Constellations of Communities: Terremoto's Story Wiggins and Jenny Jones on Care, Reciprocity, and the Powerful Beings That Plants Are
By Julia Gamolina
Story Wiggins is landscape architect with a background in historic preservation and land stewardship. Story received a Master’s in Landscape Architecture from UC Berkeley and a BA in Historic Preservation and French from the College of Charleston. Story joined Terremoto’s San Francisco office in 2016. She is co-lead of the Terremoto’s ‘Land and Labor’ internal working group, which advocates for the building and gardening trades and trades people that make their projects possible.
Jenny Jones grew up in Virginia and received her BA in Environmental Studies and her MLA and MUEP, all from the University of Virginia. She has previously worked at OLIN and RIOS, and is now a principal in the Terremoto LA office. Her work is rooted in ecology, localization, field work, and community. Jenny co-leads Test Plot, an ongoing experiment in stewardship and restoration of our public lands, and also co-leads the Land & Labor group with Story.
In their interview with Julia Gamolina, Story and Jenny talk about the healing power of plants, ecological community work, and other women in the space who are changing the game, advising those just starting their careers to pave your own way.
JG: How did you both come to landscape architecture, especially having studied different things in undergrad?
SW: I studied art history and historic preservation in undergrad at the College of Charleston, and befriended a girl in my History of Landscape Design course who was interning with a landscape architect — shout out to Nicole Ives Day who runs Day & Day Company in Atlanta and remains an inspiration. The profession kept coming back to me over the next few years as a perfect mix of the practical, creative and conceptual. I like that our work builds on an understanding of history and context, but actively engages with entropy and evolution rather than resisting these unstoppable forces.
JJ: My interdisciplinary undergraduate degree exposed me a bit to Urban Planning & Landscape Architecture, but I ended up teaching Middle School Science for a few years before returning to Landscape. While teaching, I was volunteering at Casey Trees, a nonprofit in Washington D.C., and simply saw some drawings on the wall in the office of their in-house Landscape Architect. A light bulb went off for me, that a job where I could do environmental work but also have a strong creative outlet sounded like a dream.
An intimate garden in Los Angeles that densely layers natives and non-natives. Photography by Caitlin Atkinson.
“We worked closely with the founders of Cafe Ohlone to explore themes of indigenous aesthetics and ecological abundance at their restaurant and cultural center on the campus of UC Berkeley.” Photography by Caitlin Atkinson.
How did you choose where you studied landscape architecture?
JJ: I landed at UVA, partially because I completed my undergraduate studies there and loved the school and community, but also because the Landscape Architecture department had a modesty and softness to it that appealed to me. Looking back, I think that came from the strong women leading the department at the time, who emphasized the value of hand-drawing, of small gardens, and the power of plants.
SW: I had always been drawn to the west, and graduate school was my ticket. Looking back I wonder if it wasn’t a subconscious move to shake off the weight of the east coast’s historical context and open to the possibility of designing something new. UC Berkeley had a sort of mythical pull for me — the draw was more intuitive than logical — and listening to that seems to have worked out for the best.
How did you get to Terremoto? What are you most focused on with the practice these days?
JJ: Alain Peauroi and David Godshall founded Terremoto in 2013. They started very small, doing tiny residential jobs for friends and family. They documented and shared it all, from messy process photos, to beautiful photos of grown-in gardens, and I think that their honesty and openness from the very start was one of the things that has made Terremoto so successful.
I joined in 2016, and Story joined in 2017. Since those early days, we’ve grown a lot, and are lucky to have bigger and more diverse projects. These days we are most focused on pushing ourselves to make gardens that are socially and ecologically just, and to capture the beauty of those gardens, hopefully inspiring others to do the same.
“I like that our work builds on an understanding of history and context, but actively engages with entropy and evolution rather than resisting these unstoppable forces.”
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?
SW: I feel incredibly lucky that very few challenges, setbacks, gripes come to mind when I think back over my time at Terremoto. Of course there have been trying moments, but I have almost always felt held and supported by my relationships within the office. That feeling of someone always having your back can do so much to keep the “emotional” wolves at bay. Taking the fear and stress out of the equation allows you to learn from mistakes and move on.
The biggest challenge over the past few years has been to navigate the inevitable transition from our small, scrappy beginnings into a grown ass office. I always kind of loved the chaos and fluidity of the early days and felt that was a sort of extension of our design expression and part of our DNA. Turns out, it can also be kind of a headache when twenty-six individuals are involved. I’m coming around to the idea of systems and taking pleasure in trying to shape ones that reflect and work for us and our idiosyncrasies as an office, while also creating a just, inclusive, and transparent office culture. It’s a moving target but we’re aiming for it!
What have you also learned in the last six months?
SW: I’ll mention a few recent discoveries in no particular order. First, loose parts. We’re working on a children’s teaching garden at the California Academy of Sciences and one of the most successful things they have going is their loose parts program. Each morning, they put out small chunks of wood — pinecones, branches or other natural materials. Over the course of the day these items get carried throughout the space and used in all kinds of ways. These simple objects really seem to spark kids’ imagination in amazing ways, and open up possibilities for gentle, open-ended engagement with the landscape. I’m noodling about how this could be interpreted for people of all ages and in different contexts.
Then, old garden roses. I picked up a Smith &Hawken guide to old garden roses in the used section of my local bookstore and got totally ensnared by the romance of these cultivars. We have such a long and storied relationship with the rose as a plant and a symbol, and these OG roses distill that. They’re weird and wonderful — check out Rosa viridium or any of the moss roses — maximally scented, and less commodified than modern roses, so no trademarks here. I guess they’re kind of like the heirloom vegetable of the floral world? I’m sneaking them into every project I can.
Finally, relational landscapes. Our SF office recently visited Heron Shadow, an indigenous biocultural heritage oasis in Sonoma County. The land was purchased by The Cultural Conservancy and is stewarded by and for Native folks. It was such an honor to spend the afternoon there learning about their process from TCC’s CEO, Sara Maconda, and the lead steward, Redbird Edward Willie. They spent a year on the site just observing and establishing relationships to the land and its inhabitants before making any changes. Decisions about how or where or what to introduce are grounded in how that change will affect the land and the web of relationships within it —it was beautiful to see how this principle was carried out in practical ways across the site.
A residential San Francisco garden blurs the boundary between old and new, cultivated and wild, structured and soft. Photography by Caitlin Atkinson.
A wildflower patch in one of Test Plot’s many experimental community gardens, a pro-bono project created and managed by Terremoto with many different community partners.
What are you most excited about right now?
JJ: There are the two things I keep coming back to in all my work right now — herbalism and seeds. Herbalism is a world I discovered during the pandemic that added a beautiful new dimension to my daily work, and to the way I think about gardens in general. Plants are powerful beings that can not only heal us, but teach us to be better citizens of the world. I’m obsessed with cramming medicinal plants into all gardens, and I’ve been harvesting many different native and non-native plants to make custom teas for clients and friends. Wooly Blue Curls is my favorite at the moment — it smells like grape soda and provides an overall feeling of well-being and relaxation. I also notice that the plants I harvest from regularly seem happier, which is an example of the reciprocity we seek with our gardens. We tend to the plants and they tend to us.
As for seeds, we’ve been doing some experimentation over the past few years with seed, especially through Test Plot — a non-profit we co-founded that experiments with community-led ecological restoration work — but also with client’s gardens. We love the cost-effectiveness of it, the simplicity, the avoidance of using plastic planting pots, and also just the act of sowing. It’s an ancient practice that helps us feel grounded. The exuberance of seeing the seedlings come up, the patience required to wait for seedlings to mature, the sounds of seeds rattling in their pods during collection — these simple lessons and joys are a bit addictive to me at the moment.
“Plants are powerful beings that can not only heal us, but teach us to be better citizens of the world...I also notice that the plants I harvest from regularly seem happier, which is an example of the reciprocity we seek with our gardens. We tend to the plants and they tend to us.”
Who are you admiring now and why?
JJ: We admire anyone doing ecological-community work, and we’re really excited by what women in the environmental fields are up to. One example is Katherine Pakradouni, a native plant specialist in Los Angeles who is leading the charge on Microforests as method of ecological regeneration, and who is working on LA’s first Wildlife Crossing. We’re also admiring the group of mothers leading the Angelenos for Green Schools movement, pushing for de-paving of LAUSD campuses and for schools to serve as community gardens and sanctuaries for the community.
We admire LAWJ, Landscape Architectural Workers for Justice, a loose group of mostly women — also mostly mothers — who are pushing for our profession towards more cooperative and just business models. We have huge respect for Michelle Franco, of Ohio State University, who is working to highlight the role of immigrant labor in the construction of America’s landscapes. We also want to mention the now-defunct instagram account called “Repairscapes” which featured landscape projects as acts of care and repair, rather than egoic acts of redesign. We’d love to see our profession move away from big, costly, carbon-intensive interventions, to quieter interventions, perhaps even design through maintenance. Our climate and biodiversity crises require this of us.
What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And, what does success in that look like to you?
SW: This question feels enormous, but I kind of want to answer at the smallest scale. That is to say, I’d like to be a part of interactions and human-scale projects that are based in mutual respect, kindness, collectivity, humbleness. I’m really interested in using our platform to explore and spread an emergent aesthetic that reflects these qualities. There will still be room for flamboyant moments of joy and weirdness, but not at the expense of the future or the wellbeing of other creatures.
It goes without saying that it’s a really heavy time right now. Finding a way forward from a place of care and reciprocity — which requires immense creativity — has been a buoy and beacon for us as an office.
If we can keep nosing our way in this direction, our projects will continue to get softer, simpler, slower. They will take novel forms, pushing back against business as usual — the -isms and -archies. They will lean on human and more-than-human relationships, weaving together many voices and stories. They will include remnants of the past and the expression of natural flows through the site. They will not fetishize, celebrate or reinforce property lines. And they will be beautiful.
Plant Nursery and storage structures for the Laguna Canyon Foundation, a land conservation nonprofit. Photography by Caitlin Atkinson.
Clean lines, simple details and iconic historic architecture frame a raucous coastal prairie east of the Sea Ranch Lodge. Photography by Caitlin Atkinson.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
JJ: For anyone starting their career, I’d encourage you to both seek mentorship from your elders and also pave your own way. You truly can do both. There’s so much to learn in our profession, it really feels like the more I know, the more experience I have, the harder it gets. It can be hard to know what the ‘right’ thing to do is. Be humble, and ask others for their wisdom. But you should also listen to your instincts — and this point is especially for women. I would love to see a more feminist perspective start to rise in our profession, one that is less patriarchal, more community-minded, less about the starchitect, and more about the constellation of people in our communities working together to improve them.
SW: When you’re in school or starting to work in the field, it’s really easy to get caught up in the vanity of prestige and the appearance of success. Resist! Do what you need to do to make a living and get your career started, but also listen to what feels right and good to you. Yes, work hard, and also establish boundaries and make space for a rich life outside of that work. Take care of yourself mentally and physically. Don’t turn up your nose at small-scale, design-build, ‘landscaping’ or garden design — look for the kind of work that lets you learn and grow and aligns with your values, at least part of the time. Be patient and kind and advocate for yourself. Oh, and have fun!