Penguin Environmental Design _ Landscape Architect, Japanese Garden Designer, Architectural Designer

I cannot recommend Penguin Environmental Services highly enough. Yoko has a unique talent for design with elegant simplicity, balance, and extraordinarily effective use of space. Takaya’s landscape designs incorporate an empathy with nature, and artistic elegance and simplicity. He designed a gorgeous traditional Japanese garden around a dilapidated stonewall and rocky outcroppings in our yard and transformed it into something extraordinarily beautiful and a focal point both during the day and at night with the light from stone lanterns.

We had the pleasure to work with Takaya on renovating the backyard of the house we purchased. The project includes designing a fence, landscaping, and hardscaping. Takaya listened to our needs and went above and beyond delivering extremely meticulous drawings and working with contractors to ensure the design materializes. In addition, we find Takaya to be professional, considerate, personable, and respectful. We cannot be happier and cannot recommend Penguin Environmental Design highly enough.

We asked Yoko and Takaya of Penguin Environmental Design for the renovation of an entire house and revamping the landscape to match the new house design, upon our purchase of the property in Connecticut. It came out very nicely, converting an old colonial into an open-space modern family house that gave us a sense of seamless connection to the front- and backyard. Yoko and Takaya gave us clear description of plans and operations throughout the process from the conceptual design stage to the final touches. They ensured the functionality of the design to every detail. We loved the house and considered it as our last residence, but unfortunately we had to move to So Cal after several years. We miss it all the time.

Takaya designed a beautiful backyard garden for us years ago. At that time, he came to my backyard several times to measure and monitor the construction work. He was quite conscientious and did a great job! We love the garden. And he still contacts us on the follow-up maintainence for the garden.