Craig Stevens was just a kid when he started to build worlds. While growing up in West Brookfield, he’d take the blocks he was always given for Christmas and construct cities in his backyard. He used the garden hose to make flowing rivers, his hands to sculpt the land.
When he was 10, he wanted to tackle the actual yard. (“Go for it!” his parents told him when he announced his intent to landscape.) He began transplanting trees and using boulders in the service of seemingly effortless, enduring beauty.
“I just loved doing it, so it’s very much in me,” said Stevens, now the owner of LandScapes in Northampton, where his creative designs and sustainable projects are an ode to personal growth. A recovering addict, Stevens celebrates 25 years sober this year — as his thriving business turns 25 years old.
Beginning of the end
The beginning was messy. At first no one else could see it, not even Stevens. That’s how addiction works: It takes root in your soul, in your own soil, and grows up, up, up until it breaks ground, breaks you.
He was a conscientious student who was hungry to learn. After attending the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at UMass Amherst, he got a bachelor’s in landscape architecture at the University of Arizona, where he lived for five years. In his final year, he studied abroad in Australia, creating “a historic and cultural corridor” in Melbourne that earned him an award from the American Society of Landscape Architects.
But he had started smoking pot and drinking, which led to snorting cocaine. The drug made him feel invincible. He could stay up as late as he wanted and take in even more information.
“I thought it accentuated my personality,” he said incredulously, like he still can’t believe his own naivete.
He ran a successful business in West Brookfield throughout his 20s and most of his 30s before he unraveled. After that, he was off to Beacon House in Greenfield, and, following a relapse, to Hairston House in Northampton, and finally a sober house on Summer Street. In the spring of 2001, Stevens started LandScapes out of his temporary home’s garage.
He had lost everything, so he started with nothing.
His first client was the director of the Northampton Center for the Arts, who lived in Amherst. With his free bus pass for the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, he carted his rake and shovel to UMass Amherst, where she’d pick him up and drive him to her home.
Eventually he got his own car — a Honda Prelude with “a couple bullet holes in it” that he had once sold for drugs and bought back in sobriety. In the sedan, he could fit his yellow plastic wheelbarrow and cover more ground. Soon he was hiring people in recovery whom he wanted to help tend their own spirits.
A tribute and a mandate
Today, Stevens employs seven people who work for 200 clients, about 60% of whom have been with LandScapes long-term. In a week or two, his customers will receive the company’s 25th anniversary book in the mail.
“My clients know my design skill is exceptional,” he said, “but I want to make sure they know that with this good work you get all this other stuff — like community building and recovery building.”
LandScapes partners with the Downtown Northampton Association and the city of Northampton to plant and maintain the seasonal pots that brighten Main Street each year, Stevens writes in the booklet. They have also worked frequently with the Northampton Center for the Arts and other local nonprofits, and maintain a close relationship with Hairston House and the Hampshire County Sheriff’s program to support successful reentry into the community.
But the book isn’t simply celebratory. It’s also frank about addiction. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 27.9 million people ages 12 and older in the United States had alcohol use disorder in 2024. Meanwhile, the opioid epidemic, now in its fourth wave, claimed 70,000 lives last year.
Stevens doesn’t drop statistics, but he does describe “the good, the bad and the ugly” in his reflective tribute, pointing out his many successes as well as his share of losses.
The publication is an expression of gratitude, a reality check and a call-to-action around addiction. “It’s everywhere,” he said. “It affects the worker in your house, on your roof, in your tree. It happens everywhere and we have to deal with it.”
Agency and artistry
Stevens encourages his employees to talk about recovery. (Or listen to his wisdom.)
“I tell them all the time, ‘I’m paying for you right now, so you’re going to have to listen to me,’” he said. “And they’re like, ‘Here we go again, another talk.’”
He tells them that addiction isn’t limited to drugs and alcohol — social media, for instance, has been increasingly scrutinized for its impact on mental health. A recent study found that “frequent engagement with social media platforms alters dopamine pathways … fostering dependency analogous to substance addiction.”
In an increasingly addicted society, he wants his crew to be self-sufficient and self-actualized.
“I tell them I don’t care if you work here or somewhere else, you’ve got to bring your A-game to the table,” he said. “Why am I the one deciding to give you a raise? Why aren’t you coming to me and saying, ‘How can I increase my value in the company?’ You’re letting your bosses decide how you’re going to live.”
He even advises them to have fun, because if aren’t happy, they’re likely to use again.
Meanwhile, his life is full. “I got sober to live — I didn’t get sober to behave myself,” he said with a laugh.
Today Stevens owns a meticulously-landscaped house in Hatfield and maintains a fleet of six vehicles for him and his crew. While it’s a hard-earned privilege to help others rebuild worlds, he also appreciates the agency and the artistry that came so naturally to him as a child. Design work is like painting a picture, he said, and his clients give him the brush and the blessing to create to his heart’s content.
