Bruce John Riddell has a deep connection to the natural world. His blend of granite, native plants, ground covers, moss, trees, water, and color transform each garden so seamlessly, clients often tell him they can't imagine their property ever looked any other way.

Riddell is often introduced to sites that have been destroyed by blasting or installation of underground utilities. “I listen to my clients' ideas first, learn their interests, and visit the site with them,”' Riddell says.

“But I also visit sites several times alone to feel what the site is all about. I try to impart the ‘loci’ (essence) of the site and develop the strengths that make it unique. I usually draw two to three concept plans that often are blended into one master plan.

“Then I combine stone, water, plants, ferns, moss, lichen, and flowers that relate to the environment, and the architecture, to bring the natural back to the site.”

As a child, there was some indication of his future profession. Growing up in Ellsworth and Bar Harbor, Riddell said he was always bringing home stones from the woods or the shore. “I was sort of a 'rock hound' early on.”

He also mentioned the influence of his grandfather, John “Jock” Riddell, who studied the craft of gardening in the 1920s at Edinburgh's Royal Botanical Garden in Scotland. He was born at Culzean Castle and worked at the Bar Harbor home of the Anson family. Riddell's great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather were both gardeners at Culzean Castle.

The Anson estate, called The Turretts, is now owned by College of the Atlantic.“I never knew I would take after my grandfather,” Riddell says. “I was an English major."

Riddell has been in the field, yard, estate and garden for 30 years. His professional architectural life began in Washington D.C. working for Oehme, van Sweden & Associates (OvS). His projects with them included the Nelson A. Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City, New York; Ronald Reagan International Airport, The National Zoo, and Francis Scott Key Park, among others.

In 1994, after 8 years in D.C., Riddell wanted to return to Maine and moved to Bar Harbor with his wife, Alicia.

His way with nature would soon become part of the Boothbay region thanks to his former employers at OvS. In 2000, the board members of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens began a nationwide search for a firm to design the master plan, including the D.C.-based firm.

Oehme offered Riddell a position as a member of the firm's design work team. Little did Riddell know that he would soon spend many years commuting from Bar Harbor to Boothbay and eventually make it his home.

Riddell recalled the original OvS plan included a childrens' garden, visitor's center, and rhododendron, hillside and meditation gardens.

“For the rhododendron garden, I basically made a color wheel and put in a tapestry of perennials below them,” Riddell said. “But before I did that, I asked if I could build stone steps there. I basically built them at cost.

“I brought in two guys from Southwest Harbor, Gordon Robb and Dave Murray to help me. The hardest part of it was getting around the pond. We still managed to finish them in 2 days.”

Riddell also installed many of the plantings in the rose garden on the great lawn, designed the waterfall, the Haney Hillside Garden and the Vayo Meditation Garden.

He said the Hillside Garden was one of the more challenging jobs he has undertaken. Working with Dick Zieg and Bruce McElroy, the three planned a zig-zagging garden formation going down the 95-foot hillside.

“At the first 'zig' I included a waterfall, benches, and a stone terrace. The second 'zag' became a moss mound, and for the third shady area I envisioned a lot of glass orbs –  like dinosaur eggs –  on a bed of moss.”

Riddell’s dinosaur egg vision materialized in the form of glass orbs by New York artist Henry Richardson. Their starting price of $50,000 was more than half of Riddell’s whole budget for the hillside.

However, when Richardson discovered Riddell’s plan to install the orbs in a botanical garden in Maine, where he had summered since childhood, he donated a single, faceted orb. Even delivery was free of charge.

“When the morning light filters through onto the orb it turns into a light bulb,” Riddell said.

For the Vayo Meditation Garden, Riddell envisioned Mount Desert pink granite. He called a variety of companies from whom he had already purchased tons of rock. When one of the company owners learned the granite was for a botanical garden, Riddell ended up with two donated truckloads of it.

“Working on the botanical gardens here was a chance to be part of something being created from scratch,” Riddell said. “Once every 100 years you have the chance to be part of something bigger. I was very fortunate to have been able to be part of it.”

Former Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens Executive Director Maureen Heffernan, who worked closely with Riddell, called him “a true wizard, a rock genius who is able to tune in to their frequency and listen to the stones about where they want to rest.

“His work is singularly brilliant, and like a great writer or musician, each of his landscapes has his unique voice to it.”

His current public projects include restoration work in Bath's Library Park where the William Zorach bronze sculpture stands in the pond. He is also working with DeWan Associates on a concept for an arboretum at Fort Williams and just completed the design of its Children's Garden.

Despite all of the large-scale projects, Riddell's focus is actually residential. He prefers to keep the identities of his clientele private, but locally he has designed gardens in East Boothbay and Southport.

One year ago Riddell relocated his main office to Boothbay in the Old Fire Station. Around the same time the Riddell, wife Alicia, daughter Saida, and the family's Shih tzu, Moxie, moved to Boothbay Harbor from Bar Harbor.

“We felt at home immediately in Boothbay. We love the people and the pace here,” Riddell said. “We shopped for a house for 4 to 5 years and now have the perfect one for us – with perfect gardens planted just the way I would have done them.

“That's a good thing because I don't have any time to garden at home some day I'll get around to putting up my own Stonehenge in the back yard!”

For more information on Riddell, visit www.landartdesigner.com.