We provide services to many different types of groups, from universities and municipalities, non-profits and corporations, to community improvement districts and neighborhood associations. Regardless of the client size or project budget, we provide a full-team commitment from start to finish. What does that mean? It means that regardless of scale or fee, our entire team collaborates on each and every project. This unique and equitable distribution of firm resources is one of the ways that we ensure that our emphasis remains on using design to lift up communities at all scales.

Our office is in the Grove neighborhood of St. Louis, just a block away from some of the best eateries and concert venues in the city. At any given time, there are at least two dogs in the office, and spring/summer happy hours on the patio have been known to attract a crowd. We take great joy in working together, and we try to nurture that sense of pride and community in everything we do.
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Arbolope was founded as an experiment. With the intention of acting hyper-locally and supporting the St. Louis community, we were interested in exploring ways that a for-profit firm like ours could perform a public-benefit role within the city. After almost ten years, our reach has expanded regionally and our team has spread out across three continents, but our mission feels more defined, urgent, and more possible than ever before. Each of our projects are driven by the direct relationships we are nurturing with individuals and groups of diverse, active, and passionate people who simply want to see their communities grow and thrive.

Just a few other firms and allied professionals from around the world that we consider to be good friends with aligned missions, whose work we love to support:

Michael Vergason Landscape Architects, Base Landscape Architecture, Studio-MLA, Kotchakon Voraakhom, Dorothée Imbert, Axi:0me, Linda Samuels, Derek Hoeferlin, Ruderal, Albie Mitchell, Serhii Chrucky, and Natalie Yates.

We are currently working to quantify our carbon and overall eco-footprint. Check back soon for the launch of that data and the publishing of more information about how our project material choices and office practices are helping to lower our impact on the enviornment and support local ecologies.

Nativescaping refers to the practice of designing planting plans that mimic how they might appear in unmanaged environs – which means only using plants that are considered native, endemic, or historically adapted to the area and which support the local ecology by creating habitat and food for native pollinators such as ants, bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and moths; curbing erosion and stormwater runoff; and encouraging conservation of our special ecosystems.

Native plants are a great choice for public parks, streetscapes, and home gardens alike because they provide a sense of connection with the local landscape, are genetically adapted to local weather and soil conditions (thus requiring fewer resources and less maintenance), and provide food and habitat for local wildlife. By ensuring biodiversity when selecting plants, we help to make our communities – human and non-human alike – more resilient in the face of a changing climate.
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As a firm based in the midwestern United States, one of the key issues facing us today is how to anticipate, manage, and utilize stormwater. As the world's climate shifts, the midwest is expected to recieve even more rain than before, so we utilize new and next-generation landscape technologies across many of our projects, allowing for our project sites to capture, utilize, and recycle that water in ways that benefit plants, humans, animals, and insects alike.

Landscape design has a unique role to play in helping communities become more resilient in the face of an intensifying climate crisis. Environmental justice and social equity go hand-in-hand, because the people most effected by rising sea levels, soaring heat indexes, escalating food prices, contamination of potable water, severe flooding, and increased pollution are overwhelmingly those living in underserved, disinvested, minority communities. So, there are serious implications at many scales if we aren’t able to quantify, value, and implement site-based strategies for mitigating the impacts of these eco-crisis.

Well-designed, safe, and responsive public spaces strengthen communities at all levels, improving infrastructure, jump-starting civic pride, and helping to bridge systemic inequalities like access to healthy food and safe drinking water. At Arbolope, we believe in the power of design in the public realm to do good, and we collaborate with each of our community partners to create right-fit, hyper-local design solutions that tackle the intertwined issues of ecological resilience and equity.

We commit to delivering design services that: 

Promote ecological resilience
Support social equity
Enhance accessibility for all
Connect people to each other
Innovate purposefully 
Inspire and enrich

Certified Women-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE)
Certified Minority-Owned Business Enterprise (MBE)
‍Categories: #541320, #711510
City of St. Louis

Small Business Enterprise
Disadvantaged Small Business Enterprise
SAM.gov