THE STUDIO
The most successful outdoor environments feel as though they were always meant to exist.
Ivy Studio is a design-build landscape architecture studio. We shape outdoor environments where home, land, and daily life are brought into alignment.
FOUNDER
Vern Chellberg
Vern Chellberg has spent more than two decades shaping the relationship between homes and the land they sit on. His career began not at a drafting table, but in the field — working in landscape construction as a teenager, learning how outdoor environments are actually built before he ever began designing them.
By his late teens he had built a residential practice of more than one hundred properties. At twenty-five, he founded and later sold a high-end landscape company in Minneapolis, working across a wide range of private residences and prominent clients. That work revealed something he has continued to build on: the success of a landscape depends on how thoughtfully it is considered as a whole.
Vern later relocated to New England with his wife, Traci, where they chose to build their life and raise their three children. Living here — across seasons, across years, watching how family life shapes and reshapes the spaces around it — has only deepened his understanding of what a landscape is truly for.
He founded Ivy Studio to do the work the way he believed it should be done: one studio, one continuous process, with design and construction carried from first conversation to finished environment.
FOUNDER’S NOTE
When I walk a property for the first time, I am not yet thinking about design.
I am thinking about how a family lives — or wants to live. I am reading the land: its light, its terrain, its views, the quiet things it is already offering that have not yet been noticed. And I am listening to the home — understanding what it is already reaching toward.
Then I sit with all of it. I turn the property over carefully before making a single move — testing ideas against the reality of the place, against the way the family actually lives, against what the land is genuinely capable of.
Most clients come to us knowing something feels possible. My job is to find what that is — and then design toward it, even when it is further than they originally imagined.
My commitment to every client is this: I will tell you the truth. I will protect your investment the way I would protect my own. And I will not stop until what we build together becomes everything it was always meant to be.
— Vern Chellberg, Founder
LEAD LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT & PROJECT MANAGER
Tom Frontera
Tom Frontera is a licensed landscape architect and the studio's lead on project execution. Where Vern develops the vision, Tom is responsible for carrying it forward — managing the transition from design to construction with the precision and continuity that the work demands.
He works closely with Vern from the earliest design stages, which means he understands not just what is being built but why every decision was made. That understanding is what allows the design to arrive on site intact — resolved, detailed, and ready to be executed without interpretation or compromise.
Tom's involvement is not a handoff. It is a continuation of the same thinking, carried through to the finished environment.
THE STUDIO
A full-service
design-build
team.
Behind every Ivy Studio project is a complete team of specialists working in concert from the first site assessment through final construction. Landscape architects and designers shape the vision. Project managers coordinate every phase with precision. Construction supervisors oversee execution on site. Horticultural specialists guide planting strategy and long-term plant health. Lighting designers extend the landscape into the evening. Materials specialists ensure that every surface, edge, and transition is detailed and sourced to the standard the design requires.
These disciplines are not assembled project by project. They are part of how the studio works — present from the beginning, aligned around a single vision, and accountable to the same standard of finish that Vern holds for the work as a whole.
THE STUDIO
A full-service
design-build
team.
Behind every Ivy Studio project is a complete team of specialists working in concert from the first site assessment through final construction. Landscape architects and designers shape the vision. Project managers coordinate every phase with precision. Construction supervisors oversee execution on site. Horticultural specialists guide planting strategy and long-term plant health. Lighting designers extend the landscape into the evening. Materials specialists ensure that every surface, edge, and transition is detailed and sourced to the standard the design requires.
These disciplines are not assembled project by project. They are part of how the studio works — present from the beginning, aligned around a single vision, and accountable to the same standard of finish that Vern holds for the work as a whole.
A DIFFERENT WAY OF WORKING
Design and construction are not separate engagements.
Most landscape projects are divided. A designer develops a plan. A contractor builds it. The work is interpreted along the way. Something is often lost between the two.
Ivy Studio works differently. Design and construction are carried by the same studio — so the original thinking is not diluted, adjusted, or lost. The same team that develops the vision guides it through construction — ensuring there is no separation between thinking and execution, and no moment where the work is handed off and reinterpreted.
One studio. One process. One continuous line from idea to finished environment.
WHAT WE TAKE ON
The whole property.
Always.
Our work begins with the property as a whole — understanding its structure, its conditions, and its potential before a single element is introduced. Whether a site is untouched or partially built, we step back and consider everything together.
These environments often include terraces, water, outdoor rooms, and gathering spaces — organised as one composition, not added over time.
We accept a limited number of projects each year — not to create scarcity, but to give each one the level of attention it deserves. Every project is developed carefully and carried through without compromise.
WHAT WE TAKE ON
The whole property.
Always.
Our work begins with the property as a whole — understanding its structure, its conditions, and its potential before a single element is introduced. Whether a site is untouched or partially built, we step back and consider everything together.
These environments often include terraces, water, outdoor rooms, and gathering spaces — organised as one composition, not added over time.
We accept a limited number of projects each year — not to create scarcity, but to give each one the level of attention it deserves. Every project is developed carefully and carried through without compromise.
A STEWARDSHIP MINDSET
Protecting your investment — at every stage.
We treat every project as a significant investment — in a property, in a way of living, and in something that will hold value across years and decades. Protecting that investment is not a secondary consideration. It shapes how we work from the first conversation through the final day of construction.
At Ivy Studio, the team that develops the vision is the same team that oversees how it is built — because that continuity is the only reliable way to ensure nothing is lost, compromised, or interpreted incorrectly along the way. When decisions arise mid-construction — as they always do — they are made by someone who understands the whole, not just the immediate problem.
BEGIN THE CONVERSATION
Every property is different.
But the approach remains the same.
To understand what is there. To see what is possible. And to guide that carefully into form. To create landscapes that are not simply built — but lived in, and carried forward over time.