By MARLEY LIEN-GONZALEZ
Through horse show hospitality, tack room design, and upleveling the experience for barns on the road with stall front set-ups that are oh-so Instagram worthy, Jessica Jones of Equestrian Gardens has earned a reputation for hoisting the average to artisanal levels amongst top barns and competition venues up and down the East Coast.
But in the past year, to answer a burgeoning desire for lasting elevated spaces, Jones has expanded Equestrian Gardens’ services to include full-scale landscape design for the generational impact of farms and ranches.
Former owner of Lamplight Equestrian Center and prominent performance horse owner Nina Koloseike has worked continuously with Jones on configuring her 20-acre farm in Ocala that she shares with four corgis and a donkey named Jelly. “Jessica helps me immensely in sourcing plants, and she has the best eye for how to lay them out,” she shares.
Koloseike has a penchant for gardening herself, but struggles with the limited plant variety in Ocala. “She gets the plants, sets them out in my gardens, and makes everything lusher, more colorful, and more interesting. There’s a lot of added curb appeal,” says Koloseike. “Jessica doesn’t just plan out gardens–she helps you match your property to the picture you envision in your head.”
Any Equestrian Vision, Anywhere
Jones’s leading experience in equine outdoor living has allowed her to master balancing utility with beauty and sustainability. She knows that a leafy canopy casting shade over paddocks or a meticulously clipped lawn meeting the sandy edge of a ring equates to more than just pride and exhibition for many barns; it’s tied to their identity. At the heart of creating incredible equestrian spaces lies a love of horses and devotion to crafting an environment that respects their nature and needs.
“Every project starts with a property survey,” says Jones. “First and foremost, we ask what’s functional?’ and then ‘what does a barn need to have to operate for the horses, but also accounting for things that are coming and going every day?’ On the engineering side, we take measurements, consider the topography, and determine how to make the property flow.”
Equestrian Gardens’ designs–many most recently based in Ocala, Long Island, and Westchester County–range drastically in configuration. Jones’ process is, “Executing my client’s dreams and aspirations while keeping in mind all the aspects a horse property requires.”
On builds emerging from the ground up, Jones says, “It’s great if someone’s building a new barn and arena and we’re working in partnership with architects on a master site plan where the gardens and the landscape aren’t an afterthought, rather part of the overall circulation of the property.”
But Equestrian Gardens also takes on existing landscapes established as far as 50 years ago, where she says, “It’s often just a barn, paddocks, grass. It’s beautiful, it’s buolic, but there are basic things that aren’t there–like just an entrance to the driveway or a road for the trucks and tractor trailers to come down.”
Jones adds, “The barn might be very sturdy and have withstood decades, but maybe it doesn’t have the latest and greatest matting or stall fronts. I get my clients to think about historic housing–instead of ripping down everything, how do we repair and renovate within your vision and budget?”
A Low Impact Legacy
As an avid equestrian and witness to the longevity and tradition of the sport, Jones always thinks of the future when constructing in the present. Part of her comprehensive service is keeping contacts in all sectors–ring footing specialists, aborists, soil experts, plant nursery owners, and more–to ensure long-standing sustainability.
“I’m constantly going out to the growers I work with, asking them about the latest trends,” says Jones. “Equestrian Gardens also has a team of architects that specialize in native plantings, so when clients come to me with an aesthetic, I can give them what they want.”
When landscaping, state governments often have polices requiring a certain percentage of native plants and flowers, so Jones sources varieties that suit her client’s taste (“I find that a lot of equestrians like symmetry and a streamlined look.”) but that still perform really well in the environment and abide by any regulations.
The resulting spaces endure for generations of horse people to come through conscious choices in plant type and deliberate placement for drainage, airflow, eco-friendly cooling, and natural barriers against the elements for the safety of the structures and the horses.
“The horse is always at the center of the equation, but I’ve noticed a shift where my clients want their investment to reflect their lives and are thinking about what they want to pass on to others, whether that be direct inheritance or charitable organizations. The property really becomes their legacy,” says Jones.
Equestrian Gardens does landscape design at its baseline, but it also highlights what it means to be an equestrian.
“We challenge ourselves by wondering what a property starts to look like when someone is building a home with their horses,” Jones says. Whether that be by adding gathering spaces for hosting friends and family, pools, basketball courts, vegetable gardens, or art installations. “What I always dreamt of with Equestrian Gardens was servicing a 360 view of an equestrian and their lifestyle.”
