Senior Living
Designing Outdoor Environments that Nurture Well-Being
At Emily Russell Landscape Architecture, we create outdoor environments for senior living communities that foster dignity, connection, and vitality. The design and experience goes beyond aesthetics, as each exterior landscape is designed to enhance residents’ daily experience, support staff, and reflect your community’s values.
Research shows that thoughtfully designed outdoor spaces can reduce stress, boost mood, support cognition, and encourage social engagement for older adults. I translate these insights into accessible, sensory-rich environments, walking loops, shaded seating, familiar plantings, and clear wayfinding that balance comfort, safety, and independence.
From early concept to project completion, we collaborate closely with architects, interior designers, and operations teams to ensure that each outdoor space is cohesive, purposeful, and built to endure.
we don’t just design gardens, we help create therapeutic landscapes that enrich lives, strengthen your community’s identity, and add lasting value.
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As owner and principal of Emily Russell Landscape Architecture, I remain personally involved in every Senior Living and Memory Care project. I serve as your dedicated point of contact, listening closely, guiding the design team, and ensuring your vision is realized with care and consistency through every phase of the process.
Outdoor environments in Senior Living and Memory Care communities are not simply amenities, they are vital to residents’ comfort, dignity, and joy.
Thoughtfully designed access to nature helps ease agitation, lift mood, and reduce isolation, while fostering movement, connection, and a renewed sense of purpose in daily life.
With this understanding, our ERLA approach centers on creating exterior spaces that enrich quality of life and engage the senses. Through color, texture, and structure, each design aims to inspire vibrancy, support cognitive and sensory well-being, and celebrate the beauty of everyday experience.
"From early concept to project completion, I collaborate closely with architects, interior designers, and operations teams to ensure that each exterior outdoor space is cohesive, purposeful, and built to endure. Design that is thoughtful and focused toward creating therapeutic landscapes that enrich lives, strengthen your community’s identity, and add lasting value".
Where Nature Meets Care
Approach
As a design team, ERLA adds value by translating design goals and operational needs in built exterior spaces into restorative outdoor environments that support healing and resilience. Integrated through evidence-based design, and drawing from research on therapeutic healing though nature, ERLA designs towards resident needs with a focus on greater access to garden greenery, found to elevate higher life satisfaction, foster social connection and build community.
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Purpose-Driven Design
At Emily Russell Landscape Architecture, every project begins with empathy and understanding. I design outdoor environments for senior living communities that foster dignity, belonging, and vitality, spaces where residents feel at home, supported, and connected.
2
Evidence-Based Approach
Research consistently shows that access to nature improves quality of life, reducing stress, enhancing mood, supporting cognition, and encouraging social engagement. My work translates these findings into landscapes that nurture well-being through thoughtful details like shaded seating, safe walking loops, familiar plantings, and intuitive wayfinding.
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Collaborative Process
I believe great design comes from collaboration. From concept to completion, I work closely with architects, interior designers, and operations teams to ensure that outdoor spaces are cohesive, functional, and aligned with your community’s mission and long-term goals.
4
Lasting Impact
I don’t just design gardens—I create therapeutic landscapes that enhance daily life, support staff, reinforce your community’s identity, and add measurable value for years to come.
We Believe in Inclusivity
Our values are grounded in fostering inclusivity, honesty, respect, and equity within our company and communities. We believe in the inclusion of all origin, religion, culture, or sexual orientation. We are committed to celebrating humanity's wealth of diversity and renewing hope for racial justice within the world of landscape architecture.