The access ramp of a federal brick house in Washington DC uses brick to blend into the historic … [+] character Bell Design “There is no way to recreate the past,” says Robert Bell, whose eponymous landscape architecture firm is based in Washington, DC, Southampton, New York and Palm Beach, Florida. “But you can reinterpret historic gardens if you research what was there, while looking at the practicalities of today.” Just as houses have historic architectural styles, so do gardens reflect the aesthetics, trends and requirements of their time. But these can differ vastly from the aesthetics, trends and requirements of today, Bell points out. “Historically, gardens had to be…