seana cullinan

Seana studied art at Hampshire college and then worked as a jewelry designer in New York City before moving back to New England. After a attending a horticulture internship at Stonecrop Gardens in Cold Spring, NY, she ran her own landscape and garden design business in NH. In 2012, she received her Master’s Degree in Sustainable Landscape Planning and Design. Seana moved to Maine in 2013 and opened Larkspur Design.

Designing and installing gardens combines all of her favorite things- creating beautiful spaces for humans to enjoy while enhancing the ecological health of local ecosystems. She envisions that each garden that the Larkspur team designs will become part of a growing network that will weave its way through Southern Maine and beyond, providing food, cover, and connectivity for the insects, birds, and animals of New England.

julie McLeod

Julie helps manage our design services and is also a Permaculture Designer for Larkspur. She comes to Larkspur with a background in outdoor adventure education, and Permaculture design, and education. She enjoys designing functional, productive and engaging landscapes for her clients. Julie has helped design homesteads, suburban lots, small farms, and school gardens. When she is not in the field Julie enjoys hiking, surfing, trail running, and snacking in her garden.

James mccain

Born into an extended family of avid gardeners in the Upper Midwest, James gained his initial knowledge and interest for gardening by working in their prairie-inspired gardens throughout much of the 1970s and early 80s. After five years of studying architecture and art history in Chicago and New York, his curiosity and love for the outdoors led him to gardening in Tennessee, trail-building in Northern California, and farming in Oregon. He then settled in Texas for over six years, working in information technology systems, networks, and database administration. 

James moved to Maine in early 2000, where he felt called back to the garden and found work in the tree & shrub yard at Skillins Greenhouses and in the perennial greenhouses at Plainview Farm. He supplemented his horticultural experience through selective coursework at SMCC and by working for an established landscape gardener while building his own business of creating gardens. One of six people included in the 2012 Maine Garden Journal’s list of highly recommended Maine landscape professionals, his work has been published in several regional and national magazines.

During these many years of creating and caring for residential gardens, James engaged his interest in public landscapes and the wider community by serving as board advisory trustee for the Maine Olmsted Alliance for Parks and Landscapes, board member of Friends of Evergreen Cemetery, Arboretum Steering Committee member for the Friends of Fort Williams Park, and member of Casco Bay Invasive Species Network.

James returned to school at the end of the 2012 season to finish his bachelor’s degree in art history and, upon graduation in 2013, was  recruited to manage the Ecology Project for the non-profit Friends of Fort Williams Park, for whom he had served on various committees for several years. For the next five years, James directed and managed the work to reverse damage done by invasive plants and restore coastal native plant communities, biodiversity, and wildlife habitat in the park.

During this time in Fort Williams Park, James designed the large pollinator meadow and other herbaceous plantings within the Children’s Garden, which he implemented over two seasons with contractors, staff, and volunteers. This planting is included in the book Wild: The Naturalistic Garden, by Noel Kingsbury and Claire Takacs, published by Phaidon in March, 2022. Inspired by the opportunity to create and manage such a large and dynamic planting, James returned full-time in 2019 to landscape design and project management and was honored to join the Larkspur Design team in Dec 2020.

With twenty-three years of professional experience in Maine, James creates beautiful gardens that are dynamic and ecologically rich. Continuously pushing his boundaries in planting and design, he considers himself a lifelong student - learning from others, reading, researching, and regularly enrolling in workshops and classes in ecology-based landscape design. He currently serves as an Advisory Committee Member of Advanced Studies in Professional Horticulture at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. His favorite place to experiment with plants is in the garden at his family’s coastal cottage in Cushing, where he spends many summer weekends with his family.

EVA HOGUE

Eva Hogue (she/her) is an ecological landscape designer, local food enthusiast, small farm lover, botanical illustrator, and gardener. She graduated from Cal Poly Humboldt in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Biocultural Anthropology. After graduating, Eva spent a year at Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC), in Sonoma County, CA, where she lived in an intentional community and tended a relatively small but productive garden, learned about seed saving, and gained an appreciation for perennials. After her time at OAEC, she spent a year as an intern and Teacher's Assistant for the University of Massachusetts semester-long program at Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Waitsfield, VT. In June 2023 she graduated with a Master’s Degree in Ecological Design from the Conway School of Landscape Design. Through three real-world projects, she gained not only technical skills in landscape design but also the ability to look at the world through a holistic lens that integrates community context, place-based knowledge, and ecological systems health. She spends her free time gardening, walking her dog Scruffy McGruff, knitting, and taking long neighborhood strolls admiring home landscapes.