Lani Woodruff
Owner/Designer

Benjamin Disraeli once said, “Beauty can inspire miracles”.  Beauty inspires me to create.   It is why I design landscapes and organize spaces for my clients.  I believe when we take the time to explore what is beautiful to us, surround ourselves by it and live in that space, miracles unfold.

My path in the landscape design industry has not been a direct one, but one that lead me where I am today nonetheless.  My college education began with a BS degree in Health and Wellness.  This background influences my perspective of our natural surroundings and the importance of being connected with nature for our overall wellness.  My husband, Garth, and I were married and he started his own landscape design/build firm in which I got involved.  My interest grew and soon I returned to school and earned another BS degree in Horticulture with an emphasis in Landscape Design.  The first part of my career I designed for our design/build firm in Northern Virginia.  With a move to Michigan and Garth taking a landscape architecture teaching position, I found myself at a crossroads and decided I wanted to engage in the industry in a different way.  RootBound, a landscape design studio, was born.  Designing landscapes now for over twenty-five years I enjoy attending conferences and seminars of various associations in the field, and continue to learn new ways through technology and exploration to serve my clients.  Most recently, I completed a certification through the Association of Professional Landscape Designers. 

Besides the journey that my landscape art takes me on, I have lived many other adventures.  I am the mother of two boys, Foster and Hudson.  Having them both contribute here at RootBound adds meaningful dimension to my days.  Sailing has filled my life with stories and expanded my comfort zone taking me across the Atlantic.  I enjoyed racing triathlons for a spell.  Today long hikes and yoga are more my speed.  But hands down the greatest adventure has been sharing life with my high school sweetheart. 

Reach me at lani@rootbound.com

Garth Woodruff
Owner/Designer

I started my first landscape design/build business in the fall of 1994.  That business was the backdrop to many learning opportunities and experiences that make much of who I am today.  My focus and passion has always been residential landscape architecture.  That passion fueled not only a successful tenure in the ‘green industry’ but has cast me into higher education. 

After 18 of those years in practice I moved to being the Director and Professor of environmental and landscape design at Andrews University.  The combination of academia, scholarship, design and practice is a perfect fit in my life.  I actively research sense of place and environmental design.  I am regularly speaking, writing and researching with the hope of taking this art to a new level in both my life and the industry as a whole.

Sailing is another passion I share with my wife (Lani) and our two boys.  I currently race out of the St. Joe Yacht Club.  We have had opportunities, as a tight family unit, to sail many trips up and down coasts and across oceans.  Beyond my academic titles I am more proud that I carry Merchant Mariner credentials as Captain.  It is being in nature that combines my on the water and on the land passions.

I see landscape design as the opportunity for me to exercise my creativity.  However, my goal as a designer is to not create monuments to myself through form or plants, but to act as the intermediate for the customer.  I see it as my job to create or re-create ‘place’ for my customers through good communication, understanding and re-forming all within a very client-centric process.  What we do is not just art, but art that has a purpose, physical and emotional, all of which is imbedded in the natural environment. 

Reach me at garth@rootbound.com