Bibi Gaston

Patricia Gaston Term: Spring 2015

Topic:

Gifford Pinchot’s Correspondence with the Old Timers, 1905-1910: A New Prototyle for Leadership and Service in America.

Bibi Gaston is the author of four books. She is also a fully licensed professional Landscape Architect. She has provided landscape architecture, site planning, and design services for public and private clients throughout the United States since 1986. She believes in the founding precepts of her profession: that landscape architecture, at its best, reflects a balance between man and nature.

With completed projects across the United States, the Office of Bibi Gaston has worked in partnership with many prominent architects and served hundreds of public and private clients including New York’s Central Park Conservancy, the USDA Forest Service, the Trust for Public Land, the US Department of Transportation, Union Pacific Railroad, the Columbia River Gorge Commission, the Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation, and the Oregon Garden Foundation. Bibi spent almost a decade of private practice in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area where she served as an independent landscape architect working with numerous government agencies and non governmental organizations. Areas of specialization include residential, commercial and recreational site analysis and design, landscape restoration, historic preservation of parks and gardens, construction-related services, visual assessment and scenic enhancement, group facilitation, and design communication.

Bibi has been invited to discuss her work at historical societies, librairies, garden clubs, nature centers, and numerous professional organizations.

Bibi Gaston is also an Author. Her first book, “The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries and Her Granddaughter’s Search for Home” was published by William Morrow/ Harper Collins in hardback in 2008 and by Harper Perennial in a paperback edition in 2009.

Her second and third books, entitled “Gifford Pinchot and the Old Timers Volume 1” and “Gifford Pinchot and the Old Timers Volume 2” are based on a collection of letters she uncovered at the Library of Congress’s “Gifford Pinchot collection” detailing the work of approximately 250 forest professionals as told to Gifford Pinchot, First Chief of the US Forest Service and 2-term Governor of Pennsylvania. Published by Baked Apple Club Productions, “Gifford Pinchot and the Old Timers Volumes 1 and 2” are available in bookstores, museums and interpretive centers throughout the United States.