Benjamin Albrecht is an artist, gardener, designer, and builder dedicated to transforming neglected spaces into thriving, ecological oases. With a passion for sustainability and a keen eye for design, he brings both creativity and expertise to every project.
After earning degrees in Art and Neuroscience from Dartmouth College in 2016, he moved to New York to pursue a career in fine art. Along the way, his interests expanded to architecture, design, and ecology. He spent several years honing skills as a garden installer and landscaper, completing courses at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and a six-week landscape architecture course through UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. He eventually founded Mr. Nature Landscape Design and Build in 2022. Since then, he has completed projects in NYC, upstate New York and California. He collaborates closely with clients, blending their vision with his knowledge and aesthetic sensibilities, to create functional, beautiful and harmonious garden spaces.
System Drawings
These drawings are explorations into and reflections of the complexity, interconnectedness and multifacetedness of the world we live in. This drawing practice is a way for him to take on ideas that may be overwhelming in scale and complexity, and resituate them in the context of play, absurdity and creative problem solving. As our technological systems advance and our ecological systems are under threat, how can these systems work together? Can they start to cross pollinate, and integrate into a symbiosis and mutualism? In this process, he allows streams of consciousness from these conceptual realms to flow into the drawing, assembling far flung associations into biomechanical and cyborgesque systemic compositions. He is also very much inspired by Dr. Jon Todd who has been creating eco-machines to solve life’s problems.
Gardens
Gardens and landscapes can also be thought of as systems to which he applies a permacultural design framework. In designing garden spaces, he thinks about how to use space and energy as sustainably and self-sufficiently as possible in order to achieve set goals. When working in New York City, he is usually faced with small urban backyards. The objectives are to create a space for people to reconnect with and enjoy the beauty of nature, for children to play outdoors, to offer habitat for local beneficial insects and migratory birds, to mitigate runoff, grow food for people, and recycle the organic matter produced by the spaces. Urban landscaping in this way offers a solution to bringing our urban environments back into a more harmonious relationship with nature.
Aquatic Ecosystems
These lit living sculptural processes are an extension of the system drawings and a fusion of his artistic and gardening practices. They are also the beginnings of a sculptural practice where he aims to create somewhat whimsical aquatic and botanical system installations that are akin to the drawings. They are also a mixture of technological and biological elements including heating and lighting devices, glass, wood, stone, water, and living organisms.
He hopes to create art, botanical installations and naturalistic eco aquariums for dispensaries all around the New York metropolitan area.
Contact Ben:
@mr.nature.landscaper
