James Patchett
ASLA, RLA, LEED AP
Founder and President
(630) 559-2025
jpatchett@cdfinc.com
When I founded CDF in 1994 it was my intent to carefully select a multi-disciplinary professional team composed of landscape architects, planners, environmental scientists, and civil/water resource engineers. These professionals were to be dedicated to sustainable design in a collaborative environment where each critical step of the planning and design process would draw upon the collective expertise and creativity of the whole. That is essentially the “Forum” concept, which relies on the open minded spirit of collaboration to generate solutions that no one individual or discipline has the skill, life experience, and breath of expertise to do alone.
Early in my professional career I had the good fortune to work for a pubic conservation agency with a staff of biologists, ecologists, foresters, and landscape architects, and quickly came to appreciate the logic and benefits of multi-disciplinary collaboration in the design and decision-making process. This emphasis was carried on through my work as a private sector environmental consultant prior to founding CDF.
My professional training and experience in landscape architecture, environmental planning, hydrology, and ecological restoration stimulated my interest in sustainable design, but it wasn’t until I met Jerry Wilhelm in the late 1980’s that I fully understood the shortcomings with traditional design and development practices. When I founded CDF, I did so because I chose not to work another professional day of my life on any project that did not at least attempt to further understand and promote the principles of sustainability. This is not to suggest that we, nor anyone for that matter, have all the answers, but rather to commit ourselves to the ongoing pursuit, exploration, research, refinement, and outreach associated with sustainable solutions.
Due to our commitment to research and education, several of my CDF colleagues and I co-founded
Conservation Research Institute (CRI)
in 1996. CRI is dedicated to ongoing research and educational outreach in all areas related to sustainable design, development, and systems management. We recognize that the hope for increasingly sustainable solutions rests in the repeated assessment of implemented work. This includes a critical evaluation of potential successes and failures, the ability to improve on subsequent efforts, and to share data through educational outreach to practitioners, decision-makers, and the general public.In 1997 we founded
Conservation Land Stewardship (CLS)
with the intent to improve our ability to design, implement, and steward our efforts in native landscaping and ecological restoration. Since that time, CLS has expanded the scope of its services to include the construction and management of all facets of green rainwater infrastructure technologies.The combination of CDF, CLS, and CRI provides us with increased opportunities to collaboratively design, build, and research the full range of sustainable initiatives in which we are involved.