Visionary: Gardens and Landscapes for Our Future

Natalie Cash is the Executive Producer for the Wildlife Conservation Society. With three decades experience, Cash creates innovative programming about WCS projects for multiple platforms. Before joining WCS, Natalie was a series producer and writer at the award-winning documentary production company Pangolin Pictures. Cash holds an MFA in Screenwriting from Stephens College, is a Fellow of The Explorers Club and chairs its Public Lectures Committee, a member of New York Women in Film & Television, and serves on the Advisory Boards of Jackson Wild and the New York WILD Film Festival.

Cathy Deutsch has been Wave Hill’s Director of Horticulture since 2021 and has more than two decades working and designing in public spaces from Central Park Conservancy to Greenwood Gardens. Her introduction to gardening began as an apprentice under Marco Polo Stufano, and soon thereafter she pursued study at NYBG’s School of Professional Horticulture. Having come full circle, Cathy is currently undertaking ambitious projects that will usher Wave Hill’s gardens to improved accessibility and greater resiliency to climate change. She is proud to instill the traditions of great gardening that originally inspired her and further Wave Hill’s undeniable impact on the garden community.

Giacomo Guzzon is a Principal Landscape Architect and Head of Planting Design at the international landscape architecture firm Gillespies in London and author of Visionary: Gardens and Landscapes for Our Future. He has taught planting design for several years at the University of Greenwich, the University of Sheffield, and the KLC School of Design in London. Giacomo contributes to a variety of international conferences and publications, and has lectured in Hong Kong, the US, and throughout Europe. He is currently pursuing a PhD in plant science at the Technical University in Berlin.

Stefan Herda is a Senior Designer at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc. Growing up exploring the ravines of Toronto, Stefan’s curiosity for botanical knowledge and land-based learning informed his career in the visual arts. After nine years working across diverse media, Stefan redirected his interests toward community planting initiatives and urban ecology.  As a mentor at an Indigenous Youth and Elder-led program in Ontario, Stefan developed an enthusiasm for cultivating landscape literacy in others. He was a Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation Regional Scholar and awarded the CSLA Award of Excellence and the Gold Medal in Design.

Signe Nielsen is the Founding Principal of MNLA and has been practicing as a landscape architect and urban designer in New York since 1978. Her body of work has renewed the environmental integrity and transformed the quality of spaces for those who live, work, and play in the urban realm. A Fellow of the ASLA, she has received over 100 national and local design awards for public open space projects and is published extensively nationally and internationally. Signe is a professor of urban design and landscape architecture at Pratt Institute. She is a Member of Wave Hill’s Board of Directors and oversee Wave Hill’s Master Plan.

Claire Takacs is a multi-award-winning photographer from Australia, who has specialized in capturing the world’s best and most beautiful gardens and landscapes for the past twenty years. She uses light to reveal their beauty and essence. Her work features regularly in leading international magazines and her books, in addition to Visionary, include: Dreamscapes, Australian Dreamscapes, Windcliff: A Story of People, Plants, and Gardens, and Wild: The Naturalisitic Garden.