Z Atelier Zeterre

Z Atelier Zeterre Landscape Architects creating sumptuous gardens. Curators of fine antiques/furnishings which blur the lines between indoor&out! Soon floral creations!

Zeterre Landscape Architecture was founded with a focus on creating unique outdoor ambiance and innovative design for exclusive homes. Always site specific and architecturally appropriate, each garden that Zeterre creates is an expression of the homeowner, the architecture, and the interiors of the building. Our goal is to make all of these important elements flow together seamlessly with the garden.

A hot tub tucked under the staircase, half-roofed in plaster, with red flax holding the edge. The instinct in this categ...
06/05/2026

A hot tub tucked under the staircase, half-roofed in plaster, with red flax holding the edge. The instinct in this category is to put water in the middle of a yard, open and visible. We did the opposite. Bathing wants to feel held, not photographed.

Most clients can't name that until they're in it.

06/04/2026

Some designers would have reached for wood. Or stone. Or something else expected.

We reached for stainless steel: curving walls holding planting beds, the metal taking up almost no room, working with the topography in a way nothing else could. Against the grey plants and dusky maroon, it doesn't announce itself. It easily belongs.

There's something about a symmetrical allée that slows your pace whether you mean to or not. Ornamental urns on classica...
06/02/2026

There's something about a symmetrical allée that slows your pace whether you mean to or not. Ornamental urns on classical pedestals, mature live oaks overhead, and a sight line that seems to go on forever. We designed this to feel like a European estate without losing the quiet restraint that makes contemporary gardens so livable. The gravitas is built in. The softness took more work.

05/31/2026

The hydrangeas aren't an accident.

We know what late August looks like to certain people. The white of a childhood summer, a place the mind goes when the body needs rest. We plant for that. Specifically for that.

You might not know why you feel something here. We do.

We don't give you the same fire pit we gave the last client. We don't give the last client's fire pit to anyone.Every pr...
05/29/2026

We don't give you the same fire pit we gave the last client.

We don't give the last client's fire pit to anyone.

Every project begins with the person — their psychology, their memory, the life they're actually living. Everything follows from there.

We are not for everyone. We are exactly right for some people.

05/29/2026

A garden should never give itself away all at once.

Stephen and Jarrod share this conviction. The stepping stones here, set into baby tears, set a rhythm before you've even decided to follow them. The path curves, deliberately, so the eye can't run ahead of the body. And then, just as you come around the corner, painted ferns and forget-me-nots, a plant pairing perfectly suited to a Marin woodland, and not at all what you were expecting a half-step earlier.

Frank Lloyd Wright did this constantly. He'd compress you down through a low ceiling and then release you into an expanse. We borrow that instinct shamelessly in our gardens. A pinch, then a reveal.

It's one of the great pleasures of this work. To design not just what someone sees, but the order in which they're allowed to see it.

05/28/2026

Few people can name what they're smelling in a garden, yet fragrance stops them in their tracks every time.

This Goldsworthy-inspired cairn sits beneath an arbor where Rosa climbs alongside Vitis vinifera 'Champagne' and Actinidia deliciosa, all three competing for light and winning.

We weave edibles throughout every project because a garden should reward wandering, not just looking.

05/22/2026

A garden like this isn't designed once... it's evolution is continuous.

You can see it in the layering. The lower plantings, the mid-ground, the trees holding the whole composition overhead. That kind of fullness doesn't come from our plans alone. We have to think in years to get the desired effect we're looking for.

Most of our clients (like the one here) walk the garden with our team three or four times a year. We add. We edit. We watch what the garden has decided to do on its own and respond to it. Signing on with Zeterre becomes a lifelong relationship: the garden keeps growing and so does the conversation around it.

It's one of the most meaningful parts of this work. Our relationships outlast the install, and the garden (in the end!) is the record of them.

05/20/2026

Stephen Suzman has seen it all over his storied career, and he will tell you himself: Jarrod still surprises him.

The only circular wisteria arbor Stephen has ever encountered. Black aeoniums against silver. Acid green euphorbias pushing into the frame. Contemporary moves that have no classical precedent to lean on (and shouldn't!).

"It breaks my normal aesthetic mold," he says. Coming from him, that's everything.

Two designers. Two aesthetic worlds. One extraordinary synergy... and gardens that neither could make alone.

05/18/2026

A rule follower working alongside a rebel. What they share is a deep love of English and Japanese gardens, and a conviction that the most interesting work lives in the space between them. Two traditions rarely allowed in the same sentence. One garden that lets them finish each other's thoughts.

You might notice this is a very English-looking garden on the surface... but if you poke a bit deeper, you'll see choices that would typically be present in a Japanese garden. Like we say at Zeterre: we're lovers at anything but the ordinary.

Address

1171 Folsom Street
San Francisco, CA
94103

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 6pm
Tuesday 9am - 6pm
Wednesday 9am - 6pm
Thursday 9am - 6pm
Friday 9am - 6pm

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