Hargreaves and his firm designed numerous sites including the master plan for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, The Brightwater Waste Water Treatment Facility in Seattle, Washington, and University of Cincinnati Master Plan.
In 1973, George Hargreaves attended the School of Environment and Design at the University of Georgia.
Four years later, he graduated second in his class, magna cum laude, with a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture.
Landscape Alchemist In the Introduction of the 2009 publication on his practice, Landscape Alchemy, Hargreaves cites that the firm seldom encounters project sites that are a greenfield or “natural” but are more likely to be brownfields, often flat, devoid of any significant vegetation or other natural features, yet close to city centers.
Additionally, he points out that “our design strategies is a continuing search for the way to conceptually enter the site and create bones where there are none”, and that while each Hargreaves project integrates sustainability, phenomena and process, site histories, adjacencies and overlays, “none should operate singularly - they all interact on the same site as we strive to put bones in our projects that will give them life for decades or centuries to come”.
At his presentation to the Forum for Urban Design Spring Conference 2009: the 21st Century Park & Contemporary City held at the Modern Museum of Art, Hargreaves emphasized that "distressed sites, whether abandoned, polluted, neglected, or all three, are the dross from which 21st Century dreams are woven".
Prior to resigning from his position at Harvard to focus on his practice, he was the Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture and taught advanced and theoretical design classes and core studios.