What were you doing before you applied to the Conway School?
Before I applied to Conway I was running my own diversified vegetable farm.
What brought you to Conway?
I wanted to shift what I was doing and open up some additional paths. I still wanted to work in agriculture potentially, but I needed to move away from the intensive hours of running a farm. I was at a decision point and wanted to look at going back to school. Design had always interested me but I needed some technical skills to open up some other opportunities beyond farming. I also wanted to do that in a condensed amount of time. The philosophy of Conway really spoke to me – to explore the intersection of design and ecology.
How did you first learn about Conway?
I think it might have just been a Google search for landscape design. It was one of those things though, where once I found out about the school, I began hearing about it from multiple channels. I met a friend of a friend who had gone there, and then it came up with other people. So, all of a sudden there were multiple things that brought it into my view.
Imagine we just met, and recognized we had common interests. How would you describe Conway to me?
It’s as much about learning how to understand and pull things apart as it is design. For me, it was just the beginning of opening up new areas of learning to explore. It’s an immersive experience, very close knit group for the year.
What advice do you have for someone just starting out in the field?
I would say the skills I got from Conway fit well for work in the conservation field. I found I had the opportunity to shape my role once I was in it. Land conservation is one imperfect piece of the larger picture of land use planning that is constantly evolving and an understanding of that larger picture is helpful to figure out how to make an impact. I think my advice is that sometimes a job can be a stepping stone and to try to build it out to be the role you want it to be. I would love to see more people with a design background in this work, it needs creative thinking.
What are you doing right now, and what do you love about it?
I have two roles in my current position. I do work protecting farmland with conservation easements and I also do climate adaptation planning with farmers. love meeting with farmers and getting to see their farms and new areas of Maine. It’s been exciting to build out our farmer assistance work around climate adaptation, which is certainly very in line with Conway work -bringing specific landscape analyses to the process. We’ve also worked with landscape designers on a of couple projects recently, I love the cross-pollination and learning that can happen working with people in other fields.
List one or more books that you find influential in the field of ecological design and planning.
There’s so many. Even though I’m not doing landscape design necessarily I continue to read a lot in that area. “Planting in a Post Wild World” was great. I still draw when I can and I’ve dog-eared “Drawing for Landscape Architecture” by Edward Hutchinson for some different styles in that book. I recently read some older essays by J. B. Jackson. I wasn’t aware of him until recently. Many of these essays are from the 50s and 60s but still so relevant around the built landscape, and American landscape identity.
Do you have a favorite tool? A digital tool?
Probably my hori hori for gardening. That stays in my back pocket whenever I’m outside. For work I do use a lot of GIS.
How do you think ecological design and planning can help make positive change?
I think it’s a deeper understanding of how we fit into the landscape. It’s an awareness, and I think any way we can increase our awareness of fitting together is positive.
Which aspects of your Conway education do you use in your current work? Which aspects do you use to address urgent challenges related to climate change, environmental justice, etc.?
I use GIS regularly for mapping. I pull from the analysis framework a lot in terms of helping farmers in climate adaptation planning. Presentations are incredibly helpful for what I continue to do.
What blogs or podcasts do you recommend?
I recently started listening to some episodes of a podcast called The Plantastic Podcast by Jared Barnes. He interviews people in naturalistic and ecological landscape design. There’s some great information in those, the one with Thomas Rainer is a good starting place.