Landscape designer and Wareham resident Patty Wylde has been working her magic all over the United States and Europe since the 1970s.

Wylde retired in 2007, but she has been known to gather her garden shears and sketchbook when called on by her friends.

One of those friends, Chrissie Bascom, reached out to Wylde when the time came for getting Marion’s Point Road Memorial Forest into shape.

The Stone family donated the two-acre parcel to the town in 1994 to be used as a cemetery – the only one in town solely for cremated remains.

Since then, Bascom and fellow members of the Forest’s Advisory Committee have been working to maintain the natural feel of the land.

It was the committee’s determination to keep the area intact that drew Wylde to the project, she said.

“I’m certainly interested in people pulling together to preserve a piece of land,” she said.

Included in her design for the Point Road Memorial Forest, were benches carved from tree stumps to be placed along the trails. She also designed Memorial Circle, a granite marker along the middle of the trail for names buried in unmarked plots.

When she is designing a landscape, Wylde only uses plants from the region where she is working. Gardens using non-native plants are something you will rarely see in one of her designs, she said.

“From the beginning I’ve used native plants in my design work,” she said. “You put the right plant in the right place, and it’ll take care of itself.”

“In planning, I leave nature to take its course,” she said. “I love what nature has to say without the interference from mankind. Treading gently on this planet is very important to me.”

Previously, Wylde worked as a fashion illustrator for Jordan Marsh.

She studied art and architecture in Florence, Italy and at Garland College now named Simmons College in Boston.

Combining her love of design and gardening was a natural progression, she said.

“I’ve always been interested in gardening. There’s more to gardening than just putting plants in the ground. I’m comfortable with the art part of design but I had to learn about plants,” she said.

To do both, Wylde enrolled in courses at the Radcliffe Institute of Landscape Design in Boston.

Before retiring, Wylde operated her own business for over 30 years.

“I was lucky that what I loved to do ended up being the job of my life,” she said.