MxM Landscape Architecture

Recently the @cityofbellingham City Council unanimously approved the new framework plan for the @bellinghamparks Civic Athletic Complex. With @rmc_architects , MxM was pleased to lead the site planning for this expansive recreational and to craft a roadmap that repositions the disorienting “complex” into a cohesive, connected, and coherent campus. Through extensive public involvement by a dedicated group of stakeholders, the design team was able to reimagine the site circulation to assert a new Civic Spine which will seamlessly connects the lower and upper portions of the site with an all-ages-and-abilities shared use path. Next to Joe Martin Stadium, and connecting the future Community Recreation Center and the existing Civic Stadium and Sportsplex, a portion of the existing vehicular circulation will be transformed into a car-free Civic Promenade with seating, specialty paving, street trees, lighting, and signage to create a space that links these destinations together. As Councilmember Skip Williams noted, “It’s a major, major project that will give us a major asset that we can all be proud of.”

Did you happen to see the @seattleparksfoundation ’s 2025 Annual Report? We love seeing the Foundation’s vision for a greener Seattle featured in its pages, and we’re thrilled to have helped with these supporting graphics. It’s inspiring to have nonprofit partners like the Foundation helping to push forward a greener, more sustainable, and resilient vision of the city.

Please join us in welcoming Meredith Hall @yardtotable to the MxM team! Meredith’s community connections, business curiosity, and eagerness to grow aligns beautifully with our goals and values as we work to build places that rebuild public life. Meredith first became a landscape architect because she found the perfect alchemy of idealistic environmentalism, boundless creativity, and pragmatic problem solving, skills that she continues to use in her projects to this day. Some of her favorites include: South Park Plaza with @seattleparksandrec a “dream project” where she synthesized everything she knows about her own neighborhood into a celebratory and deliberately joyful gathering place; The South Park Pump Station with @seattle_public_utilities , a hidden oasis in Seattle’s industrial lowlands, where workers walk their dogs, relax, and eat lunch next to the Duwamish; Martin Street End (aka @gt_park_seattle ) with @seattledot due to the collaborative design team and the way the site plan balanced accessibility, green space and flood control; The Habitat Beach along the Central @waterfrontsea where logs, boulders, and native plants provide habitat for invertebrates to sustain passing salmon fry and also frame panoramic territorial views of the Sound and Olympics; The “outdoor library” at the @winthroplibrary which is a favorite hangout spot for her family when they’re in the Methow and an exercise in restrained and impactful grading; @lifeatmckinstry ’s corporate campus in Georgetown that is transforming workaday warehouse buildings with beautiful native plantings, a functional sidewalk, street trees, and a reworked entry statement; The @colinabeaconhill where the developer went out of their way to create public open spaces around the adjacent light rail station; and Vashon’s @mukaifarmandgarden where archival research and fieldwork revealed a 1920s garden that hybridized Japanese and American garden vernaculars, and which now hosts the island’s Japanese cultural celebrations. Meredith describes herself as “a person of many distractions” outside of work including biking, gardening, roadside guerrilla gardening, cross-country skiing, and visible mending.

We’re looking for a talented, passionate designer to join our team as a paid intern this winter. Send a resume and a brief portfolio by January 5,2026 to info [at] MxMLA dot com. #intern #internship #landarch #seattle

Across the region, polluted runoff from our roadways presents a major challenge to the health of our waterways and the people and animals that depend on them. To help inspire new ways of thinking about how to clean this toxic stew before it reaches our lakes, streams and rivers, our work with @ecoss_org on the Georgetown Stormwater Interpretive Center will transform a once-fenced and inaccessible parcel in the heart of Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood into an art-infused work of green stormwater infrastructure. Using stormwater runoff from a highway on-ramp, the site uses grattix boxes (essentially rain gardens in a box) to scrub the water of pollutants, and then use that clean water as a resource by irrigating new plantings. The resulting landscape invites people into a new pocket park while providing educational insights into efforts for restoring the Duwamish watershed. This effort began with a simple question: could an overlooked, negative space passed so often during our team's work in the neighborhood turn into something regenerative? Some three years later the answer is a definitive "Yes!" with permitting and design efforts continuing apace. #mxm4thanniversary

Coming soon to the @cityofmaplevalley , Henry’s Switch Park will be a new biking-focused destination for locals and visitors alike. Collaboration lies at heart of the project's on-going success. With our team, community members, @evergreenmtb , staff, and the specialists at @americanrampcompany , we were able to co-create a clear concept vision. Extensive public outreach informed the selection of park amenities, including a pump track, bicycle playground, drop zone, and progressive jump lines. These features are strategically placed to leverage the site’s topography while ensuring safely distinct bike and pedestrian uses. Picnic pavilions, a restroom building, and play spaces complement the bike features. The park connects directly to the surrounding regional trail system and has a vehicular entrance that minimizes impacts on the adjacent neighborhood. Parking provides ADA access to core park elements, while overflow space is designated in undeveloped areas of an adjacent power line corridor. #mxm4thanniversary

For the past several years, we’ve been thrilled to work with @watershedseattle as they seek to combine community benefits, artistic creativity, and environmental performance in “sunny West Georgetown.” With the amazing team of architects at @signal_arch , artists from @equinoxstudiosseattle , local activists, and developers, we’ve helped to develop a Street Concept Plan that sets a framework to transform the public street network from exclusively transportation corridors to essential places that link parks and people, making and performance, industry and sustainability together into a cohesive, one-of-a-kind urban fabric. When constructed, The Bend promises to be unlike anywhere else in Seattle, with community creativity baked into the DNA of each public and private investments that are amplifying what’s already exceptional about this oft-overlooked place in our community. If you want to participate in helping to build this future, Watershed is holding a fundraiser this Saturday. Their Smash-a-Thon is sure to be a fun time for all involved! See link in our bio for more info. #mxm4thanniversary

Our friends at the @seattleparksfoundation recently invited us to brainstorm ideas that might help inform the ways that Seattle grows its parks and open space networks in the coming decades. Inspired by the way people use some of the city’s most popular open space assets–the Green Lake Loop, the Seward Park path, the new Cheshiahud Loop, even the developing crescent of parks and trails along Elliott Bay–we explored the idea of a boundless and interconnected system of green spaces that connected the City’s densest urban centers to its best natural assets: Seattle’s Infinite Green. Waterfronts that were cut off become democratically accessible. High point panoramas become proximate even to those without views. And a new synaptic, networked, resilient, green spaces map is grafted onto older infrastructure systems to reveal new ways of navigating and understanding the Emerald City’s terrain. To test this idea, we looked at two areas of the city where there is likely to be growth in the coming decades based on the recently adopted Comprehensive Plan. The Mount Baker station area is a hub where light rail, arterials and green space connections converge, yet the open space connections remain disjointed, and barely felt over the din of arterial traffic. Leveraging development to convert grey space to green space, we saw opportunities to complete the Olmsted vision by connecting Mt Baker Boulevard to Cheasty Boulevard, thereby creating a loop of green space that links the station area to Mount Baker Park, Lake Washington Boulevard and Colman Park to the future Judkins Park station. Along Rainier Ave S, at S McClellan Street where a large sewer cuts through private property limiting development opportunities, we imagined a new park along Rainier Ave S that serves as a front porch for all the new residents in the area. The second area considered was up on Aurora Avenue N in the Bitter Lake neighborhood, a newly-greened and right-sized Aurora Avenue N corridor helps make the wide streetscape more humane and welcoming for all the new residents who are planned to come into the area. Renderings by Zachary McBride and @cchrisafis . #mxm4thanniversary

MxM turns four this week and we’re thrilled to be able to look forward with much to celebrate. 🎉 As we’ve matured from coffee shop conversations to a committed design team that is co-creating our culture through daily patterns and actions, we had the opportunity earlier this year to come together, reflect, and articulate our values as a collective, creative enterprise. If our mission statement articulates our "why," these statements attempt to define our "how." How do we work together with our clients and collaborators? How do we see purpose and positive agency in the world? How do we support one another in our journeys as individual contributors? How do we serve the clients and communities we work with? These statements offer a north star to our work together to do our small part to make the world a more beautiful, resilient, and empathetic place.

Still smiling from last week’s Planting Day 🥹 Check out the progress our dedicated volunteers made on this brand new park. S Industrial Way has never looked better! 💚 Stay tuned as fencing comes down in the next few weeks. 🔗 Learn more about the Pocket Park in our bio.

We did it, SODO! 🎉💚 With the help of a dedicated group of volunteers and community members, the Pocket Park on S Industrial Way & 6th Ave S is now complete! Thank you to everyone that joined us to lend a hand. Over 1000 plants of various species were installed during our Planting Day on Saturday. A few comments we heard along the way: 🤝 “I can’t wait to walk over to the park and finally have a space to enjoy my lunch break.” 🤝 “There aren’t a lot of trees and green space in SODO, so this a big first step!” 🤝 “It was so fun and therapeutic to plant together. I can’t wait to come back and enjoy it!” By the start of November, the fencing will come down and the park will officially open. We can’t wait for everyone to see this amazing gathering place. Make sure to snap a pic when you visit the park and tag us! 📸: @vertizonphoto