Elizabeth Powers

As the driving force behind The Garden Angels, founding Principal Elizabeth Powers has turned a lifelong passion for nature and creativity into the central Willamette Valley’s most successful and innovative landscape design & consulting firm. Inspired by the classic gardens in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the temperate lushness of Oregon’s natural environment, Elizabeth’s body of work is enunciated by an exacting attention to detail. Like a great piece of music, her gardens emote curiosity, harmony, and the playful stuff of memories.  Each place is an opus in rhythm, dynamic range, percussion, intonation, and color highlights; groundwork of our daily lives. As they say, “Life began in a garden” and, like a great conductor, Powers devotes every effort to the art & ensemble of garden making.

Powers brings creative and technical skills to the drawing table: an artist from childhood with undergraduate work in music performance, she leveraged her resourceful nature in the study of landscape design at the University of Oregon. Elizabeth launched her design practice, The Garden Angels, in 1994.

As a technician, Powers is a specialist in sustainable landscape applications, grading & drainage, ornamental & native plant species applications, and riparian & natural area restoration. Applying her background in cultural landscape history, her designs engage old-world landscape gardening methods, in the effort to reduce fossil fuel use and dependency upon landscape contracting. She is keenly concerned with creating human connection and stewardship with the land, scaled to the smallest of suburban footprints. Powers has been instrumental in the establishment and development of the Lord & Schryver Conservancy, a local cultural historic preservation and cultural organization, with her love of history, local vernacular and garden architecture.

Powers sums it up: “Today, new climate realities are driving all of our design products. I’m hopeful that our grounded designs help cultivate a healthier future for us and Earth. Every day we are developing new creative vision and sensible construction applications which challenge the conventional model of residential landscaping.”

Elizabeth is an educator and enjoys opportunities to lecture on a variety of garden and sustainability topics. She has been active as a volunteer in the Willamette Valley, working to preserve and restore historically significant gardens, natural areas, and cultural spaces. She recently retired from Chemeketa Community College, where she served for over 2 decades as adjunct professor, sharing her knowledge with the next generation of landscape designers, horticulturists, contractors and business professionals. She continues to guide The Garden Angels, changing our local environs and outdoor spaces, one garden at a time.

• Retired Professor of Landscape Architecture, Chemeketa Community College, Adjunct
• Retired Certified Professional in Erosion & Sediment Control (CPESC)
• Retired LEED Green Associate - US Green Building Council
• Construction Project Manager-Landscape Construction Professional LCP 14025
• Certified Landscape Professional - BackyardHabitats.org, Portland Audubon & Columbia Land Trust
• 2023 Winner - Women in the Green Industry Award
• Co-Founder The Lord & Schryver Conservancy
• Certified Business - Marion County Oregon Earthwise Program
• Member - National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP)
• Member - Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD)
• Member - Oregon Association of Nurseries (OAN)
• Member - Oregon Landscape Contractors Association (OLCA)
• Over 2000+ designed and 600+ built projects in the Pacific Northwest (from the smallest of backyards to large scale sites- including planting 77,000+ trees & shrubs in one 58-acre habitat restoration project, now a beautiful forest on South Salem's Brown Island.)

Powers is married, a grandmother, and when she is not gardening, still enjoys making music on her lovely grand piano.