About Us
René J.L. Fransen Landscape Architects serves high-end residential and commercial clients who demand the utmost quality in design and detailing. The firm’s specialty is locating specimen plants, which give its projects a mature, established appearance as soon as the installations are completed. Projects are diverse in scale, ranging from French Quarter courtyards, high-rise condominium terraces, beachfront estates in the Hamptons and a two-thousand acre estate in northern Mississippi.
The firm’s philosophy is that it can be done. This is integral to its reputation and success; as clients demand the seemingly impossible, René and his design team always devise creative solutions to turn dreams into stunning reality.
Ongoing and recently completed projects include a five-hundred acre Texas Hill Country ranch, an estate on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a Palladian mansion in Mountain Brook, Alabama, and numerous fine homes throughout the New Orleans area.
René has served as a guest lecturer for the Longue Vue Symposium, the Texas chapter of the Garden Clubs of America, the Brazos Forum and many other organizations. He was the first landscape architect selected by the National Pool and Spa Institute to judge its design competition in 2003. He also garnered the ASLA Honor Award for the design of the grounds of a Richardsonian Romanesque mansion on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans and for a 2000 acre estate in Mississippi where 10 acres were intensively developed adjacent to the residence. HGTV featured an 1850’s Gothic Revival villa and its grounds, landscaped by Fransen’s team, in its Homes Across America series. The firm’s work is also frequently featured on garden tours in the New Orleans area, as is René’s own courtyard, which was also featured in Secret Gardens of the Vieux Carré.