Craig Ritland: Landscape architect enjoys environment he helps create

Ritland, 84, has left his fingerprints all over parks and gathering spaces as a landscape architect. Starting his own firm in 1970, which eventually became Ritland+Kuiper Landscape Architects, he has worked on the designs of George Wyth State Park, the Cedar Valley Lakes, Hickory Hills Park, the Cedar Valley Nature Trail, Cedar Falls’ Main Street and River Place Plaza and Waterloo’s Fourth Street and Lincoln Park, just to name a few.

“Wherever you may travel, especially in the Cedar Valley, you are never very far from a property that Craig Ritland has impacted in some way at some time through his design practice,” his partner and nominator, Mark Kuiper, said.

Ritland was surprised he was nominated, even anxious to know what to talk about in his interview. Despite the accolades, he stays humble.

“I think I have some artistic talent,” he said as his annual hand-drawn Christmas cards of nature scenes were displayed on the wall behind him. “I have a love for the outdoors and the environment. I have a love for making things look cool.”

He was inducted as a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, one of the highest accomplishments someone can achieve in the profession. Kuiper said Ritland is highly regarded for the scale and depth of work, which includes parks, campus master plans, urban streetscapes, site design and residential projects.

In 2022, he received the organization’s Honor Award for his contributions over the past 25 years to the Iowa Living Roadways Community Visioning program, where he assisted more than 50 rural Iowa communities in developing park and transportation enhancement projects.

Ritland had always been in love with nature and art, but did not find his calling until he returned to his stomping grounds near Ames. Not finding what he wanted to do at Luther College, he enrolled at Iowa State University.

“I happened to visit a fraternity with somebody that was in landscape architecture and he had a project that he was working on in his fraternity room, and I looked at that and I said that’s what I wanted,” he said. “So I enrolled in landscape architecture and never looked back.”

About 10 miles away at a farm near Huxley is where his appreciation for the outdoors began. He and his brothers helped his father, a school teacher, tend the fields to “get us out of mom’s hair.”

“Whenever he was working the farm, I just ran through the woods and fished in the pond and we just fell in love there with that environment because that was our playground,” he said. “That was a beautiful piece of property, and it was full of wildlife and just a really great experience, a great way to experience a childhood.”

Ritland, along with his wife, Jenny, often goes fly fishing or hunting. Selfishly, he said, his work life positively affects his hobbies.

“It makes you keenly aware of the need for good environments, healthy environments,” he said. “So, you know, that’s really what we do in our work is try to make more beautiful, more healthy environments and environments for people to enjoy.”

“It’s just better for mankind, but more personally, it makes for much better hunting and much better fishing when you have a healthy, quality habitat.”

Enjoying the outdoors keeps him young, which allows him to continue going into the office multiple days a week.

Kuiper said Ritland has shaped many peoples’ lives -- both clients and coworkers -- with his experience, talent and heart.

“He has created such a great working environment in his office that his employees have told him that they simply won’t allow him to retire,” Kuiper said in his nomination.

Luckily for him, Ritland said he does not see himself stopping any time soon.

“I enjoy doing it, and that gets me outside, too, occasionally,” he said. “To stay young, I think you got to keep moving. My passions drive me to do that.”