Viridian’s 2026 Landscape Love Languages

“Love languages” are five ways people express love to strengthen relationships. The five best known are Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch. Not every love language resonates with every person; we all have specific ways we need or want to be seen, supported, and inspired. 

We believe that landscapes, like relationships, can also make us feel seen, supported, and inspired. In the last year, we’ve advanced five projects that support our clients in the specific way they need it — in their love language, so to speak.

Words of Affirmation: Speaking Their Language in Lancaster

For some people, their love language is literally language — spoken and written words of encouragement and understanding. Language was central to our work designing three new parks in Lancaster, PA. We invited Spanish and Swahili translators to our public design workshops to ensure we heard perspectives from everyone in this diverse community. “Your work has blown open what we can do with Parks in Lancaster,” they told us. Those are words of affirmation we love to hear. Two parks are under construction now—Ewell Gantz Park and the Joe Jackson “Tot Lot”—and a third project is starting soon outside the nation’s oldest farmer’s market.

Acts of Service: Growing a Healthier Future in Overbrook

The best landscapes aren't just beautiful; they're an act of service. They give back. They offer support. In the Overbrook neighborhood, the ongoing realization of our master plan is transforming a once-contaminated site into a thriving community resource that provides fresh produce, green infrastructure, and education opportunities—allowing people to grow, play, and learn together. A new greenhouse and food education initiatives have proven to be successful, and construction begins soon on a new environmental learning center.  Read More about Overbrook >

Receiving Gifts: Building the Heart of a Community

Every park is a gift to the community. As our design for Triangle Park in Rutledge wraps up Phase 1 construction, new placemaking is reshaping the heart of this active community, creating a new shared identity. Phase 1 is proving to be a gift that keeps on giving, as the community leverages its success—and renderings of future phases— to rally support and keep the vision moving forward.

Quality Time: Masterplanning with the People of Pennsylvania

This year, we delivered our 1,044-acre master plan for the Susquehanna Riverlands, the first new PA State Park in 60 years. While developing the project, we spent a lot of quality time with the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the people of the Riverlands. Our goal is to protect and restore native ecosystems while creating resilient, engaging landscapes that serve the area. Great landscapes come from taking the time to understand people and place.

Physical Touch: Fostering Health, Happiness, & Rubbed Bellies

At AVIRA, a new Philly mixed-use development from Brandywine Realty Trust, we transformed an asphalt strip under a rail line into a welcoming place for playful connection between people and their pets. AVIRA residents—and the general public—are spreading the love through scratched ears and games of fetch. We worked through a tight timeline and complex logistics to integrate the playful landscape with the new building's design and the city's infrastructure.

A final point about the commonality between relationships and landscape: they both take time to blossom, and require more than one person to put in the work. That’s why so much of what we do is community-driven. It’s why we spend so much time empowering the people who will be using these spaces every day. Because we’re in this together. Because we’re all in it for the long haul. And because we love what we do.