Kate Kennen

Kate Kennen, FASLA, is a registered landscape architect and founder of Offshoots, Inc., a Boston, MA landscape architecture/ horticultural installation practice & a full-time teaching professor at Northeastern University in the College of Arts, Media and Design. She grew up with a deep connection to plants on her family’s garden center in central Massachusetts. Her current research and teaching concentrates on productive planting design, phytoremediation, mycofiltration (using fungi to clean stormwater), and pollinator landscapes for the Northeast. She wrote the book: PHYTO, Principles and Resources for Site Remediation and Landscape Design, with Niall Kirkwood, which translates the science of phytoremediation into an easy-to-understand guide for design professionals.

A registered Landscape Architect with degrees from Cornell University and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, she founded Kennen Landscape Architecture in 2004 and Offshoots, Inc. in 2012 to create practices focused on productive planting and ecological planning. Kate’s current research and teaching concentrates on planting design and applied phytotechnologies that utilize plants to clean up contaminated sites. Kate has been honored with numerous awards for her recent and ongoing projects including Somerville’s Pollinator Action Plan and Hood Bike Park in Boston.