David Godshall is a landscape architect, gardener and meta garden philosopher making his way with his young family and his Terremoto LA Landscape Architecture Design Studio team in Los Angeles.
David’s LA home garden and his perspective on adventurous gardening and design are featured in Under Western Skies, on which I collaborated with photographer Caitlin Atkinson. The Terremoto Team was featured as one of Elle Décor’s A List of designers 2021.
"garden making IS civilization making in miniature."
David Godshall, Terremoto LA
David joined me from his home and garden – accompanied by happy bird song – to share more on his garden world view.
You can follow along with David and Terremoto's work online at the Terremoto.LA, and on Instagram Terremoto_Landscape
Photos courtesy of Caitlin Atkinson, David Godshall & Terremoto, all rights reserved.
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JOIN US again next week, when we take a little European garden field trip vacation in the company of Hannah Gardner, Horticulturist, wildflower lover, garden travel writer and head gardener based in the United Kingdom. Hannah was the writer of the longtime Gardens Illustrated column ‘The Outsider’– listen in!
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Thinking out loud this week:
The word Terremoto is Spanish for earthquake, or more literally ‘moving earth’ some of you may remember our conversation a few years back now with the British landscape designer Jinny Blom and her organizing principle stated something like this: When you’re building a garden, you’re building a temple for the everyday, and “if you’re going to move the earth around, you’d better put something good on it.” I think that’s what David and his team are asking of us, and asking of themselves at every level of their business and garden and civilization creating. I think it’s such a noble and worthy and attainable goal for us all.
And as David notes early in this conversation, "garden making IS civilization making in miniature."
Adventurous gardening – adventurous landscape design of integrity. You have to love this kind of meta garden thinking. It’s what we get to when we give ourselves the time and space to actually think about this activity and act we engage in so regularly. When we study it through shared voices like David’s, in gatherings with other gardeners, through attending open gardens –Hurray for that season – when we attend lectures, read books and articles in the garden media. Summer is a great time to read great garden writing….The garden media is a transitory kind of forum, I might add, and in my lifetime some of our leaders in garden writing and photography and thinking have either been shuttered, or have slimmed down to a dormant stalk of their former inflorescence. And yet we gardeners are hungrier than ever for community, engagement, information, alternate pathways and viewpoints. Some really seminal and generative work is still being printed, with even more on line, or on podcasts. I’m heartened by the work coming out Australia from Georgina Reid and her site The Planthunter, which has featured David and Terremoto’s philosophy. I love her new journal – Wonderground, along with the UK’s Hortus and RakesProgress very different and both refreshing takes; I enjoy a lot of garden club and plant society publications like The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon’s, and regional press magazines like DC Gardener and Connecticut Gardener.
As you’ve heard me say before, garden how-to is most often best served fresh and local. For spiritual ecology and environmentalism, you’d be hard pressed to find better than the thoughtful work of Emergence Magazine, and for straight-up horticultural know how and whos-who, I generally turn to both Gardens Illustrated and House & Garden UK, and The American Horticultural Society’s The American Gardener, which keeps us up to date here in North America. The May June issue of The American Gardener featured great articles by Kelly Norris on his Naturalistic design, another on the state of fireflies in North American, and it informed me about new leadership at The Huntington, at the Ginter Botanical Garden, and a new name for Quarryhill, The Sonoma Botanical Garden.
Ok so your turn – what are your favorite garden media sources? I would love to hear – you know how to reach me: email me cultivatingplace@gmail.com or send me a comment or message on Instagram – I will look forward to your summer reading list garden friends!
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