Landscapes connect us to the environment, to one another, and to ourselves.
Preston Montague is a landscape architect and artist working to strengthen relationships between people and the environment.
Through his multi-disciplinary, award-winning, eponymous environmental arts studio, Preston provides design and consultation services for clients with needs ranging in scale from intimate private gardens to large-scale public land planning and management projects. Preston Montague Studio collaborates with architects, engineers, and developers to provide clients with resilient, ecologically robust, cost-effective solutions with an attention to aesthetics that spark emotional reactions.
Preston’s decades-long training in the arts, tempered by the practicalities of his experience in horticulture, and informed by his exploration of wilder places, provides clients with solutions that Preston and his collaborators believe balance passion with pragmatism.
Preston's front yard, a cosmopolitan assembly of native North Carolina Piedmont species, Mediterranean herbs, and traditional Southern pass along plants selected for their heat and drought tolerance.
Click below to join Preston for a conversation with Margaret Roach, renowned garden columnist at The New York Times, where he describes his approach to design and management of native plant-focused landscapes for Wild Ones.
Landscape design for Wild Ones, a not-for-profit organization focused on advocacy and education about native plants and ecological landscape design. Above is Preston’s submission for a design template appropriate for use in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic Piedmont.
Preston Montague Studio provides fine prints and greeting cards featuring native plants that adds a special touch to your correspondence or makes a great gift for the nature-lover in your life
Much of our work involves improving the ecological function of new construction. We believe biodiversity in plant, insect, and animal populations is a precious natural resource that we are honored to protect through our work. Because people are a part of ecological function, we also believe that creating beauty, and encouraging curiosity about nature, encourages people to take better care of the environment in which we all depend.
Preston Montague in conversation with Walter Magazine about botanical illustration featuring native plants of the Southeast.
Listen to an episode of The Native Plant Podcast hosted by landscape designer, John Magee of Magee Design
Article for the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators in support of Codex Carolinum, a 26-piece botanical illustration series featuring native plants of North Carolina. Illustration of jewelweed and poison ivy with associated pollinating insects and box turtle.
Preston returns to Walter Magazine to discuss garden design.
Still Life written for the Lady BIrd Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, TX