Barn Talk: A Garden in Dialogue: Place and Practice

The 2026 Barn Talk season proudly opens with Bedford, NY-based landscape designer Leslie Needham, who invites us to embrace garden design as a continuous conversation. Every garden speaks through materials, familiar forms, and seasonal rhythm. Drawing from years of hands-on experience, Leslie will explore ways designers and gardeners can thoughtfully respond to place, sharing easy design strategies that bring clarity and intention to nature-inspired gardens. Join us and discover how loosening the pursuit of perfection can open space for joy, adaptability, and a deeper relationship with our gardens and surrounding landscape.

Leslie Needham is a gardener, landscape designer, writer, and lecturer whose work is grounded in sustainable, place-based design. Her home landscape, River Hills, was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Gardens. Her work has been featured in Martha Stewart Living, The New York Times, and Gardenista, and she has been a guest on Margaret Roach’s podcast, A Way to Garden. She is the founder and principal of Leslie Needham Design, a landscape design firm based in Bedford, New York