JULIE MOIR MESSERVY - Landscape Designer
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Julie Moir Messervy is an internationally recognized landscape designer, award-winning author, and principal of Messervy Associates in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She received her bachelor of arts from Wellesley College and master of architecture and master in city planning degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She trained with the eminent Japanese garden master Kinsaku Nakane in Kyoto, Japan, first as a Henry Luce Scholar then later as a Japan Foundation Fellow.

Ms. Messervy recently completed the acclaimed Toronto Music Garden, which she created in collaboration with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the City of Toronto. This three-acre public park is designed as six garden "movements" that mirror the form, feeling, and structure of the “First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello” by J.S. Bach. Ms. Messervy and the Toronto Music Garden are the subject of the Emmy award-winning PBS television series, “Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach: The Music Garden.”

For the past 20 years, Ms. Messervy has created notable gardens throughout Boston. Her clients include: the Arnold Arboretum, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Friends of the Public Garden, Fidelity Investment Company, Mount Auburn Cemetery, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she helped design and build Tenshin-en, The Garden of the Heart of Heaven with Professor Kinsaku Nakane. Recent local projects include the interior and entry gardens for Praecis Pharmaceutical Company in Waltham, MA, and a children's garden for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in Wellesley. Projects outside of the region include landscape master plans for the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO., and the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Garden, Columbus, Ohio.

Celebrated author, Ms. Messervy’s first book, “Contemplative Gardens” (Howell Press, 1990), was called one of the ten best garden books of the year by The New York Times. Her second book, “The Inward Garden” (Little, Brown and Company, 1995) won the Garden Writers Association of America Gold Medal in 1996. Her third book, “The Magic Land”, was proclaimed a “delight” by Yo-Yo Ma and “a companion for inspired daydreaming” by Carol Stocker of The Boston Globe. It was released by Macmillan USA in 1998, and is currently published by John Wiley and Sons.

Ms. Messervy has taught in programs at MIT, Harvard, and Radcliffe. She lectures around the country and in Canada at such distinguished venues as the Smithsonian Institution, National Geographic Magazine, the Getty Museum, and at art museums, botanical gardens, and arboreta. Her column, “Inspired Design”, is a regular feature of Fine Gardening Magazine.

Julie Moir-Messervy can be reached at Julie@juliemoirmesservy.com.