About Paul Goldbacher

I was fortunate to grow up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, surrounded by gardens. My grandparents, Italian immigrants, grew row after row of tomato varieties, grapes, and figs in sunny gardens that covered entire backyards. Every house had a fruit tree. The commercial greenhouses of northeast Philadelphia were our neighbors. I marked the seasons by watching the bright colors of springtime annuals and perennials grow under glass cold frames, until they were ready for sale in spring. As a child I played among the magnificent formal gardens of the Biddle Estate in Andalusia, where roses and boxwood swept down to the Delaware riverbank. These influences set me on my path.

After college I became active in the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and began work as a florist, nurseryman, and AFID designer. I worked with prominent landscape and garden designers in New York City, and became a sales leader in interior design, consulting with the top architecture and design firms in the nation. 

My early studies in interior design, horticulture, and culinary arts complimented each other. As part of my culinary arts training, I studied in France and focused on the importance of farm to table food sourcing, and sustainable living. I continued my studies through travel across the European Union, comparing horticultural and design strategies in Germany, Spain, Italy, the UK, Poland, and Scandinavia. I brought all that I learned back home. 

Sustainable living in the Hudson River Valley is my passion and focus in landscape design. I believe the outdoors that surround our homes should be an extension of our homes. The way in which interior design and garden design work together and relate to each other informs my work. Even indoors I am inspired by the colors of nature, all shades and tones of blue, grey, green, and brown.

Today my favorite sources of inspiration in the Hudson Valley are its landscape, its viewshed, and many aspects of the built environment. Manitoga, the Rockefeller and Vanderbilt mansions, the Mills and Wilderstein Mansion, Springwood, Clermont, Olana, Locust Grove, and Locust Lawn provide me and my clients with endless sources of information, inspiration, and problem-solving strategies.

I take pride and enjoyment in troubleshooting and envisioning solutions to garden design problems, and then working in stages with my clients from beginning to end. Garden restoration, approaches to what might have been neglected gardens, and creating new gardens from untouched land is my life’s work.

Last but not least I strive to share and represent the importance and history of gardening in the Hudson Valley. The allure of the mountains, rivers, orchards, valleys, and wildlife here have inspired generations, from the Mohicans and the Lenape, to earliest settlers, to the Hudson River School and arts movements of the nineteenth century, to today. 

I use my own garden as a living laboratory. In the Catskills, I experiment with varieties of flowers and plants, foliage, seasonal hardiness, scale, drainage, design, and accessory structure construction. I always have my clients in mind as I strive to bring sustainability and beauty to the land we cultivate.

Please allow me to talk with you about what you would like your Hudson River Valley Garden to be.