When the Baxter’s Pond Foundation set out to renew the landscape around their namesake park, a public pond at the heart of the community, they wanted something that would do more than dress up the entrance. They wanted a planting that would announce itself as native, intentional, and rooted in the place it was meant to celebrate.
Spadefoot designed and installed a layered native planting that wraps the foundation of the park’s civic building and extends down to the pond walk itself, where brick paths and park benches meet the water. The palette was chosen to read as deliberate in a high-traffic public setting — grasses and shrubs grouped with structure and rhythm, while functioning as habitat the moment it went in the ground.
The result is a public landscape that does double duty: a visibly polished entrance for visitors, a native habitat for pollinators and birds, and a working demonstration that ecological landscaping belongs in civic spaces, not just private yards. The project’s unveiling drew Nassau County Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton to the park alongside Foundation co-president John Keiserman — a small but pointed statement about what public greenspace can be when it’s planted with intention.
Spadefoot completely transformed our backyard. They removed all the invasive plants and replaced them with beautiful native species.
