A quiet practice.

The Practice

I design places the way an herbalist writes a formula. Ingredients chosen for how they hold you, not how they perform. My work sits at the seam between architecture and ritual: the entryway that slows your breath, the courtyard that catches morning light, the table where a stranger becomes a guest.

The practice began in Austin, Texas and now moves between there and Todos Santos, on the Baja peninsula. Two landscapes that share a fondness for dust, warm stone, and long afternoons. Each project is treated as a small ecosystem. Materials sourced close, plants chosen for climate and memory, light considered season by season.

The Philosophy

The mark I use is a diagram of five elements borrowed from Traditional Chinese Medicine: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. It is a framework for balance, not decoration. Every project is auditioned against it. Where is the movement, where is the warmth, where does the ground hold, where does the edge cut, where does the room breathe.

“Rooted in who you already are.”

The Circle

I work with a small circle of hospitality clients, private homes, and cultural spaces. If you are building something that wants to feel inevitable, as if it grew there, let's talk.

The Designer

Jennifer Johnston is a spatial designer, botanical curator, and experience architect whose practice is rooted in a lifelong relationship with the natural world. She studied plant biology and landscape horticulture with a concentration in sustainable design, then spent three decades working alongside respected herbalists, ethnobotanists, and plant scientists, weaving their knowledge into her own. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in education and the art of teaching, bringing the same depth of study to every client engagement.

Her practice draws on 500 hours of yoga and Zen Buddhist meditation training, Reiki II certification, and ongoing study toward her Reiki Master. She actively reikis every design space and every product she creates, infusing each with intentional healing energy. Her deep fluency in TCM five-element theory and Ayurvedic principles informs every spatial and sensory decision she makes. She is also the founder of Aterra, a botanical studio bringing plant intelligence to skincare formulation, ceremonial tea experiences, and immersive design.

Every project begins with an intention. A feeling, an idea, a quiet direction. From there the process unfolds like a story. The five elements and the client's own inner chakras are explored together, and something unexpected and true begins to emerge. The space and the person do not simply meet. They become one. What is designed is not just a space but a living reflection of who the client is at their deepest level, a place where inner world and outer environment finally speak the same language.

During COVID, Jennifer began designing personal sanctuaries where people could think, pause, and reconnect with the natural world that had been pulled just out of reach. That work grew into a full spatial design practice, environments that bring the exterior in and reveal something true about the person who lives inside them.

Away from the studio she runs marathons, tends her own gardens, and researches botanical discoveries she cannot wait to share.

“When we work together, we start with your heart and move through your chakras. That is how we discover the true essence of the space you are meant to inhabit. Then I research, I share, and I deliver.”

What is Experiential Design?

Experiential design is the practice of shaping how a place makes you feel. Not what it looks like in a photograph, but what it does to your shoulders when you walk in, what it asks of your voice, how long it holds you before it lets you leave. It sits between architecture and ritual, and treats a room as a sequence, not a still life.

In this studio, every project is auditioned against the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. It is the oldest checklist I know for whether a place is in balance. I write more about the framework, and what each element asks of a room, in the field notes.

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