Introducing TCLF’s 2026 Sally Boasberg Founder's Fellow
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) is pleased to welcome recent Master of Landscape Architecture graduate, Rachel Phipps, as this year’s Sally Boasberg Founder's Fellow.
Rachel practiced landscape design and construction for seven years before enrolling in The University of Texas at Austin’s (UT Austin) Landscape Architecture Program, where she earned an MLA in May 2026. She is deeply curious about the ways in which history, ecology, horticulture, and culture are embedded in landscapes—and how understanding these layers can inform contemporary design and long-term stewardship.
Rachel is particularly interested in the legacy of women in landscape architecture and garden design, particularly figures such as Gertrude Jekyll and Beatrix Farrand, and the transatlantic exchange of ideas that helped shape American landscape practice. Her research considers the Arts and Crafts movement not simply as an aesthetic tradition, but as an approach grounded in craftsmanship, regional expression, natural forms, and material honesty—predecessors of ecologically minded landscape practices.
At UT Austin, Rachel explored these interests while as a teaching assistant for Mirka Beneš’s “History and Theory of Landscape Architecture” course, as well as during an extended trip in the United Kingdom, where—as the recipient of the school’s International Research Travel Scholarship—she was able to research, document, and visit several of Jekyll’s designed landscapes.
Outside the classroom Rachel worked with two landscape architecture practices, FORGE landscape architecture and SITE Agency. At the former she worked with her academic mentor and the firm’s founding principal, Phoebe Lickwar, to research ecological stewardship and long-term land management of Canard Brake in Louisiana. The project earned two awards (2025) from the Texas Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architect’s (ASLA). At SITE Agency she worked with founding principal Michael Averitt and two of her classmates to develop the project, The Great Trinity Prairie, examining how practices such as cattle grazing and prescribed burning can rehabiliate historic cultural and ecological systems. The project received a World Landscape Architecture (WLA) Professional Award in the “Concept | Analysis and Planning” category and the Texas Chapter of ASLA’s Professional Honor Award for “Planning and Analysis” in 2026.
During the past summer, Rachel served as The Garden Club of Virginia’s Rudy J. Favretti Fellow. With guidance from Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, Rachel researched and interpreted the evolution of Battersea, a historic estate located in Petersburg, Virginia.
As TCLF’s 2026 Sally Boasberg Founder’s Fellow, she is excited to continue exploring how research, preservation, design, and stewardship can reveal the stories carried by landscapes and help communities understand, care for, and sustain them over time.