Diana L. Drake

Diana L. Drake has been active as a landscape designer for two decades, working with the firms of Judith Heintz Landscape Architecture and Wallace Roberts & Todd in New York City, and as an independent contractor. In addition to managing both large and small public projects, she has specialized in selecting plants for public spaces, such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Theodore Roosevelt Park (adjacent to the American Museum of Natural History); rooftop gardens, such as One River Terrace in Battery Park City; and numerous residential gardens in New York City, Connecticut and East Hampton.

Summer internships at the Center for Plant Conservation and the Arnold Arboretum in Massachusetts quickened her interest in plant species rather than cultivars, now augmented by her use of native species. Drake currently is involved with the all-native planting of Southpoint Open Space on Roosevelt Island, which will open mid-summer, 2011.

Prior to her work in garden design, Drake had an active career in the media. She holds advanced degrees in landscape architecture from Harvard's Graduate School of Design, where she studied plants and design under Michael van Valkenburgh, Peter del Tredici and Michael Dirr, and in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, in addition to a B.A. in literature from SUNY-Binghamton.

Diana L. Drake teaches Advanced Planting Design.