Landscape firm stays grounded

After 20 years, and despite growth potential, owners prefer hands-on style

Their work has transformed the banks of the Blackstone River, honored war heroes, reinvented suburban villages, revitalized urban streetscapes, enhanced residential and commercial developments, and carved out a luxurious oasis in the Egyptian desert.

They’re best known for their public projects and multimillion-dollar contracts, but in between big jobs, they’re more than happy to take on a city garden. They’re true believers, and they’ll plant the seeds of good design in any fertile ground they find.

Wilfrid L. Gates Jr. and Donald S. Leighton have been partners for 20 years now, and together, they’ve built Rhode Island’s largest landscape architecture and design firm, and one of New England’s most prestigious.

They have enough business to grow bigger still, but that would spoil the fun for them.

“We’re at a size that still allows us to be involved in every project,” Gates said. “If we were to grow any larger, we’d need a layer of middle management, and we wouldn’t have the hands-on control we have now.”

Landscape architects bridge the gap between nature and the built environment, creating harmony with the surroundings and ensuring that spaces are both functional and beautiful.

When Gates graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 had just been passed, and he was promptly hired by the state Department of Public Works (now Transportation) to help build beautiful landscapes along Rhode Island’s roads. Then, while Gates was serving in Vietnam, the federal money dried up, and the beautification effort went with it. But when Leighton graduated from RISD, in 1978 – Gates was already in private practice – the Department of Environmental Management offered great opportunities, including the creation of Beavertail State Park, the Galilee Fishing Port and Breakwater Park. In Gates and Leighton’s first years together, they got mostly private, residential jobs. Then a handful of visionaries decided that the Blackstone River could be made beautiful again, and in the process, revitalize the industrial wasteland around it.

One by one, the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission began targeting sites throughout the region, and Gates Leighton & Associates helped transform them, working with local leaders to “re-envision” their communities and designing parks, pedestrian paths and public gathering spaces all along the 32-mile stretch from Slater Mill to Worcester.

For Gates and Leighton, both environmentalists who believe in preserving open space and strengthening urban clusters, the projects were opportunity to show the power of that concept on a regional scale, and Gates speaks proudly of the results.

“Gates, Leighton & Associates has been part of a rebuilding of pride, a rebuilding of community, a rebuilding of the economy,” he said. “It’s really been good for the company.”

Of course their urban revitalization work isn’t limited to the Blackstone Valley, or to the public sector. They did Thames Street Landing, in Bristol, and now Stone Harbour; they’re involved in Patrick Conley’s plan for the Providence Piers and the Trinity Gateway at Grace Church in South Providence; they redesigned Central Street in Wellesley, Mass., and Leighton, who keeps a satellite office in Maine, is heading a major project in New Brunswick.

The firm is also helping advance a related trend: the “new urbanism,” a move to village-style development in the suburbs and rural areas instead of long, sprawling commercial areas. They’ve done a proposal, for example, for a new Middletown town center.

“It’s just a very propitious time to be alive, because there is so much going on,” Gates said.

The firm has also set roots in Egypt, where Gates helped develop the Ritz Carlton resort in Sharm El-Sheikh, enlisted by Rhode Island-based hotel designer Robert DiLeonardo; that led to all sorts of other projects, and Gates Leighton now has an office in Cairo. Contracts have also come in for work in Belize and the Dominican Republic.

To do it all, the partners have equipped their office with state-of-the-art technology. But they’ve also remained old-fashioned, presenting their work as hand-drawn renderings – “there’s so much more warmth and feeling” – and aiming for a natural, un-designed look.

“Our business is creating beautiful environments for people to enjoy to work and live in,” Gates said. “With a lot of projects, people don’t realize it was designed. A really well-designed landscape fits its site so well that it just feels natural to be there.”