Two Renowned Garden Experts Will Speak at the Bronxville Library
By the Bronxville Green Committee
Feb. 25, 2026: The Village of Bronxville’s Green Committee is thrilled to host two exceptionally experienced landscape design specialists, Bram Gunther and Leslie Needham, who will discuss “How Healthy is Your Yard?” on March 3rd, 7 pm at the Bronxville Public Library. This free event, open to all, is co-sponsored by the Bronxville Adult School and will begin with short remarks by Mayor Mary Marvin. You can register here.
Bram Gunther currently serves as Vice President for Science and Development at Plan It Wild, a mission-driven sustainable landscape design firm based in Bedford. Plan It Wild’s goal is to restore suburban gardens into healthy native ecosystems that support biodiversity and beauty. It has developed the Wildr Score, a fun assessment tool for homeowners.
Leslie Needham runs her own landscape design firm, Leslie Needham Design LLC, which has a strong emphasis on sustainable design; she speaks widely and has been featured on multiple media outlets in our area. Her home landscape, River Hills, was chosen to join the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Gardens.
Both Plan It Wild and Leslie Needham were featured last September in Margaret Roach’s New York Times column “In This Class the Teacher Wants to Be Wild.”
For much of his career Bram Gunther worked for the New York City Parks Department, beginning as an Urban Park Ranger and serving for many years as Chief of Forestry, Horticulture, and Natural Resources; while there, he executed major projects such as Greenstreets and MillionTrees. Currently he serves on the boards of several conservation nonprofits, including the Natural Areas Conservancy, which he co-founded. He has a master’s degree in environmental management from the Yale School of the Environment.
Leslie Needham is a gardener, landscape designer, writer and lecturer who received a Landscape Design Certificate from the New York Botanical Garden and has taught in the program. Her work has been featured in Martha Stewart Living and Gardenista, and her work received an APLD Silver Award for residential design. Based in Bedford, her design firm focuses on land stewardship and sustainable, timeless gardens that capture the “spirit of place.”
Bronxville is fortunate to have these two exciting professionals in landscape design, who will share beautiful examples of their work and show how just a few changes to your own garden can make it healthier and full of life, to the benefit of your family, your pets, and the planet. As this long, cold winter winds down, we all look forward to spring. What better way to prepare than by getting a head start in March and attending what promises to be an inspiring conversation between two experts in sustainable garden design.
The Bronxville Green Committee is a volunteer organization that is part of the Village of Bronxville. We work to propose and implement environmentally sustainable programs in our community. Visit our website and follow us on Instagram @bxvgreencommittee to learn more.
