Meet the landscape designer on a mission to ‘beautify’ cities

The award-winning landscape designer and horticulturist on her Kenyan childhood, feeling a strong connection with the land and her desire to beautify cities. Words: Paula McWaters, Portrait: Rachel Warne

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Published: Tuesday, 10 December 2024 at 09:58 AM

In 2021, Kenyan-born Wambui Ippolito was named by Veranda magazine as one of ‘11 revolutionary female landscape designers and architects everyone should know’, an accolade she attributes to her roots. “I believe it is because I have an optic outside of anything western European or American,” she says. “There is a long tradition of gardening in the UK – a certain template that is echoed in America too. But I take a very different approach; growing up in East Africa, the landscape is so vast, it gives you a panoramic view.”

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Based in New York, Wambui practises mostly on the East Coast and is currently working on large estates in the Westchester area, north of the city. She is also in demand on the lecture circuit and as a consultant helping institutions and museums to develop horticultural programming. “There is something in me that wants to continue to explore, to learn and to grow,” she says.

Chairing the Society of Garden Designers’ spring conference earlier this year, she was praised for her enquiring approach. “I wanted answers from the audience: how are young people thinking? What effect is Instagram having on landscape design? How can we work more sustainably in a real way? It became very inclusive and that’s something I think I am good at: bringing people together.”

I was trying to be what I’d call ‘a serious person’, but really and truly, all I wanted to do was to be outside.

Nature was always part of Wambui’s DNA. Much of her childhood was spent outside – born in Nairobi, she grew up in the Rift Valley, on her family farm in Uasin Gishu, where she had freedom to explore and felt a strong connection with the land. “I loved that life – just walking around, looking at plants and picking fruit and berries,” she says.

Her mother, a diplomat, is an avid gardener. “She would take me with her on plant-buying trips to visit an influential man called Peter Greensmith. He was a British ex-soldier who became an expert horticulturist, responsible for turning Nairobi into the green city it is. My mother would always encourage me to pick out a plant for myself. One of the last ones I chose as a child was a bougainvillea, which is still growing at my mother’s property now.”

When Wambui was 14, the family moved to Washington DC, where she went to high school. “I also went to school in Costa Rica for a while – we did a lot of travelling.” Later, she studied international development, and in her twenties worked as a democracy consultant in Washington. “I was trying to be what I’d call ‘a serious person’, but really and truly, all I wanted to do was to be outside.”

Ten years ago, living in Staten Island, New York, with her American husband and new baby daughter, Wambui finally made the move. Returning to corporate life held zero appeal, so she began volunteering at Snug Harbor Botanical Garden and then enrolled at the New York Botanical Garden School of Professional Horticulture.

After finishing her studies, Wambui cut her teeth at Martha Stewart’s garden in Bedford, New York. “I couldn’t have had a better start – she has great plant collections and we had to follow the highest standards of horticulture.” Shortly afterwards, Wambui moved on to a work placement at David Letterman’s estate. “Equally wonderful but in a different way,” she says. Focusing on native plants used ornamentally, it reminded Wambui of her home in Kenya and the plants that grew wild there.

I loved that life – just walking around, looking at plants and picking fruit and berries.

Wambui has since been making her mark. In 2021, she won a Gold Award and Best in Show at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Philadelphia Flower Show, and a year later she was invited to design a courtyard garden at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia. “I believe I was the first black woman in America to design a permanent garden for a major botanical institution,” she says.

In Nairobi, Wambui has taken on the care of her mother’s garden, one of the few remaining pockets of old, original forestland in a city that has seen huge change. “When I was growing up, this was such a languid, quiet town, so beautiful and green. Then we had this population explosion and many trees were cut down to build housing. It’s precious and I want to preserve it forever by caring for the native trees
and plants that are here, and adding more.”

Much as Wambui enjoys creating gardens, she has wider ambitions. “I would like to work with cities and municipalities around the world to help beautify them, and to reforest large tracts of land that have been lost to deforestation. I believe the future is there. At the same time, we could create more jobs for young people – and particularly women – by setting up nurseries where native plants can be propagated. It could make a big, big difference.”

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Wambui is currently writing a book that will highlight the influence that immigrants’ gardens have had on the American landscape. Provisionally titled Terra Nova, it will be published by Timber Press in 2026.

Find out more about Wambui Ippolito’s work at wambuidesign.com