Escape Garden Design: Landscape Architecture in Aspen, Colorado
Escape Garden Design is a boutique landscape architecture company in Aspen, Colorado. We design, build, and maintain Japanese-influenced luxury gardens across the Roaring Fork Valley, and have since 1998. The company is led by Registered Landscape Architect Jennifer Dolecki-Smith (CLARB certified, ASLA) and offers full design, construction, and maintenance services: water features, koi ponds, alpine planting design, stonework, and site development.
Escape Garden Design · 312-E Aspen Business Center, Aspen, Colorado 81611 · Voice: 970.920.3700 · Fax: 970.920.9589 · Start a conversation
Featured gardens
- Borrowed Mountain: Stone from the front walls, restacked in serpentine curves to shape garden rooms with a snow-capped peak in the frame. The old Japanese idea of borrowed scenery, at work on a Colorado mesa.
- Playful Retreat: A home on an Aspen hillside, made for daily life and quiet use.
- Mystical Waters: Garden rooms, play areas, and quiet reflective spaces, each with its own identity, all connected by water and path.
- Hillside Statement: A burst of color runs through this big display of nature. Three six-to-nine-foot falls fill the air with sound, a natural answer to an old, unnatural water feature.
- Tranquillity Corner: A traditional Japanese viewing garden and a strolling garden, combined into one. The design lends real history to a fairly new installation.
- Woodland Pond: A natural woodland feel on a lot close to town. Three waterfalls feed the pond, the high notes of the falls balanced against the low note of the brook.
- Waterfall Wonder: A naturalized mountain waterfall and pond anchor this garden at nearly 10,000 feet. Honored by the ALCC and featured in Sunset Magazine.
- Edo Period Rooftop: A rooftop garden in Edo period Japanese style, with mountain views. Stone stands in for water to spare the structure below.
- Mountain Tranquillity Garden: A high alpine garden built to echo the sounds and sights of the Rocky Mountains.
- Cascading Water: An award-winning water feature set into the natural contour of the hillside.
- Koi Pond & Spaces: A koi pond garden that links the home's interior to a series of outdoor rooms.
Recent newsletters
- Spring 2026: A Season in the Garden (June 22, 2026)
- Winter 2025-2026: A Season in the Garden (March 22, 2026)
- Fall 2025: A Season in the Garden (November 10, 2025)
- Summer 2025: A Season in the Garden (September 11, 2025)
- Spring 2025: A Season in the Garden (June 21, 2025)
- Winter 2024-2025: A Season in the Garden (March 21, 2025)
- Fall 2024: A Season in the Garden (November 18, 2024)
- Summer 2024: A Season in the Garden (September 10, 2024)
- Spring 2024: A Season in the Garden (June 20, 2024)
- Winter 2023-2024: A Season in the Garden (March 20, 2024)
- Fall 2023: A Season in the Garden (November 17, 2023)
- Summer 2023: A Season in the Garden (September 17, 2023)