Opening a small garden center in 1979 offering select nursery stock, good gardening advice and a hands-on approach to customer service, we offered a design service for our landscape customers. The popularity and success of this aspect of the business led us away from retail and into full-time design and installation. Although we miss the daily contact with our gardening customers, we’re excited and proud of the work we’ve accomplished over the past decades transforming properties of all sizes and styles. We know good landscaping, well considered and expertly executed, can actually change lives. The architect Luis Barrigan put it this way:

“Nature reduced to human proportions…transforms into the most efficient haven against the aggressiveness of contemporary life.”

Jeff Hutton, principle owner and our primary designer, is a frequent lecturer at garden clubs and related functions.  He has been a featured speaker at The Hartford Flower Show, The Connecticut Master Gardener Design Symposium and The Elizabeth Park Winter Lecture Series as well as The Connecticut Nurserymen’s Association. Check our speaking schedule for upcoming events or contact us if your organization is interested in a presentation.  Also an accomplished writer, check out Jeff’s book “Inside Out: The Art & Craft of Home Landscaping” (Breakaway Books, 2007).

Our landscape installation crews are led and quite often inspired by Rob Symonds.  Rob and Jeff have worked together since the days of the garden center and Rob has become an accomplished designer in his own right.  Anything Jeff can imagine, Rob can help realize – from elaborate stone work to beautiful gardens.  Rob’s hands-on approach, his distinct and uncompromising signature, impacts much of our work as he leads crews of expert masons, carpenters and gardeners to translate your wildest dreams into beautiful reality.

Featured in local newspapers such as the Hartford Courant and The Journal Inquirer; Earthworks has also been featured nationally for a full spread in American Nurserymen Magazine’s Superior Sites.  Over the years we’ve won design and installation awards from The Connecticut Nurseryman and Landscape Association.  We’ve taken part in professional training as liaisons with The University of Connecticut Landscape Design Program.  Jeff was an instructor in a program at the University to certify landscapers as well as a contributing writer for the manual used by students.  He teaches a popular Landscape Design Class for Homeowners through a local Continuing Education Program and occasionally at a local community college.  Jeff wrote a weekly landscape column for a local newspaper and is the author of the book, INSIDE OUT: The Art & Craft of Home Landscaping (Breakaway Books, 2007).  He is currently at work on his second book about Creating Great Back Yards.