It’s 6 a.m., and Marfa landscape designer Jim Martinez is already deep into his workday tending a garden. “When it’s early, it’s cool and you get to see more of the insects and butterflies working the flowers,” he says.
Martinez’s mark on the community is visible everywhere, from parks and homes to memorial gardens. And his sumptuous 2019 book, Marfa Garden, doubles as eye candy and botanical reference guide. It’s an eloquent reminder that everything—the soil, wildflowers, wildlife, and even people—is connected. “We have this belief that we were kicked out of the Garden of Eden,” he says. “But I think the paradise that we have is here.”
Martinez developed an affinity for the stark land as a boy spending summers at his grandmother’s small ranch in Northern New Mexico. “She taught me about medicinal herbs: how to collect them and take care of them in the wild,” he says. A deep love of native flora and fauna took root, leading him to four decades as a successful Dallas-based landscape designer.
He began cross-pollinating himself in 1998, splitting time between Dallas and Marfa after attending artist Donald Judd’s Art and Architecture symposium at the Chinati Foundation and falling in love with the region. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision as an extended courtship; he cultivated his own Marfa garden years before construction began on his house.
When not designing landscapes, Martinez mentors young people for various regional foundations. “I tell them, always hug a tree or plant a plant, because they create the environment that allows us to exist,” he says. “You can’t eat computer programs.”
