower) and Rudbeckia (black eyed Susan).