CROWLEY COTTRELL

Crowley Cottrell draws the plan, takes it through permitting and sees it built — it is a landscape architecture practice, not a crew with shovels. Michelle Crowley and Naomi Cottrell founded it in Boston in 2011 and still run it from Liberty Square. The work spans parks, campuses, civic spaces, housing and private property. Brewster Academy announced in April 2026 that Naomi Cottrell is leading the landscape design for its courtyard alongside studioDSK. Banker & Tradesman named the firm in September 2023 as the woman-owned landscape architect on a development team with CBT, EMBARC and Buro Happold. A Pro Landscaper Magazine piece in May 2026 described Michelle Crowley as president of the Boston Society of Landscape Architects. The residential side shows up too. A March 2021 Gardenista article described Michelle and her team reworking the boundary between a house and its garden, with a separate company running the landscape construction — which is how a practice like this usually operates: they design and administer, a contractor builds. Back in October 2018, North Shore CDC described the firm leading a design process on Ward Street that brought residents in to set the priorities. Its Houzz profile carries no reviews; the page is still showing its empty state. What the directories do show is the work — eight projects on Houzz, eleven on Procore since the firm joined that network in February 2023 — plus an A+ letter grade from the Better Business Bureau, on a profile that is not BBB accredited. Houzz also lists professional landscape architecture licences in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont, LEED accreditation, and a women's business enterprise certification; those are the directory's entries rather than something checked against a state board. For a homeowner the fit turns on the size of the job. A practice that designs campus courtyards and civic plazas is built for a project with drawings, a permit path and a construction contract behind it — a whole-property plan, a grading and drainage scheme, a garden that has to clear a town review. Ask which principal will actually run your project, whether the fee includes construction administration once work starts, and who they expect to build it.