Francis Dean, a pioneer modernist of California landscape architecture, died April 29, 2003, surrounding by friends and family at his home on Vashon Island following an accident and a long illness. He was 80 years old.

Mr. Dean was born Oct. 1, 1922. He grew up on a northern California farm.

During World War II he became an Army Air Corps pilot, once crash landing his P-38 fighter in Italian farm land, following an air engagement.

After the war he entered the University of California, studying landscape architecture under Leland Vaughn and Robert Royston. It was while at Berkley that he was introduced to the Modern Garden Movement.

He began work as a landscape architect in 1948 and in 1958 became a partner in the firm Eckbo, Dean, Austin and Williams (EDAW) in California, eventually directing the Irvine office in Orange County.

Of his partners and mentors, Mr. Dean wrote, “My fondest wish was to be able to design gardens such as (theirs). I thought they were magnificent. I had no idea that I would some day have the opportunity and pleasure of working on these great gardens with Garrett Eckbo during the 1950s and 1960s.”

In 1976 he began teaching on a part-item basis at Cal Poly Pomona, retiring from EDAW in 1978 to teach full-time.

Comparing the two careers, he wrote, “In the private sector, the issues concerning the environment were just beginning to reach a few landscape architects. Our firm had been working with environmental issues for years, but not to a level of comprehending holistic ecological points of view. It was snot until I came to teach that I understood the opportunity available to landscape architects to incorporate environmental issues into the process.”

In 1989 Mr. Dean retired from teaching at Cal Poly to return to Seattle and Vashon Island.

While there, on acerage he and his wife, Candy, had bought many years earlier, he set about on a personal mission of establishing a living legacy to the natural environment by planting a thousand trees. He had nearly accomplished this task at the time of the accident.

During his long, active career, Francis Dean was awarded many honors, including the American Society of Landscape Fellowship, Distinguished Member, Sigma Lambda Alpha, and Richard Neutra Medal recipient.

An ardent liberal, it was his sincere desire to be able to vote in the next Presidential election. He was passionate about world peace, environment issues and the natural world.

His first wife, Myrtle died in 1969 and his brother John Dean died in 2000.

Survivors include his wife, Candy, sister Carolyn Horsewill, daughter Tami, son, Gary, two grandchildren, Ben and Lily, stepdaughters Deborah, Linda, Sally, stepson George and five step grandchildren.

Mr. Dean, a creative thinker and designer and patient and skillful teacher and devoted environmentalist will be missed by his family and all who knew him.

A private remembrance gathering was at the Dean house. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust, 10014 S.W. Bank Road, Vashon Island, Wash. 98070.