Heather Ring is a landscape architect practicing in London and is the Founder and Creative Director of Wayward Plants. In 2010, she was commissioned by the Architecture Foundation to design and produce the Union Street Urban Orchard for the London Festival of Architecture and followed this, in 2011, with the Urban Physic Garden – a pop-up garden and summer festival of medicinal plants. Heather’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Barbican in London, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, the Graham Foundation in Chicago and the Metis International Garden Festival in Quebec.

Heather has worked for the international landscape practices of Gustafson Porter and Martha Schwartz Partners on the design of large-scale public spaces, developing projects that explored social engagement and ecological narratives. She has a Masters degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Beyond Wayward Plants, she presently lectures in the Masters of Landscape Architecture at Writtle School of Design and is a Senior Editor for Archinect.com.

Thomas Kendall is an Architectural designer and artist from Cornwall. He graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture where his work focused on translating stories into tectonic space and human/spatial interactions. He now resides at the Royal College of Art studying for his Masters in Architecture.

He has spent the last two years working on design and build projects such as the Union Street Urban Orchard and the Urban Physic Garden with Wayward Plants, whilst running his own project, the Identikit Urban Playground, that focused on children’s interaction with the urban environment. Recent projects include a garden house in Barons Court, a stand at London Book Fair (for FIELL) and design consultancy for a housing development in Ghana amongst other projects.

He believes fairy tales are our future.

Jarred is a designer and urban grower. His passion and understanding of food, combined with a background in architectural design has led to a career managing farmers markets, community gardens, food growing projects and composting systems. Jarred joined Wayward Plants as Planting Lead for Urban Physic Garden in 2011 and now continues as an associate.

Jarred lectures widely on the designers role in urban agriculture, teaches at science specialist schools – introducing complex food systems 11 to 18 year olds – and is currently researching the introduction of industrial size composting wormeries to London’s high density housing estates.

Rachel started with us as an intern from Central St Martins (studying MA Creative Practice for Narrative Environments), and quickly became an integral part of the team as Volunteer Coordinator and Events Coordinator at the Urban Physic Garden. Using her recent experience in pirate radio, she is working to produce our ‘garden radio’ series. Currently, she is focusing her master’s dissertation on the Wayward Plant Nursery. Rachel is a multi-disciplinary designer with a foundation in sculpture from Camberwell College of Arts and a MA Honors in sustainable development from the University of St Andrews.

Claire completed her MA in Creative Practice for Narrative Environments at Central Saint Martins in 2011 having previously taken her BA in Arts, Design & Environment. Her work is centred around the practices of spatial design, curation and experience design. Claire began working with Wayward Plants as the Assistant Site Curator on the Urban Orchard where she was also responsible for curating an exhibition about cider-making called the ‘Scrumping Shed’. For the Urban Physic Garden she created the ‘Herbarium’ in collaboration with the Museum of Life Science’s at King’s College. Claire is particularly interested in creating environments that use story to drive memorable experiences and help to inform new ideas and perspectives.

Wayward Plants creates botanical narratives, bringing together people through spaces and stories, and so we love working with writers, poets, playwrights, filmmakers, thinkers, researchers and storytellers. Here are a few of our collaborators – if you’ve got a story to tell, please get in touch!

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