Catherine Howett

Catherine Mahony Howett, beloved wife, Nana, and mother, passed away peacefully on November 1, 2025 surrounded by her loving daughters. A renowned landscape architect and historian, she left a legacy of scholarship and made important contributions to the modern understanding of gardens in the American South.

Catherine was born on June 23, 1934, in New York to Jeremiah George Mahony and Julia Nolan Mahony. While attending graduate school at the University of Chicago, Catherine met and married John Howett in 1957. In 1966 they moved to Atlanta, Georgia with their four young daughters when John accepted a faculty position in art history at Emory University. Catherine went on to have a distinguished career of practice, teaching, and scholarship as a Professor of Landscape Architecture and Historic Preservation at the University of Georgia. She taught, trained, and mentored hundreds of landscape architects over the course of her illustrative career. Her research focused on 19th- and 20th-century architecture, landscape architecture, and public art, with a particular interest in the regional traditions of the American South. She was one of the first to explore environmental art in the spectrum of contemporary practice, public art, and environmental studies. She wrote about the phenomenon from a theoretical perspective but also explored its impacts in a five-year design partnership with sculptor George Trakas on the campus of Washington State University. Her exhaustive published history of Reynolda Gardens, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, exemplified her approach to interpreting design in its cultural and personal context. Professor Howett was a Senior Fellow in Landscape Architecture Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and served on numerous design juries, panels, and Boards of Directors, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, The Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation, and the Southern Garden History Society. For several years she served as the visiting professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Among the many academic distinctions and awards she received were the Bradford Williams Medal for Outstanding Article in Landscape Architecture Magazine, Outstanding Educator Award from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, the University of Georgia's Creative Research Medal and Senior Teaching Fellow Awards, and other academic honors from Harvard University, Radcliffe College, Emory University, and the University of Georgia. She built beautiful gardens everywhere she lived and was a prolific cook and baker. A lifelong Roman Catholic, educated in Catholic schools, she converted to the Episcopalian Church toward the end of her life, and was devoted to a feminist praxis of faithfulness.

Catherine and John enjoyed a beautiful married life together in and with nature for 52 years, sharing a passion for art and European travel, before John's death in 2009. In addition to her husband, she was predeceased by her grandson John Nolan Howett Eley. She is survived by her daughters Meghan Magruder (Clarke), Maeve Howett, Catherine Howett Smith (Cozart), and Ciannat Howett Marose (Cullen). She is also survived by her grandchildren Mary Claire Magruder Rojas (Dan), Caleb Magruder, Caitlin Eley, Hannah Smith, Field Smith, and John Cullen Marose, and life-long best friend, Sister Peggy McEntee.

Howett, Mahony, Catherine