Booking site visits for spring 2027

I design ground thatoutlives the building.

Registered landscape architect working on public parks, campus grounds, and stormwater-led site design — practicing on the principle that a site plan is a promise to the next fifty years.

View Projects Start A Site Visit

38Sites completed

412Acres designed

14Years practicing

6Design awards

Site Plan — Sheet L-0145.5152° N, 122.6784° W

Site IndexSelected sites, by area and typology

Riverside Confluence Park12.4 acres · PublicHarborfront Promenade2.1 km · WaterfrontCedar Ridge Campus Grounds34 acres · InstitutionalWillow Creek Daylighting0.8 mi · RestorationBasecamp Rooftop Commons1.2 acres · Urban InfillAlder Hollow Housing6.5 acres · ResidentialRiverside Confluence Park12.4 acres · PublicHarborfront Promenade2.1 km · WaterfrontCedar Ridge Campus Grounds34 acres · InstitutionalWillow Creek Daylighting0.8 mi · RestorationBasecamp Rooftop Commons1.2 acres · Urban InfillAlder Hollow Housing6.5 acres · Residential

00Design Ethos

Most site plans are drawn to survive the ribbon-cutting.

Mine are drawn to survive the hundred-year storm.

Every grade, every drain, every tree pit is sized for the site's worst week — not its best photograph.

— If it only works on a sunny day, it isn't finished.

01How A Site Gets Read

Four layers, before one plant is placed.

Every site is drawn as a stack of overlapping analyses — each one has to hold up on its own before it's allowed to inform the design.

Topography

Every project starts with contours, not concepts — how water actually moves across the site before a single line is drawn on top of it.

Hydrology

Stormwater is mapped as a design layer, not an afterthought bolted on for permitting — retention, infiltration, and overflow are drawn in from day one.

Vegetation

Native and climate-adapted planting palettes, sequenced by canopy maturity so the site looks intentional in year one and thrives by year twenty.

Circulation

How people, service vehicles, and maintenance crews actually move through the finished site — tested against real desire lines, not assumed ones.

02From Sheet To Site

A plan is only as good as its punch list.

Site Analysis

Survey, soils, hydrology, and a week of just walking the site before any concept work starts.

Concept Design

Two to three master plan directions, each pressure-tested against budget and maintenance reality before a client ever sees them.

Documentation

Full construction documents — grading, planting, irrigation, details — coordinated with civil and architecture, not handed off blind.

Construction Admin

On-site through substantial completion. Plans survive contact with a backhoe; I'm there to make the calls when they don't.

03Selected Sites

Four sites, four hundred acres.

Riverside Confluence Park

Portland, OR · 12.4 acres

Public Park · Stormwater

Challenge: A flood-prone brownfield at the confluence of two creeks, written off by three previous studies as unbuildable.
Approach: Redesigned the site as a working floodplain — terraced wetland cells that flood on purpose, with a raised boardwalk system that stays open during the events that would close a conventional park.
Result: Handles a 100-year storm event without closing, and manages stormwater for four adjacent blocks that used to flood every spring.

18M gal/yrStormwater managed

64Native species

2022Completed

Cedar Ridge Campus Grounds

Eugene, OR · 34 acres

Institutional · Master Plan

Challenge: A 1970s campus with disconnected quads, a maintenance budget cut three years running, and a mandate to cut irrigation use in half.
Approach: Rebuilt the planting palette around drought-adapted natives, converted 40% of turf to no-mow meadow, and redrew circulation around the paths students were already wearing into the grass.
Result: Irrigation demand down more than half within two seasons, with maintenance hours redirected instead of cut further.

−54%Irrigation use

40%Turf converted

2021Completed

Willow Creek Daylighting

Beaverton, OR · 0.8 mi corridor

Ecological Restoration

Challenge: A salmon-bearing creek buried in a storm culvert since the 1960s, running under a strip mall parking lot.
Approach: Worked with the city and a hydrologist for two years to daylight the channel, rebuild the riparian corridor, and reroute the parking lot around it instead of through it.
Result: First confirmed coho salmon spawning in the reopened reach in over fifty years, and a public greenway where a culvert used to be.

0.8 miChannel restored

3,200Trees planted

2019Completed

Basecamp Rooftop Commons

Portland, OR · 1.2 acres

Urban Infill · Green Roof

Challenge: A structural roof deck rated for far less soil depth than a real planting scheme needs, on a tight infill site with no ground-level open space.
Approach: Engineered a lightweight growing-medium system in partnership with the structural engineer, layering intensive and extensive zones to stay under the load limit without flattening the design.
Result: The only usable green space for 400 residential units — and the load calculations are now a reference detail the structural engineer reuses on other projects.

3Soil depth zones

400+Residents served

2023Completed

04Growth Rings

Fourteen seasons, measured in acres.

14Years Practicing

0Acres designed

0%Native canopy avg.

0MGallons stormwater/yr

0Sites completed

05Fieldwork

Fourteen years of site visits.

Principal

2019 — Present

Marsh & Field Studio

Independent practice focused on stormwater-led public and institutional landscapes across the Pacific Northwest.

Master PlanningStormwater DesignConstruction Admin

Senior Associate

2015 — 2019

Halvorsen Landscape Collective

Led design development on three park systems and a university campus master plan, from concept through documentation.

Public ParksCampus PlanningGrading & Drainage

Landscape Designer

2012 — 2015

Greenway Studio

Cut teeth on residential and small commercial planting design before moving into larger public-realm work.

Planting DesignSite Detailing

M.L.A., Landscape Architecture

2010 — 2012

University of Oregon

Thesis on post-industrial stormwater remediation — the seed of the practice's current focus.

Ecological DesignHydrology

06Licensure

Stamped, certified, and current.

2016

Registered Landscape Architect (RLA)

State of Oregon

2017

LEED Accredited Professional

USGBC

2020

SITES AP

Green Business Certification Inc.

2013 —

ASLA Member, Oregon Chapter

American Society of Landscape Architects

ASLA OregonHonor Award, 2022●Landscape Architecture MagazineFeatured Project●City of PortlandGreen Infrastructure Award●Metro Parks CouncilDesign Excellence●SITESGold Certification●DwellRooftop Feature●ASLA OregonHonor Award, 2022●Landscape Architecture MagazineFeatured Project●City of PortlandGreen Infrastructure Award●Metro Parks CouncilDesign Excellence●SITESGold Certification●DwellRooftop Feature●

07From The Field

What holds up after the punch list.

“

Every other firm told us the site was unbuildable. Owen redesigned it to flood on purpose and it's the busiest park in the district now, storm season included.

Denise OkaforParks Director, City of Portland

“

He sat with our maintenance crew before he drew a single plant. That's why the planting plan actually survived contact with our real budget.

Marcus WebbFacilities Director, Cedar Ridge

“

Two years of permitting meetings and he never once let the ecology get value-engineered out. The salmon came back the first winter.

Dr. Lena PetrovHydrologist, Willow Creek Restoration

08Start A Site Visit

Tell me about the ground you're working with.

A first site walk tells me more than any brief — send a few details and I'll follow up to schedule one.

Emailowen@marshfield.studio

LinkedInin/owen-marsh

Based inPortland, OR