My Mimi, Liv, and Me

Kim Smith draws on over thirty years experience as an interior and garden designer. Established in 1985, Kim Smith Designs works in collaboration with clientele to create highly individualized, livable spaces. She combines the classic and the modern, the elegant and the playful, and utilizes eastern and western cultural influences to further develop and refine design projects. Her passion for flowers and butterflies drew her to garden design and love of textiles to interior design.

Me in the Tiger Swimsuit I Designed for Bergdorf Goodman

Kim attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Massachusetts College of Art, and while a student established her couture clothing business. She sold her dresses, hats, and swimsuits in New York City at Bergdorf Goodman, Henri Bendel, and shops in the Village, and created one-of-a-kind wedding dresses for a select group of clients. Kim branched into costume design for the New Erlich Theatre in Boston and rock music videos, which led to film and television set design, including the Steve Martin film Housesitter and the television series Against the Law.

Kim Smith Designs Leopard Velvet Suit and Pill Box Hat

Kim Smith Designs Velvet Persian Lamb Hat

Kim’s business shifted to working with commercial and residential clients to design and renovate their homes, businesses and gardens. Kim, her husband Tom, and their children moved from Boston’s South End to Gloucester, the historic working harbor town on Boston’s North Shore. They purchased a ramshackle 1851 Greek Revival home overlooking Smith Cove. Realizing that the practical experience gained from creating their garden would be useful to gardeners with similar objectives, Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! began to take form.

Peter Pan Alex

Liv Hat Girl

Liv and Me

Liv starring in Anything Goes with Kim Smith Designs Costumes

Like many gardening books that have come before, Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! was written over a period of several years. Through planning and planting, writing, painting and photographing; observing intimately the natural world found in a garden, Kim has become a committed conservationist. Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities!, her first book, combines her love for horticulture, writing, painting and poetry.

How Alex Hugs Me!

Kim is currently creating documentary films about the life stories of the Monarch Butterfly, the Black Swallowtail Butterfly, and the Feast of St. Joseph. She is the landscape designer for the award winning Gloucester HarborWalk Gardens. Kim is a professional designer, lecturer, author, illustrator, photographer, and documentarian. She is a daily contributor to the stellar community blog Good Morning Gloucester.

Female Monarch Butterfly Depositing Egg on Marsh Milkweed

Link to purchase Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! ~ Notes from a Gloucester Garden

 “In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.” ~ Baba Dioum, Senegalese conservationist.