Thomas e Martina Reinhardt

Thomas Reinhardt was born in 1940 in Santa Monica, California, USA. His family had fled Germany due to racial and political reasons after the National Socialists came to power in 1933. His grandfather, Max Reinhardt, had been one of the most important theater directors of the Weimar Republic and a co-founder of the Salzburg Festival. Thomas’ father Wolfgang followed in his father’s footsteps and became an influential movie producer in Hollywood and Europe.

A close relationship with nature was very important to the Reinhardt family. Thomas was already fascinated with gardens when very little and with the assistance of the family gardener, Thomas, then still a child, planted small flower beds and an herb garden in the large family estate.

After the war Thomas Reinhardt returned to Germany and emigrated again in 1967 to Israel, where he lived for 12 years between the two fronts in a village near Jerusalem. Working with Palestinian and Israeli children he created his first garden: a desert garden surrounded by stone and mosaic walls.

In order to expand his knowledge of herbaceous perennials and woody ornamentals he went in 1979 on exchange to the Weihenstephan University of Applied Sciences in Freising (near Munich), where he met his future wife Martina Kofoth.

Martina Reinhardt (née Kofoth) was born in Menden, Germany in 1959. Her family has been involved in horticulture for generations, and includes everything from master gardeners to landscape architects. Her grandfather and father were master gardeners for the town of Menden and managed the parks and gardens department.

Martina Reinhardt began helping her family with gardening when still a child. The Menden parks and gardens department was well known for its collection of banana trees, palms and agaves that decorated the town parks in the summer and spent the winter in the town’s palm greenhouse.

In 1978, Martina Kofoth started studying horticulture at the Weihenstephan University, where she met Thomas Reinhardt. Shortly thereafter, they emigrated to the USA and married in 1982.

They founded their company “Creative Landscaping Inc.” in East Hampton on Eastern Long Island, N.Y. Their company specialized in landscape design with a particular focus on large-scale herbaceous perennial gardens. They also took charge of the associated garden upkeep.

The couple returned to Europe in 1996. Thomas and Martina Reinhardt settled near Cortona, where Thomas’ father had spent some time after the war.

They continue to work as landscape designers on a property purchased in 1996 in Piazzano, a district of the town of Tuoro sul Trasimeno in Umbria. Over the years they created the Reinhardt Park and Gardens, which soon caught the interest of garden enthusiasts from all over the world.