you said: The issue is most landscape architects work only with smaller residential lots and I feel it would be overstepping their knowledge base to expand to 58 acres.

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no ... the issue is .. interviewing enough professionals to find the one that is qualified ...

to me.. you seem to be making an overly broad presumption about an entire profession ...

the same might be said about the guy who did central park in new york.. prior to him actually doing it ..

contact your state ag college.. usually the one that ends in STATE.. such as michigan state for me ... and find out if they have a landscape architect program.. and then contact the director of said program.. and ask for referrals ...

ken

I was going to recommend the same thing Ken mentioned.
Get in touch with a college, fire academy, or forestry program, and they might help you out far more than you anticipate.

Congratulations on a fantastic purchase!

Josh

Maybe call some golf courses in your area and find out who their landscape architects are. Maybe they are local.

Don't forget to budget for maintenance with your landscaping. That would need to be a rather significant budget for acres and acres.

I know exactly what you are going through. Asking people in the ornamental horticulture and landscape architecture programs at my state university got me nowhere. It was like you said, their mindset seemed to be limited to small scale. It wasn't that their knowledge base was limited, but their imagination and creativity was just not up to the task. I've asked people from a broad variety of programs and places, including various public gardens, and no one has really been able to provide much help. They all "wish they could help" and many recommended others that they thought could help, but no one really seems to ever come through. There are designers that specialize in large projects like this, but from what limited experience I have with them, I think they expect to get paid very very very well.

Sorry I couldn't really give you any answers, but at least you know you are not alone. I've been doing my own design a little bit at a time. I worry that my design work may not be optimal in the long run, but I know it's better than no plan. Things do seem to be slowly coming together. Visiting other large-scale properties, botanical gardens, and arboretums does help to give me ideas. If I could only quit my job and spend half my time visiting places and the other half working on my property, I think I could do great. (-;

BTW, where are you? You don't have your state listed beside your name or a member profile. Adding that will allow people to give you better answers specific to your part of the country or area.

I work with a lot of LAs and I'm not convinced that most get this kind of training. You may want to get a Rodale publication and look in the back at their ads and get an LA out of there, or maybe ads in the permaculture publications, Mother Earth News (Rodale[?]), those sorts of things. I went to an ag school as Ken mentions and I can't think of any of my classmates or grad students who were looking at these scales. Maybe some of my grad classmates could, but these were mostly urban studies. Just thinking out loud now, but Rodale seems to me a good direction to go in.

Dan

Thank you all for your input. I do appreciate the schools abilities, espcially since I graduated from the local university. I don't want to be a guinea pig though. This will be part of my legacy and in 30 years, I want the property to flow as though it had always been there and pass down to my future kids. We live in Western Kentucky by the way, Murray State University. That is an idea and I will speak with the local ag/landscape department. Any more comments I do appreciate.

As a grad student I was fortunate enough to work on three studios where we traveled to do the work, including to Alaska and Montana - lifetime memories and useful, award-winning work & grad alma mater continues to do this and win awards for such studios.

Anyway, we did projects over a quarter for various objectives. I would think 58 acres for a grad class of 20 students might be a 5-week project that would tie to a sustainability class that did 2-3 projects in the area over a quarter-semester. Totally doable, and the multidisciplinary possibilities for an undergrad engineering class that needs to learn surveying, an ag class that needs to learn permaculture/organic, a business class that wants to branch out...

The microclimates and hedgerows and refugia and biodiversity and permaculture possible in that area lend themselves very well to studio work. I suggest doing a little research (you can contact me offline) and get a little 2 or 3-pager together to present to the Uni before spring classes end, so the administration can get something together for Fall period.

Dan

Once you locate your house-site, I'd recommend planting several trees about 30' from house site on south and or west sides to start shade trees growing now.
I acquired 51 acres of praire with a creek lined with hackberry trees. 30% of those have died in the last 3 years. I'm slowly replacing them with native oaks and miscellaneous other native trees for diversity, fire-wood, wildlife habitat, etc. Fenced off about 1 1/2 acres for house and drive. Planted conifers on east and north of house for greenery, privacy, and somewhat of a wind-break, and a few deciduous trees on south/west sides. Left trees spaced about 30' apart so I can still see out between them. Will plant additional trees by fence some year. Not exactly a landscape plan but there is some method to it. Recommend sticking with native trees for the bulk of your plantings, if not all of them. Beware of planting more than you can water. Good luck.