Landscape Designer of the Year 2026: Andrew van Egmond -

Andrew van Egmond’s first landscape designs were underwater.

As a kid, he kept an aquarium—not just for the fish, but for the miniature green world around them. “I was more fascinated by the plants and making these little landscapes,” he says. “It’s such a cheesy story.”

Cheesy? Maybe. Useful? Definitely.

Today, that captivation remains but the scale is bigger: Garry oak bluffs, mossy rock, wetland-inspired planting and steep West Coast sites. Van Egmond sees each landscape as a living system, one that changes with the seasons and years, needs guidance and leaves room for the unexpected.

For van Egmond, the first problem is how often a property becomes an island. “We tend to over-decorate and make little islands in our environment,” says the Dutch-Canadian designer. “There is a reason why we moved here to the West Coast or why we appreciate the wild. But somehow we push it out.”

The second problem is our urge to fill said island. Too many small gestures can dilute a space’s calm, so he favours a few strong moves and a restrained material palette.

CALM BY NATURE: For Andrew van Egmond, calm begins with reading the land. He pares each design down to its strongest gestures, connects it to the larger landscape and frames nature just enough to let its messiness, movement and character lead. Photo by Evaan Kheraj.

Before moving to British Columbia in 2016, van Egmond spent 11 years at OKRA landscape architects in the Netherlands, working on public squares, parks, inner-city public spaces and citywide master plans. There, he learned to read a site through its geology, history, recreation and sociology. “That implies really long processes,” he says. “And it also means often watering down of the concept.”

He eventually returned to residential design and ran his own practice before moving to B.C., bringing that same analysis to smaller sites with closer client relationships and more room for poetry. British Columbia demanded a new design vocabulary. The long lines he uses to create calm were harder to carry across uneven terrain.

“I come from a very flat country,” says van Egmond. “The Netherlands is so flat. Working with the elevation changes and steep sites—that’s a totally different ballgame.”

GARDEN STATE: Back in his native Netherlands, van Egmond drew neighbouring Vondelpark into this historic Amsterdam garden with antique yellow IJssel brick, dense planting and a green-tiled, plant-filtered pool. “We wanted to draw in that park gesture a little bit, but also honour the historic site,” he says. Photo by Andrew van Egmond.

He learned to read the land slowly. Maps, soil and geology help, but so do hiking boots.

“If I have a new site, I look for the closest park or provincial park… and I go and have a hike there,” he says. “And I take a lot of pictures of plants that I see, rock formations and just to get a feel of that bigger landscape.”

Every landscape tells a different story. A coniferous forest might mean humus-rich soil, ferns and vine maples; Saturna Island, Garry oak, Douglas fir and dry grasses. Ucluelet and Summerland are different again.

On Saturna, the strongest move was restraint. Sandstone, slope, sky and water were already doing plenty, so van Egmond left the bluff in front of his house untouched.

CONCRETE RESTRAINT: On Saturna Island, van Egmond let the land lead: “Just keeping the bluff the bluff.” Where hardscape was needed, he mixed Portland cement with sandy soil from the property to echo the sandstone bedrock. Photo by Andrew van Egmond.

“Just keeping the bluff the bluff,” he says. “The tendency to do something in front of the house was big, you know, but again, the discipline was not to do anything and to keep it empty.”

Sometimes, doing nothing is the design.

Where he did intervene, he worked with what was already there. Imported stone felt alien; plain concrete, generic. For non-structural landscape elements, he mixed Portland cement with sandy aggregate excavated from the property, echoing the sandstone bedrock and capturing small branches, pinecones and leaves in the surface.

“It becomes one,” he says. “It’s this human-made sculpture that has the same colour as the sandstone rock bedrock in the background.”

Saturna Island. Photo by Andrew van Egmond.

At Vancouver’s Refolded House, van Egmond and Alexander Suvajac Landscape worked with architecture by McLeod Bovell Modern Houses to reconnect the developed site to its historic roots in the Fraser River floodplain. Wetland-inspired sedges form a low green field around the weathered-wood structure.

“The wooden structure emerging from that green field, I think that worked out really well,” he says. “This whole coherence between the architecture and the landscape, creating one experience.”

WET ’N’ WILD: At Vancouver’s Refolded House, van Egmond, with Alexander Suvajac, set McLeod Bovell’s weathered-wood home in a field of sedges inspired by the site’s history as part of the Fraser River floodplain. “The wooden structure emerging from that green field, I think that worked out really well,” he says, bringing architecture and landscape into one experience. Photo by Ema Peter.

At Shoreline House in View Royal, designed by Splyce Design, van Egmond removed visual clutter along with domesticated planting to let mossy rock, native vegetation and the waterfront lead. He also built up the rock around the main patio so it could remain open without a guardrail cutting through the view. “It stops the connection with the landscape,” he says.

Shoreline House in View Royal, with architecture by Splyce Design and landscape design by Andrew van Egmond. Photo by Andrew van Egmond.

OPEN SKIES: At Shoreline House in View Royal, van Egmond used concrete hardscape to echo the bedrock, moss dishes to carry the landscape onto the patio and surrounding rock instead of railings to preserve the waterfront view. Photo by Andrew van Egmond.

Shoreline House in View Royal, with architecture by Splyce Design and landscape design by Andrew van Egmond. Photo by Andrew van Egmond.

A railing cuts the horizon. Another feature can talk over the rock. Empty space can do more than another intervention.

Judge Paul Sangha of Paul Sangha Creative praises van Egmond’s “simple and strong lines” and “minimal intervention,” while judge Joseph Fry of Hapa Collaborative points to his “subtle sophistication,” “quiet refinement” and “innovative approach to materials choices—borrowing from the larger contextual landscape.”

Calm, in other words, is mostly subtraction.

“You want to put them all in,” says van Egmond. “But then you get to a point like, this is way too much. And then you have to eliminate 90 percent of it to stay to the essence of a plan.”

That instinct is becoming ecological as well as aesthetic. Van Egmond sees landscape design moving away from tightly controlled gardens and toward wilder, more diverse systems that can adapt to a changing climate and support more life.

The bluff stays open. The wetland comes home. The moss keeps the rock. The railing, whenever possible, disappears.

Van Egmond is not taming the wild into good behaviour. He is making room for it to belong.

Andrew van Egmond on Design

Andrew van Egmond. Photo by Evaan Kheraj.

Who’s a Western Canadian designer whose work you admire?

Patricia and John Patkau, pictured at the Polygon Gallery, one of their designs. Photo by Martin Tessler.

Patkau Architects, because they try to push the boundaries of what’s technically possible; because they want to achieve forms that work in their context and radically shape the experience of moving through and around it. And Omer Arbel, because his inspiration by nature is stunning. Even his book represents a complexity and layered approach that you can only find in nature (or these days in algorithmic and parametric AI-driven rendering).

What books are on your nightstand?

Austere Gardens by Marc Treib. Book cover courtesy of ORO Editions.

I’ve read Austere Gardens by Marc Treib several times, and the book is still important to me as a reminder to think outside the conventional and embrace the calm and essential. Reading this small book shaped my approach to landscape design in an important way. There is also a seasonal magazine called Emergence. The subtitle is “Ecology, Culture and Spirituality,” and I do believe these themes are important, because there is so much distraction that we tend to drift away from their nurturing nature.

Andrew’s Local Favourites

For Breakfast

Steveston Cafe and Hotel. Photo courtesy of Steveston Hotel.

The Steveston Cafe and Hotel is just a basic, old-fashioned breakfast.

For Lunch and Dinner

Part and Parcel in Victoria. Photo courtesy of Part and Parcel.

We live on an island, and although beautiful, I do get island fever sometimes. We head to Victoria, where places like Part and Parcel are good antidotes against it: they have an amazing menu and the combination of flavours is always surprising and joyful.

For Coffee

Hide + Seek Coffee in Oak Bay. Just good coffee and a nice low-profile design feel.

Editor’s note: Hide + Seek’s Oak Bay shop has since closed. The café currently has locations in Fairfield, Vic West and the Royal BC Museum.

For Design Shopping

In Victoria, Arrietty Home on Fort Street offers small, simple and clever designs for small-space living.

For an Undiscovered Gem

Mount Warburton Pike on Saturna Island. Photo courtesy of AllTrails.

On Saturna Island, where I live, Brown Ridge offers about three kilometres of trail starting on Mount Warburton, guiding you along a forest line that opens up into a feral goat-graced landscape, where the pattern the goats leave is of an inspiring graphic nature.