USA Today Features Shades of Green Firm Profile
Rooted in Place: How Shades of Green Designs Landscapes that Belong
Ive Haugeland was barely tall enough to reach the bloom. A girl in Norway, peering into the wide mouth of a red tulip, studying the dark stamens and yellow center with the intensity only a child can sustain.
That image has stayed with Haugeland for decades. It surfaces when she talks about why she chose landscape architecture, a profession she had never heard of until a casual conversation at the garden nursery where she worked summers as a teenager. She could not tell a petunia from a pansy back then. But on quiet shifts, she read the plant books cover to cover, memorizing Latin names between customers. Something had already taken hold.
From Bergen to the Bay Area
Five years of practice in Bergen, Norway helped shape the design philosophy that still guides her work at Shades of Green today. The landscape studio she worked in favored clean juxtaposition: modern interventions contrasted against historic structures, so that both gained clarity and told a story of time.
Ive brought her modern instincts with her to California in 2000. Shortly after arriving, she earned her professional license, and in 2004, founded Shades of Green, the studio she would go on to build with a close-knit team. Since founding the studio, she has built a practice that allows for thoughtful design work, collaboration, and long-term creative control.
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