Jean-Marc Flack

Jean-Marc Flack is the founder of Hortulus Animae, an award-winning, ecologically focused landscape design studio established in 2015 in New York’s Hudson Valley. His practice is guided by a belief that landscapes can be both expressive and restorative, telling the story of the land and encouraging biodiversity while at the same time deepening our connection to the living world.

Through a holistic approach that unites art and nature, Jean-Marc’s work brings beauty, creativity, and craft into dialogue with ecology, horticulture, and botany. Each commission begins with the close study of the terrain, living systems, and history that define a place, resulting in a site-specific response that centers the land’s inherent character within the client’s vision.

Jean-Marc’s two decades of experience and a prior career in the fashion industry, along with formal studies in philosophy, psychology, and sustainable garden and landscape design at the New York Botanical Garden, bring a deeply informed and interdisciplinary perspective to his practice.

His work has received international and regional recognition, including a 2024 Gold Award in Planting Design and a 2020 Design Award from the Association of Professional Landscape Designers, as well as a 2022 Design Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects, New York Chapter. His landscapes have been featured in Gardenista, Surface, Upstate Diary, Design Courier among other publications.

Jean-Marc resides under the Blackhead Mountain Escarpment in the Catskills with his husband, choreographer Stephen Petronio, who founded his dance residency center on 172 acres of protected forest. Though the Center is now closed, the ever creative couple continue to live in the property’s gate house cottage where their combined vision aligns art, culture, and ecology through a singular lens.