Robert Charles Leighton, known as Bob Leighton, earned a landscape architecture degree from Michigan State University and a master's degree from the University of Michigan three years later. Over a 32-year career working throughout the US, he founded his own firm in Ann Arbor in 1987 and became one of the state's premier land planners and wetland consultants. In Northville Township, he designed hundreds of acres that became high-quality places to shop, live, and recreate, while striving to integrate his strong passion for the environment into his designs. His last two achievements in the township were Ridgewood and Arcadia Park, where Johnson Creek, one of three remaining trout streams in Southeastern Michigan, runs through the area. He designed regional deep-water detention ponds to protect the creek by storing water from upstream properties and releasing it from the pond bottom so that its purity and temperature matched the creek's. He also created a restoration plan for wetlands around the creek that had been disrupted by earlier human activities, helping return this important natural system to its previous condition.