President's Letter: November 2025

Greetings, Maryland Chapter ASLA Members and Partners! I'm thrilled to be writing to you as the new President of our chapter, serving a 1-year term through next year's Conference on Landscape Architecture in Los Angeles. I'm pleased to say that we have the largest Executive Committee in the seven years that I've been involved with the Maryland Chapter, and our team is already working hard on a number of events and initiatives to support and advocate for our members and our profession. Our Executive Director, Board Members, Committee Chairs, Volunteers, Sponsors, and Partners do a lot of work, often behind-the-scenes, to support chapter operations and programs, but we also need your help; I have three asks from you:

ATTEND AN ASLA EVENT

Many of you have previously attended our annual springtime Awards Gala - our landmark event that we've worked hard to perfect through the years; please stay tuned for more information coming in the next few months. I'm also excited to announce that we will again be holding a one-day Regional Conference - our first one post-pandemic - titled "Leading Locally: Our Responsibility to the Community, Climate and Ecosystem" on February 28th at Vectorworks in Columbia, MD. Our monthly e-mail newsletter will be the best way for you to stay in-the-know about these events and many others throughout the year.

KNOW YOUR RENEWAL DATE

This is an important one! Some of you may know me as the guy who sends you an e-mail or Linked-In message when your membership is up for renewal and indeed, I have been serving as Membership Chair for several years and I've discovered that many people don't even realize that they missed their renewal date. Please know your renewal date and add it to your calendar OR consider opting-in for Auto-Renewal on your membership... set it and forget it. For any questions or troubleshooting, please contact ASLA Membership by phone at 202-898-2444 or by e-mail at membership@asla.org.

UPDATE YOUR ASLA ACCOUNT INFORMATION

When's the last time you logged into your account at www.asla.org and checked to make sure that your account details and contact information was up-to-date? If it’s been a while, I strongly encourage you to do so in order to ensure that you are receiving critical communications from ASLA about membership status, events, and opportunities. On the topic of ASLA's website, ASLA National has been working on a complete website transformation, which is admittedly long overdue. I got a preview of the progress at the Conference in New Orleans last month, and it's going to be a huge improvement!

I'm looking forward to connecting and re-connecting with friends and colleagues over the next year! Please feel free to reach out to me at president@marylandasla.org about anything, at any time, and I'll do my best to be of service.

In Fellowship and Service,

Patrick Whealton