Otto Holmdahl

Born in Falkenberg, Sweden, Holmdahl trained in naval and landscape architecture at Chalmers University (now Chalmers University of Technology) in Gothenburg before immigrating in 1907 to the United States through Vancouver, BC. He initially lived in Snohomish, Washington, subsequently settling in Seattle and founding one of the city’s earliest landscape design offices in the University District in 1919. He became a naturalized citizen in 1926.

Holmdahl became known for his insightful and common-sense approach to landscape architecture. He established a reputation as a skillful designer of rockeries (rock gardens) in the 1930s, when interest in the subject was gaining national traction. Although his work primarily concentrated on public spaces, he also designed residential gardens—often in collaboration with architect Arthur L. Loveless for such prominent Seattle residents as Laurence and Ida Colman (1930). In the late 1930s he became involved in the design of the Seattle Arboretum (now Washington Park Arboretum), for which Olmsted Brothers authored a general plan (1936). Holmdahl prepared plans for several areas: the Rhododendron Glen (1936), Maple Collection (1938), Rockery (1938), and Mary E. Williams Memorial Camellia Garden (1945). He oversaw Works Progress Administration workers at the rockery, where they installed volcanic basalt, and also at the glen.

Holmdahl designed the grounds of the Washington State Library in Olympia, Washington (1954–1959), and served, in 1958, as a member of the Seattle Worlds’ Fair planning board, advising the relocation of nearly 100 trees from local freeway construction to the fairgrounds. Three years later, he served as principal landscape designer of the fair (also known as the Century 21 Exposition). He delivered lectures on designing rockeries, wrote articles for the Arboretum Bulletin, and was among the founders of the Washington Society of Landscape Architects (1946). Holmdahl died at the age of 83 and is buried in Washington Memorial Park in Seattle.