Wild By Design is a lifelong in the making and yet came in an instant. As a child in the Bay Area, Jess Lewis Edwards camped among the redwoods and took creek walks through the Laurels, always with her father (and sometimes great-grandfather, pictured) sharing scientific knowledge of and deep adoration for the wonder of life emanating from nature. To pass the quarantine time in her canyon home, she took up native landscaping, exterior design and plant restoration as a hobby, and then designed the landscape for her and her husband’s newly remodeled home in Pacific Palisades. Eight weeks after having lost everything, in one brief moment, her purpose in life became clear: she must restore Southern California’s coastal lands to their native ecosystems while constructing newly imagined and idyllic outdoor living havens, one landscape at a time.