As a child, Mike’s family moved around quite a bit, so he was able to learn about the different areas of the United States of America. He has lived in San Jose, Chicago, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, Novato and finally settled on Santa Rosa. As his family moved, they also travelled all over the country. History, education and plants were all of Mike’s interests.

Throughout his middle-school and high school education, Mike knew that he wanted to design landscapes. During high school, he became very involved in golf and played on the high school golf team, eventually being the #1 seed for Santa Cruz High. After high school, Mike had chosen Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as his higher education. He decided that his interest in golf and interest in landscapes would merge perfectly to become a golf course architect!

His last year in college, he found out that you did not need to have an education in Landscape Architecture to become a golf course architect. And, in searching for a position after college found out that golf course architects were all small firms and all were associated with a PGA tour player of present or past. At graduation, Mike scrapped the idea of becoming a golf course architect and found a position at a small firm in Novato, California. During his six and a half years at the Novato firm, Michael rose quickly through the ranks and became a Project Manager within the first year. He worked on projects of all sizes and shapes (some are shown on his website). Private, Municipal and Commercial projects were all a part of Mike’s repertoire.

In 2006, Mike married his wife, Kerri, and bought a house in Santa Rosa. As part of that transition, Mike changed positions to a local Landscape Architect firm in Santa Rosa. For over one and a half years, Mike managed the firm and its projects. Due to the current economic climate, Mike was no longer needed at this firm and decided to start Michael A. Cook, Landscape Architect.  Taking a “leap of faith”, Mike began pounding the pavement, soon to find that many past and new clients found his work to be impressive.

Welcome to my website and blog. I hope you find this information helpful and more information will arrive shortly. This blog will be used to educate and entertain potential clients, the general public, and design professionals. Michael A. Cook, Landscape Architect is based in Santa Rosa, California and provides consultations and design throughout the State of California (soon to be Oregon and Nevada). We are also working toward becoming LEED certified and have worked on numerous LEED projects during the past 4 years.

Mike will be the author of all posts, with references from resources that he has found and brought together here in this one venue. I look forward to hearing from you and seeing your comments on my posts. The posts will probably be semi-regular (i.e. most likely once per week) and if you sign in with your email, you will receive updates when I have wrote a new blog. Thanks again for visiting.