The notice of Heather Morgan’s death from cancer at age 44 came as a particular shock to anyone who was fortunate enough to see her raising the roof at Courageous by Design: Landscape Architects Confronting the Climate Crisis in New York City six weeks earlier. The conference, hosted by the Cultural Landscape Foundation, was one of the first major in-person gatherings for landscape architecture, and probably the first that held so many women designers in one well-ventilated room. It was thrilling (and to be honest, weird and slightly terrifying), and that was before the program began. That Morgan stood out on that day wasn’t a surprise, but that she did it remotely while the other participants were in the room was remarkable.
Morgan had done time as a landscape architect and as the National Sustainability Program Manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where she had first come to my attention, before she moved on to the big job of Director of Climate Risk Adaptation for AECOM in New York. Fittingly, she gave the opening remarks for the panel, What We Can Do: Preparing and Adapting Bureaucracies for Our Future Climate, and was joined by Signe Nielsen, FASLA, and Annette Wilkus, FASLA. My notes from her talk were extensive and hard to read, a sure sign I am charged up by an idea. Later, I noticed that next to Morgan’s name in my program, I’d written Learn the System!—a charge to the audience to find a way to dismantle the obstacles to climate resilience. Among the other landscape architects who spoke were Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA; Martha Schwartz, FASLA; Kate Orff, FASLA; Lisa Switkin, ASLA; Dorothée Imbert, ASLA; Edwina von Gal, Affiliate ASLA; Barbara Wilks, FASLA; Mary Margaret Jones, FASLA; and Julie Bargmann, then the newly minted Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize winner. Having managed to convene, the groupproceeded to barrel through a program that was by turns provoking, demanding, angry, and very funny. Panelists cried. More than once. I know I was one among many to feel the wind at my back for the first time in two long years.
In the days after I read the news, I got in touch with some of Morgan’s close colleagues. It was too soon to talk about her legacy, but one wrote me something that’s stuck with me: “I do feel the world has lost a person who was actively making change and had so much more to offer. Such a powerful and motivating person.” In her work, she’d burrowed inside some of the most intransigent systemic problems and come out swinging.
We’d do well to follow her lead.

JENNIFER REUT
EDITOR

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