Hello there, I’m Molly…
A plant loving garden designer fascinated with the link between people and the places they cultivate.
I am often asked how I found my way to the gardening world. To be honest, gardens seem to be something that found me… they are a natural obsession after a childhood spent rambling through the wild woods of Alabama. It feels like just yesterday, yet also a lifetime ago, that my two sisters and I would fill our backpacks with plums and peanutbutter sandwiches and take off to explore the great outdoors from sunup to sundown. The rolling hills and bubbling creeks of our childhood home left no shortage of spots for our imaginations to run wild.
Education & Experience
Through my studies in horticulture and graduate work in landscape architecture at Auburn University, I had the privilege of traveling the the world studying gardens, plants, and landscapes. From a summer internship in Delaware at Winterthur Estate and Gardens, to the studio at Lambert Landscape Company in Dallas, TX, to using travel scholarships to explore Europe, I spent my early years digging into a variety of experiences that allowed me step out of the classroom and grapple with new skills through hands on experiences.
The most life changing opportunity during my time as the 2016-17 Royal Horticultural Society’s Interchange Fellow. Through this fellowship, which is awarded each year to an American and a British scholar who then swap places for horticultural study, I spent ten months living and working in top public gardens across the UK. It was while I was working in these gardens that I felt the pull to bring all my experiences and work to translate it to my home here in Alabama, the landscape I intuitively know and deeply love.
In 2017, I returned home to Birmingham where I began working for the Friends of Birmingham Botanical Gardens, seamlessly blending my horticultural and design training while working on future development of the Gardens. Each day I found myself rubbing shoulders with local gardeners, eager volunteers, and passionate co-workers as we crafted a special place for the Birmingham community that I love. Through this exchange of passion and knowledge I took the leap and launched Roots & Ramblings in 2023.
Roots & Ramblings is a garden design studio committed to cultivating gardens and gardeners.
Over the last decade as I have crafted a career at the intersection of plants and design, I become more and more convinced that tapping back into that childhood awe and wonder of the natural world is where magic happens. I endeavor to bring that same unhindered curiosity to each project here at Roots & Ramblings. My design posture is to unearth the innate spirit of the site while also reflecting your distinctive taste and goals as the client — because it is out of a deeply personal connection to place that a truly great garden can grow.
