Michele, owner and founder, is an upstate New York native and has been a practicing landscape architect for nearly three decades. In 2004, she formed Templeton Landscape Architecture and Planning to further her interest in progressing environmentally responsible projects through minimalist approaches to site design, the use of local materials, and sensitivity to the natural world. Her experience has ranged from large scale master planning to detailed design through construction.

Palmer has specific interest in historical districts and properties, higher education campus design, and public parks. Skilled in the technical aspects of site development, she has practiced in a civil engineering firm, providing site design, grading, and stormwater management. Her landscape architectural practice has involved many large-scale projects with complex review processes including SEQR, environmental impact statements where she has been the primary author and coordinator, municipal site plan review, NYSDOT and USACE permitting. In recent years, her practice has been more directed toward planning work, particularly in large-scale flood mitigation in the Mohawk River basin.

It is her belief that the public benefit from these projects is very much in alignment with her belief in the potential for design to “do good” for the larger community. Also, as an academic, archaeologist and educator, Palmer taught at Cornell University for twelve years. She is engaged in landscape archaeology projects in the ancient Roman world, in particular, studying the site engineering and water harvesting systems of villas and houses in Pompeii and Stabiae. She is currently project architect for the Regina Carolina Project in Pompeii.