President, Landscape Images
“If I’m stagnant, I’m not happy.” That growth-oriented mindset has shaped Marianne Mumford’s perspective as a gardener, business owner, and world traveler constantly seeking inspiration to make gardens — both hers and her clients’ — more beautiful.
Marianne caught the horticulture bug in high school, working for local florist Meade Wenzel. At LSU, Marianne fell in love with landscape architecture from the very first class. She subsequently fell for Alan Mumford (a fellow landscape architecture student) on a department trip to Europe led by a professor. That journey spawned a group that still travels together, exploring gardens in far-flung locales from Morocco to Japan and Brazil. Like this travel cohort, the Mumford union flourished, creating Landscape Images in 1984 and growing the company into one of the area’s premier landscape design, build, and maintenance firms.
Marianne’s journey through the industry initially focused on the business building and maintenance side of the organization. After Hurricane Katrina, she was drawn more deeply into design and found a happy medium integrating the two. “Maintenance is so key to everything we do in design,” she said. “I don’t know how people can operate without having a maintenance part of their company — because you design something with an intent of how big it’s going to be, how round it’s going to be, how you want it to eventually grow. If you don’t have that, it’s all for nothing.”
Marianne constantly visits client properties to keep an eye on progress and consult with crews. She prizes education and training for staff, with weekly demonstrations on techniques like arranging pots with different palettes of color. “They love it, they’re really engaged in it because they want to learn,” she said. “Sometimes we take that for granted, but it’s a super important part of our day.”
While Marianne appreciates all garden styles, from contemporary to formal to native (balanced with structure) and pollinator-friendly, she holds a special fondness for certain smaller or “off-the-wall” projects, like the couple who asked her to design a garden with a run path for their Great Dane, or the Lower Garden District home centered around a precious tree. “The oak tree ruled every move we made through the whole build,” she recalled. She loves using color in a garden and believes in giving careful weight to a home’s architectural style and the needs of its owners — all skills she has honed over many years in the business: “If you don’t listen to the client, you know nothing.”
Today the Mumfords split their time between New Orleans and the Mississippi farm they’ve owned for decades, where they grow plants for use in their business. The farm also serves as a playground for experimentation inspired by travels, like the Japanese garden currently in development. Marianne is also embarking on a refresh of the garden in her Uptown home, letting in more sunlight which will allow her to plant some long-desired additions. As she observed: “My style will change a little bit… gardens are always meant to change.”
