As landscape approaches to the conservation and sustainable development of productive lands and resources gain ascendancy, the need for viable partnerships between different sectors, disciplines and stakeholders becomes increasingly apparent. Emphasizing cultural heritage among other important landscape values, a defining feature of landscape stewardship is long-term, inter-sectoral and multi-stakeholder partnership among different groups of land managers and resource users. Recognizing landscape partnership is notoriously challenging to realize and sustain in the face of diverse, complex and often conflicting demands on leaders in landscape stewardship, we propose a deliberate design-oriented approach to examining the characteristics of good partnerships and building effective partnership for particular contexts. Specifically, we draw upon literature and professional experience to put forward a partnership design framework comprised of four key elements: the actors involved, the roles and responsibilities, the functions of the partnership and the organizational configuration. The process of building landscape stewardship partnerships around the four design elements is guided by contemplating characteristics that are recognized to contribute to partnership performance. The framework should be valuable to new landscape stewardship initiatives and for use with existing partners to assess the strengths and limitations of either formative or well-established partnerships in order to improve them.