Elizabeth A. Sargent has steadily built a fulfilling career in landscape architecture. As the principal of Liz Sargent HLA, she specializes in preservation planning, historical landscape architecture, and conceptual design. At the helm of her sole proprietorship, she provides consulting services on historic preservation and design for cultural landscapes throughout the United States.
Ms. Sargent’s success has been the result of her diligence and willingness to stay true to her goals while managing a plethora of projects, including planning and design studies for nationally recognized historic properties. Some of her undertakings involved working on the historic Mount Vernon home of George Washington, the Washington Monument, Yellowstone National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Yorktown Battlefield in the Colonial National Historical Park. She launched Liz Sargent HLA in 2007 after more than 15 years of experience in landscape architecture and has never looked back – while still pondering unlimited possibilities for her firm’s future.
Long before running her own company, Ms. Sargent began her career as a senior associate for Land and Community Associates in 1992. From 1995 to 2004, she was the principal of OCULUS, after which she secured experience as a principal landscape architect with John Milner Associates Inc., for three years, concluding her tenure in 2007. Understanding the advantage of her vast experience, Ms. Sargent has been an eager participant in her professional community, including being elected president of the Virginia chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects from 2003 to 2004. Since 2015, she has been the organization’s historic American landscapes survey representative.
Ms. Sargent considers her most notable achievement to be her talent for developing complex reports that integrate information from various sources. She regularly serves in the role of project manager, overseeing many other professionals and working to combine their efforts into an exceptional product. She is proud to have been named a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2016, as it commemorated her lifetime of professional contributions to the industry. Throughout her career, Ms. Sargent has invested in herself and pursued increased knowledge and professional development. Starting out, she studied at Connecticut College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in botany and American history in 1984. Following this accomplishment, she matriculated at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, where she graduated with a master’s degree in landscape architecture in 1991.
In addition to her primary roles, Ms. Sargent has remained an active contributor to her community, serving as a board member of the Ivy Creek Foundation since 2014. From 2000 to 2004, she was a board member and secretary of Preservation Piedmont, and between 2011 and 2017, she was a trustee of the Rockfish Valley Foundation. As a member of the historic resources committee for the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, Ms. Sargent spent more than five years advocating for historic preservation and promoting local historical sites. She also was a trustee and executive committee member for the Highlands Biological Foundation in 2020 and served the organization as the chair of the botanical garden committee.
Among the numerous lessons Ms. Sargent has learned and applied throughout her career and years of public service, she believes strongly in the importance of working collaboratively to ensure success. She identifies those with whom she enjoys working and maintains a good rapport to elevate the quality of work and to keep the environment positive and welcoming. Pondering the future, Ms. Sargent hopes to continue heading up projects that synthesize her interests. She also plans to write a book about her work experience, further elucidating and commemorating her legacy of devotion to developing, maintaining, and celebrating sites of historical significance.