PLANNING

For the past 40 years, Hawkins Partners has championed Landscape Architecture to be included in the early conversations that go into developing new areas for communities to thrive in the Southeast. Master Planning is just one of the many opportunities our founding partners, Kim and Gary, saw as areas to improve and offer as strategic services.

DEVELOPING

When it comes to developing cities like Nashville, you need a collaborator who understands what will work and what absolutely will not. That’s why Hawkins Partners, early in our practice, recognized the importance of offering entitlement work. We’ve cultivated relationships with our collaborators at Metro Nashville for 40 years. We know what it takes to develop in Nashville and surrounding areas.

PLANTING

Every Hawkins Partners project begins with a question: what belongs here? Choosing the right plant palette means understanding a site's soil, sun, and water long before the first shovel goes in the ground. Over 40 years, we've watched the industry shift toward native species and climate-conscious design, and we've shifted with it, refining our approach as the science and the stakes have evolved. The result is landscapes that don't just survive their first season, but settle into their surroundings and belong there for good.

GROWING

Growth has taken many shapes at Hawkins Partners over the past four decades. We've grown our team, invested in the people who've become the firm's next generation of leaders, and played a role in Nashville's growth and the surrounding communities. Four decades in, we remain proud advocates for the kind of growth that strengthens a place rather than straining it.

RESILIENCE

The firm has weathered its share of change since 1986 — economic downturns, shifting industry standards, a rapidly growing region that doesn't always slow down to catch its breath. Hawkins Partners has met each of those moments by adapting rather than retreating, and by treating resilience as a design principle as much as a business one. We plan landscapes built to withstand storms, droughts, seasons, and leadership shifts, just as we've built a firm built to withstand 40 years of an evolving industry.

COMMUNITY

Hawkins Partners is rooted in community, and in a responsibility to do right by the neighborhoods our projects are designed to serve. That commitment has shaped everything from small pocket parks to large-scale developments across Nashville and the region. Forty years in, our work continues to reflect the belief that a well-designed landscape should serve the people who use it every day, not just the client who commissioned it.

COLLABORATING

No project at Hawkins Partners has ever been built alone. Over the past 40 years, we've formed lasting partnerships with our peers and collaborators across the industry and built on shared standards and a mutual trust earned over many projects. Those relationships have shaped some of the region's most recognized work, and they reflect a simple belief we've held since our founding: the best design happens when good firms choose to work together rather than compete.

CONNECTING

In the end, every plan, plant palette, and partnership serves the same purpose: connecting people to the places they live, work, and gather. Hawkins Partners measures its impact in those everyday moments — a family in a park, a commuter along a greenway, a downtown block that finally feels walkable. Forty years of work has taught us that the places we design are only as successful as the connections they create, and that's the outcome we've built our practice around.

HAWKINS PARTNERS

Now, as Hawkins Partners marks 40 years in practice, the firm looks different than it did in 1986 — a six-partner leadership team now carries the vision forward.