ABOUT DOBRO DESIGN:
A PRACTICE ROOTED IN PLACE AND CRAFT
The practice brings together landscape architecture, garden design, ecological landscapes, horticulture, garden craft, and long-term stewardship.
Dobro Design is led by Desirae D. Wood, a landscape architect and garden designer whose practice brings together nearly two decades of experience across landscape architecture, garden design, construction, horticulture, and garden stewardship. Desirae believes gardens are cultivated, not simply designed. A garden begins with a place, but becomes meaningful through attention, care, and time. Her work begins by looking closely at what a landscape already contains—its land, ecology, architecture, climate, history, and atmosphere—and allowing those qualities to guide what comes next.
Twelve years of apprenticeship and stewardship at Portland Japanese Garden established a deep foundation in garden practice and craft. Working alongside Japanese garden masters, Desirae learned through the traditional practice of doing: observing, placing stone, pruning, constructing, nurturing, and returning to the work again and again. She learned to understand stone through touch, plants through seasons, and landscapes through repetition and care. This experience shaped not a prescribed aesthetic, but a way of seeing—attentive to place, material, proportion, sequence, season, craftsmanship, and time.
Today, Dobro brings these principles into contemporary landscapes, responding to the particular character of each place rather than applying a predetermined style. The work is both analytical and intuitive—grounded in the physical qualities of land while attentive to atmosphere, beauty, emotion, and the experience of being in a place. Each landscape is approached as a composition: carefully made, experienced through the senses, and allowed to develop its own character over time.
Landscape is not simply an addition to architecture or property.
It is a living part of it.
DESIRAE D. WOOD
FOUNDING PRINCIPAL, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
Desirae D. Wood brings nearly two decades of experience across landscape architecture, garden design, construction, horticulture, and garden stewardship. Her twelve-year apprenticeship at Portland Japanese Garden under Sadafumi Uchiyama, provided an unusually deep foundation in garden craft and in the understanding of landscape as something living and continually changing.
Her work brings landscape architecture and garden practice together with a particular attention to nature, architecture, material, planting, and atmosphere. She approaches each landscape as a composition—one that can engage the senses, evoke emotion, and deepen through time.
The design process is collaborative. Desirae brings experience and clarity to each project while making space for the ideas, questions, and aspirations of the people who will live with the landscape. Together, client and designer look closely at what is already there and consider what the place could become.
Her practice is grounded in the belief that landscapes are living environments: places that shape how people move, gather, pause, observe, and experience the natural world.
Japanese garden tradition is an important lineage within Dobro Design.
Its influence is found not in a prescribed aesthetic, but in a way of observing and making: close attention to place, restraint, spatial sequence, natural materials, seasonality, craftsmanship, and the understanding that gardens develop through time and care. It is a tradition Desirae continues to learn from through observation, making, stewardship, and the changing life of each garden.
The landscape may be contemporary.
The place may be entirely different.
The principles remain.
This tradition continues to inform how Dobro sees, composes, makes, and tends landscape—while allowing each project to find its own expression.
Dobro Design’s work has received international and national recognition across landscape design, research, and garden practice.
DESIGN & PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION
Colorado Society of Landscape Architects · General Design Merit Award, 2025
Colorado Homes & Lifestyles · Top Landscape Architects, 2025
International Architecture MasterPrize · Garden Design Award, 2025
PUBLIC, CULTURAL & GARDEN PRACTICE
City of Boulder · Climate Resilient Landscape Showcase Finalist, 2026
RESEARCH & PUBLICATION
Colorado Society of Landscape Architects · Research & Communication Award, 2026
Landscape Journal · Peer-Reviewed Published Research, 2026
A thoughtful landscape begins with understanding the place.
Dobro Design welcomes conversations about private gardens, residential landscapes, public and cultural projects, and significant landscape transformations—particularly where architecture, land, planting, and long-term stewardship can be considered together throughout North America. Start a project inquiry by telling us about the property, the architecture, the landscape, and the opportunity.