James R. Cothran, FASLA, (1940-2012), was a practicing landscape architect, urban planner, and garden historian. The native South Carolinian received a Bachelor of Science degree in ornamental horticulture from Clemson University in 1962, a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Georgia in 1969, and a Master of Science degree in city planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1978. He served as Vice President of the Planning and Landscape Architecture Division of Robert and Company, an architectural, engineering and planning firm in Atlanta, from 1981 until his death. Cothran also served as a professional instructor in the National Garden Clubs, Inc. Landscape Design Study Program from 1970. Cothran taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Georgia and Georgia State University, where he instructed graduate-level courses on America's historic gardens and landscapes. He was the author of three books, Gardens of Historic Charleston (1995), Gardens and Historic Plants of the Antebellum South (2003) and Charleston Gardens and the Landscape Legacy of Loutrel Briggs (2010). Cothran was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2002.