Poly/Ana emerged from the landscape architecture firm Studio Petrichor and a growing need, an ache really, for reconnection. When Shawn met Leigh in 2018 there was a kismet connection and desire to help our world facing ecological breakdown and cultural disconnection. Together, they see an opportunity to reawaken awe, responsibility, and relationships with Earth’s living systems. In 2021 Poly/Ana was born to host events focused on immersive education, community-rooted research, and participatory design to empower people to step into a new role: one of steward, student, and co-creator.

Our Story

Poly/Ana is a collective of people who envision communities gathering in harmony, learn from Nature’s intelligence, and nurture landscapes that will change the climate. We are regenerative landscape designers, permaculture experts, educators, volunteers, and beyond.

Who We Are

Our Team

  • Shawn Maestretti

    Shawn Maestretti | Co-Founder

    Shawn Maestretti is a regenerative landscape architect, arborist, educator, Co-Founder of Poly/Ana, and the Founder of Studio Petrichor—a Southern California design practice rooted in ecological restoration, spiritual ecology, and whole-systems thinking.

    In 2025, Shawn lost his home in the Eaton Fires. Remarkably, much of the surrounding landscape—nurtured over years through water harvesting, native planting, hugelkultur berms, and soil-building—remained intact. Shawn did not intervene after the fire; instead, he observed. This act of witnessing deepened his commitment to teaching a form of design rooted not in control, but in relationship, care, and ecological reciprocity.

    Shawn’s work lives at the intersection of art, activism, and embodied practice. Through the reuse of salvaged materials, the honoring of seasonal rhythms, and the cultivation of community-based resilience, he invites others to treat land not as a blank slate, but as a collaborator. In addition to leading Studio Petrichor, Shawn is a cofounder and educator at Poly/Ana—a nonprofit school for regenerative systems—where he shares his experience through storytelling, seasonal observation, and soil literacy.

    He has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Pacific Horticulture, Horticulture Magazine, and NPR, and was honored with the Design Futurist Award for his project A Resilient Cottage—a hyperlocal, fire-adapted garden rooted in biodiversity, water harvesting, and whole-systems care.

    Shawn continues to speak and teach across California and beyond, offering a grounded and poetic voice in the ongoing conversation about how we live with land in a time of climate disruption.

  • Leigh Adams

    Leigh Adams | Co-Founder

    Leigh Adams is an award-winning educator, artist, and regenerative designer whose work brings together science, story, and spirit. Known for her warm presence and intuitive teaching style, Leigh has spent more than five decades guiding communities toward deeper connection with nature—through soil, through art, and through acts of quiet repair.

    As a Co-Founder of Poly/Ana and Studio Petrichor, Leigh creates spaces where ecological restoration and collective healing go hand in hand. She is especially known for her gentle but powerful leadership in bioremediation—restoring polluted soil using fungi, mulch, and native plants. Her work is rooted not only in ecological wisdom but in a deep trust that the land, like people, can recover with the right care.

    After losing her home and studio in the 2025 Eaton Fire, Leigh turned to the soil she had nurtured for decades. Rather than scrape it clean, she chose to heal it in place. That decision—and the methods she applied—became a model for post-fire landscape recovery across Southern California, profiled by the Los Angeles Times and studied by community leaders and scientists alike.

    Through workshops, installations, and public storytelling, Leigh continues to invite others into a practice of reverence and regeneration. Her work has been featured in Pacific Horticulture, VoyageLA, Metabolic Studio, California Landscape Design, and 360 Real Estate Group, and she is a beloved educator at institutions like the LA County Arboretum and Polytechnic School.

  • Kreigh Hampel

    Kreigh Hampel | President

    Kreigh Hampel is a teacher, designer, and craftsman drawing on the restorative power of living systems and the creative strength of community cooperation. 

    For more than forty years he has designed and built educational programs for stormwater protection, rainwater harvesting, composting, school gardens, household toxics, California condor recovery, solar energy, recycling, and waste reduction. He currently teaches greywater and water harvesting classes at the Burbank Adult School and advocates for fair housing policies and human powered transportation. 

    Kreigh served as Burbank’s Recycling Coordinator for seventeen years, overseeing multi-million-dollar budgets, public education, facility operations, and stormwater compliance. He led the City’s home composting program and initiated urban lumber partnerships, while minimizing industrial inputs and maximizing soil health. In 2013 he was named Burbank Employee of the Year, and in 2020 he was recognized as Recycler of the Year by the California Resource Recovery Association.

    A graduate of the UCLA Municipal Waste Management Program, Kreigh holds two Permaculture certificates, and has been a guest lecturer and student project advisor at Pasadena Design Center, Otis College of Design, UCLA, CSUN, Pierce College, Woodbury University, CSULA, and others. He has served on the boards of The Los Angeles Bicycle Kitchen, Leadership Burbank, The California Product Stewardship Council, and is currently the Board President of Poly/Ana.

  • Sanjay Gupta

    Sanjay Gupta | Chief Operations Officer

    Sanjay Gupta is a Pasadena-based boutique gardener and educator with a focus in growing vegetables and fruit trees in small spaces. He has been with Poly/Ana from the start, providing vital hands-on leadership at numerous workshops over the years. This commitment led Sanjay to being certified in the "Petrichor Method" Hugelist Certification program. 

    Every year, Sanjay sets a personal goal to plant 100 trees in his community, which he usually surpasses. While mostly self-taught through rigorous research and frequent trial and error, he credits his wisdom in growing healthy soil and plants to his time living at The Urban Homestead in Pasadena, a residential family farm and close ally of Poly/Ana founders Shawn and Leigh.

  • Scott Campbell | Secretary

    Scott Campbell is a senior paralegal at Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP, a premier Los Angeles-based real estate law firm. His 30+ years of practice has primarily focused on corporate governance for public and private companies. Scott’s clients come to him for his extensive knowledge of entity governance and formation, property acquisitions and sales, and loan transactions. He has been involved in domestic and international mergers and acquisitions, private offerings, project finance, and other corporate/business matters. Scott has extensive experience with the acquisition, financing, and development of affordable and multi-family housing projects throughout the country, including entity formation, authority, property conveyance documents, government compliance and related matters. Having worked with borrowers and lenders to document and close complex real estate secured financing transactions in relation to both individual assets and portfolios of properties, Scott has completed numerous loan, loan assumption, loan modifications, workouts and restructures, and other similar transactions. He also prepares conveyance, finance, joint venture, and other transaction documents in connection with real estate and personal property acquisition and sale transactions, project finance transactions, and joint venture transactions. 

    Scott brings his expertise in corporate governance to Poly/Ana by serving as Secretary and as a member of the Board of Directors and handles all the local, state and federal governance filings and internal corporate documents on behalf of the Company.