Harrison Green Updates a Forlorn Brooklyn Warehouse as Its Own Pastoral Haven

In a postindustrial corner of Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, tucked behind a vine-covered fence, sits the studio and nursery of garden design firm Harrison Green. The two-story building, stuccoed jet-black, has the air of a modern farmhouse plunked down far from its country home. Past the gate, ivy climbs the walls, garden furniture and statuary dot the pebbled grounds, and potted boxwood flank a stone pathway. It makes a compelling case for Harrison Green’s particular expertise: creating thoughtful green spaces for cramped urban quarters.

Principals Jacqueline and Damien Harrison met in the aughts, when they both worked for the New York City–based landscapers Plant Specialists, and married in 2013. One of their projects at that firm was the West Village home of Marc Jacobs, for which they frequently coordinated with the fashion designer’s assistant at the time, Casey Kenyon. Soon after the Harrisons decided to go out on their own, Kenyon reached out to the fledgling enterprise for help restoring Jacobs’s garden, which had been damaged in Hurricane Sandy. “That call came, and we were like, oh, it’s on,” Jacqueline recalls. The pair quickly sketched a company logo, sent it through with a cost estimate, and hit the ground running. In the decade or so since, they have joined forces with Steven Harris Architects, Kelly Behun Studio, and Gachot, among other AD100 architecture and design studios.

By 2018, Harrison Green had outgrown its rental office and the couple started looking to buy new headquarters, where they could fit the design, installation, and nursery components of their business—not an easy ask in a jam-packed city. They wanted to stay in Bushwick because, as Jacqueline says, “people make things here.” Nearby, a former warehouse had the perfect footprint, but it needed a lot of love. Fortunately, Jacqueline says, Michael Gilmore, of New York– and Arizona-based firm Weddle Gilmore Architects, “didn’t think we were crazy.” His partner on the project, Aaron Reddy, describes the old envelope as Swiss cheese: “You could see daylight through multiple spots that were not windows.” After updating and finessing the fenestration, the result was a sleek shell of French doors and gridded picture windows, fully embracing the firm’s indoor-outdoor vibe. As for the façade’s color scheme, Damien explains, “black typically recedes and makes the plantings pop.”

Meanwhile, Kenyon had launched his career as an interior designer, and the couple tapped him to kit out the new space. Together they thought through the diverse uses of the office: workplace, showroom, meeting space. “We really wanted to focus on materials that they use in their landscapes,” Kenyon says, noting the incorporation of Corten steel, teak, and outdoor sconces and carpets. In Damien’s ground floor office, a Belgian tapestry lush with greenery hides a TV used for presentations. A table that once sat in Jacobs’s backyard stands next to a cabinet that Kenyon originally designed for his own apartment. Upstairs, Jacqueline’s office, painted an appropriate deep green, is populated by a growing collection of wooden mushrooms. Under her vintage Charles Dudouyt desk (a Christmas gift from Damien) is their dog Scratchley’s favorite spot.

Gilmore says that above all he took inspiration from the way the Harrisons themselves have metamorphosed rooftop terraces they’ve worked on together over the years. “I was thinking about how this building that’s so urban and raw could all of a sudden transform into their magical world, behind those gates,” he says. “Instead of just being something in the garden or around the garden, make it part of the garden.” harrisongreen.com —Julie Coe