Her first trip to the Southeastern Flower Show in Atlanta at age 18 got Beth Garmon hooked on doing landscape design. “I saw all the beautiful displays of plants and flowers and said ‘I can do that,’” she says. “The way all the elements came together naturally to create such beauty intrigued me.”

Beth graduated Cum Laude from the University of Georgia with her bachelor of Landscape Architecture in May 2006, but even before she graduated she began working with New Leaf Landscape Services, doing design for residential and commercial projects and putting her love of creativity into practice.

“My favorite part of my work is the chance to collaborate with clients for the right balance of creativity and functionality,” Beth says. “Being a good listener is crucial, and my knowledge of horticulture, coupled with the ideas clients and I come up with, is the best of all possible worlds.”

Beth says she looks at her work as an artist, using colors and textures to tell a story or create a mood. “There are so many wonderful types of plants to choose from, with new varieties being developed all the time, that the choices are constantly changing,” she says. “That’s part of the freshness of what I do.”

Beth and her husband Eric have been married for one year and live in Gainesville. They have a black lab and a cat. In her spare time she’s an avid reader and enjoys home improvement.

“Let me tell you the biggest reward in my work,” she says. “When an installation is complete and the client says, ‘Now, that’s exactly what I wanted; it’s perfect,” I know that our collaboration has been successful.”