A proactive approach to community engagement is embedded in Vireo’s practice and is an essential part of our projects’ long-term success. 

At the earliest stages of the project, we work with our clients to create a right-sized plan for in-person and digital engagement that is scaled and tailored specifically for the task at hand. Only then can we truly engage the community to discuss, explore, investigate, analyze and build together. 

Our entire team is prepared to actively engage with community members and listen to them intentionally. Starting with a go-to-the-people approach, we employ a wide range of personal and interactive strategies, always looking for the missing voices. 

Not only do our methods bring out the best ideas for growing a community through discussion and design, but they also build advocacy for the realization of the built project through an informed and intentionally engaged constituency. 

Vireo is the best in the Midwest at crafting innovative, healthy outdoor environments that are resilient, holistic, and designed with the future in mind. Our unique combination of skills and abilities makes this possible, from park planners and designers to community engagement specialists and natural resource planners. We engage the entire team and combine our technical knowledge and creativity with a truly collaborative process that makes it possible to create exceptional solutions.

At the heart of Vireo’s process is thorough and authentic collaboration. We have found time and again over three decades that it’s essential to connect to people who care about the places in their lives if we intend to create designs that make for thriving communities. While we bring deep expertise to every project, we embrace our clients and the communities we seek to serve, recognizing their input may be the most valuable of all.

Do what is right, even though it may not be expedient, typical or profitable.

That’s a philosophy we’ve been living since the firm was founded. We know our reputation is the key to our future, and that reputation depends on our integrity and the quality of our work on every single project. We work very closely with our partners, we anticipate issues before they happen and we do everything we can to make sure the project is done right.

To ensure that every work product meets or exceeds this standard, Vireo developed a rigorous Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) process more than 20 years ago. Since then it’s been incorporated into more than 1,300 successful projects and ensures those projects are providing value to their communities for decades to come.

Technical reports and analysis are regularly reviewed by our QA/QC Director before submission to our clients. All deliverables will be reviewed for accuracy, completeness and ultimate constructibility.

After spending hundreds of hours creating a design that serves a particular purpose, and a through set of documents, our work is far from over. Vireo’s project managers and staff remain involved throughout the construction process to ensure our partners have all the support they need to deliver a quality product and the concept is executed faithfully for the owners.

Owners trust Vireo to represent their interests and contractors see us as a partner in the whole process, not an adversary. Working together we have made a habit of delivering projects that serve the community as well as possible in every way.

There is both an art and a science to landscape architecture, and both reveal themselves clearly when it comes to planting designs for outdoor spaces. True success comes in creating a living system that enhances its environment and connects us to the natural world, while seeming to wholly belong where it is planted.

Our designers have the ability to visualize the potential of a place and think in four dimensions – not just how the design responds to the topography and architecture, but how the living system of plantings blends in with and enhances the larger ecosystem, growing, changing, and thriving over time.