Landscape Design and Fine Gardening

It all started with an artfully arranged patio of recently unearthed bricks on Tasha Hill in Provincetown. Covered in dirt and satisfaction, the scrappy mason stepped back to admire her work. Little did she know, that moment and a half-joking job offer from her future boss and now dear friend would lead to a career in landscaping and a lifelong passion for gardening.

Several years later in a different brick patio, one more professionally done, she sat out in her garden and made the last pencil mark on a sketch of a squash plant just beginning to bud. Alongside it she scribbled ‘apical meristem’. It has a nice ring to it, she thought. In plants, she had recently learned in her New York Botanical Garden plant science class, apical and lateral meristems are the regions of tissue capable of cell division and growth.

A natural science illustrator and painter, Tessera C. Knowles moved from Vermont to Provincetown full-time in 2015 to focus on art. After unexpectedly beginning a career in gardening in 2016, Tess quickly fell in love with tending to plants and digging her hands in the dirt. In 2020, she began studying garden design and in 2021 she began working with Spiegel & Company as a garden designer and head gardener. In early 2024, she founded Meristem Designs. Her endless curiosity, love for research, respect for history, and dedication to the pursuit of kindness, beauty and truth inform every aspect of her work.

Meristem Designs is all about growth and hope. Our gardens are designed with intention, connection, care, and respect.