PEOPLE

JOANNA PERTZ, RLA – Founder + Principal

As Founder and Principal of JPLA, with 30 years of experience in landscape architecture, Joanna has built a reputation as a leading NY Landscape Architect with award-winning built work across a range of scales and project types. She is driven to create landscapes that have a positive impact on communities and the built and natural environment. A uniquely gifted and passionate New York Landscape Architect, Joanna is known for her conceptual rigor, technical excellence, and commitment to ecological sustainability. Her passion for drawing, movement, and space informs the shapes, relationships, and scale of the spaces she designs. As a native New Yorker, her goal is to create unique and meaningful urban places that bring the natural world into focus and foster connections between people and their surroundings. Her design experience includes Hospitals, Low-Income Housing, Schools, Waterfront Parks, College Campuses, Corporate Landscapes, and High-end Residential.

Joanna received her BA in Environmental Studies and Fine Arts from The University of California Santa Cruz and a Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture from The Rhode Island School of Design, where she graduated with Honors. Prior to starting JPLA in 2003, Joanna was an Associate at HLW International LLP and a Design Manager at Quennell Rothschild and Partners, LLP. She also worked as an Apprentice Stone Carver in Texas, assisting in the production of large-scale urban sculpture before entering Architectural practice.

Joanna has cultivated a dynamic, collaborative practice founded on exploring innovative ideas, experiential design, and fine craft. She created and leads JPLA’s talented landscape designer and management team. JPLA designs landscapes that build and sustain lasting value for our clients, the communities they serve, and greater ecological systems. Our firm’s expert systems provide a strong framework that allows us to efficiently fulfill our clients’ project goals and vision.

As a leading New York Landscape Architect, Joanna understands that a successful landscape is one that sustains and thrives over time. JPLA offers comprehensive Landscape Architectural services and long-term horticultural support and site stewardship. Through their Maintenance Oversight Services and Ecological Stewardship, JPLA maintains lasting relationships with clients, so that our landscape projects continue to mature elegantly, with design continuity and strong ecological systems ensuring they remain sustainable and dynamic into the future.

RACHEL WHITESIDE, RLA – Associate Principal

Rachel plays a critical role in supporting the firm and Founder – collaborating on design, helping to shape strategy and business development, and managing projects in the office. Rachel is a licensed landscape architect who leads JPLA’s landscape architect design + production efforts to deliver clear, thorough design presentations and construction documents and interfaces with clients and consultants for streamlined, effective communication. Throughout the course of a project, Rachel takes pride in ensuring that JPLA’s design vision is carried out from the inception of concept design through the execution of construction details. With 17 years in the field, Rachel brings to the team a diverse skill set that includes an advanced understanding of the materials and technologies of landscape and a penchant for plants and planting design. Her goal is to maintain JPLA’s place as one of the most innovative landscape architecture firms in New York.

Rachel received a BA from Amherst College and an MLA from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. With a background in Fine Arts, she has an eye for design and a graphic sensibility that she brings to her work. Since graduating from Harvard in 2004, Rachel has worked in New York City building her experience in resilience design landscape architecture on local and international projects, across a range of sectors and scales. Rachel enjoys exploring Brooklyn’s large parks with her family and dog and takes refuge in the beaches and meadows of the North Shore of Long Island where she grew up.

ANNIE SCOTT HALABURDA – Horticulture Oversight Manager and Landscape Designer

An accomplished landscape designer and practitioner, Annie Scott Halaburda manages JPLA’s Maintenance Oversight practice. In this role, she helps guide the stewardship of designed landscapes. Annie works with our client teams to identify the required services needed, assemble a team of allied professionals to perform the work, and oversees the project in-situ to provide the best systems and strategies for the health of their landscapes. Her work is guided by a hands-on approach with an emphasis on field observations and clear communication with clients and contractors.

Prior to joining JPLA, Annie earned both a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the City College of New York, and a Master’s in Landscape Design from The Conway School. Annie comes to JPLA with the experience of founding a boutique ecological design studio where she designed landscapes for residential clients, community projects, and nonprofits. Her extensive knowledge of native horticulture and ecological maintenance practices enriches the depth of the firm’s work.

Annie believes in creating and sustaining landscapes that are resilient architectural landscape design and emotionally resonant. Through her work, she aims to create opportunities for joy and engagement in the landscape to foster a shared sense of environmental stewardship. In her free time, Annie enjoys working in her vegetable garden, biking, hiking, and exploring natural and urban areas.

MARIA ISABEL ARROYO – Landscape Designer

Maria has a facility with the digital tools of graphics and technical production, particularly with AutoCAD drafting, organization, and drawing management. As a project designer, Maria supports the development and refinement of design concepts through clear and thorough graphic and technical documents and also excels in developing organizational systems and product research. In her first year at JPLA landscape architecture firms, Maria led production on NYCHA PACT ABM, 3 public housing landscapes in Washington Hts Neighborhood, with the completion of construction documents in January 2022.

Prior to joining JPLA and NY landscape architecture, Maria worked throughout the Mid-Atlantic on a diverse range of projects including small public spaces, highway greening, urban streetscapes, multi-family residential landscapes, and private residential gardens. Her Graduate education at the Harvard Graduate School of Design MLA Program provided a framework of space-making and ecology and refined her undergraduate foundation in landscape design architects and analysis. Maria is an avid reader and maker and enjoys learning about history, art, and sustainability while also dabbling in a number of creative projects including drawing, sewing, crocheting, and photography.

AARON NELL – Landscape Designer

As a landscape designer at JPLA, Aaron contributes to all aspects of project work from design and planning to advancing material research to construction documents and construction administration. Aaron strives for clarity in graphic and verbal communication, coordinating with consultants and clients throughout the architectural landscape design process.

Prior to joining JPLA and New York Landscape Architecture, Aaron worked in Southern California on landscape and planning projects in multifamily, estate residential, institutional, corporate, and public landscapes, focusing on landscape architecture and sustainability design practices in drought and fire-sensitive regions. Originally from rural Alabama, he graduated with an MLA from Auburn University in his home state and worked as a graduate teaching assistant in design introduction classes. Aaron is passionate about landscape as the intersection of human and non-human expression in the city. He enjoys exploring, sketching, and investigating ecologies both native and novel.

ALEX HADLEY – Landscape Designer

Alex Hadley assists at all stages of design at JPLA, with a particular focus on the production of technical design documents, modeling in 3D, and writing about our New York landscape architecture firm for proposals, awards, and marketing purposes. With his experience in digital design and teaching ecological theory, Alex helps projects achieve a high level of refinement. Having worked for several years with landscape architects, Alex is able to lead clients to elegant solutions rooted in real-world experience.

Prior to joining JPLA, Alex completed his undergrad in Architecture at Temple University, as well as a master’s degree in ecological design at IAAC in Barcelona. After finishing his master’s, Alex continued to work in Spain at the Valldaura Labs research center, teaching small-scale intensive agriculture and ecological theory. While acting as Technical Director, he participated on two full-scale building prototypes (The Voxel, 2020 and F.L.O.R.A, 2022) which were featured in The New York Times, ArchDaily, and Dezeen. Alex has also published writing on the politics of sustainability and ecological design, and the intersection of design and economic production.