Member Profile: Lesley Miles
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Many of us have had fairly similar young lives: school, friends, parties, sports. Lesley Miles’ childhood was different. While we were hanging out with friends, this only child spent every weekend, holiday, and summer on her grandparents’ 50-acre avocado/lemon ranch in Carpenteria, south of Santa Barbara, “getting to know the trees”, she said recently. She stayed in the main house; her parents in an adjacent apartment. “It was overwhelming for a little kid,” she said.
Her grandfather was a Santa Barbara County Supervisor and head of the State Water Board. “I would travel with them for conferences where I pretty much just sat,” she said. Back at the ranch, Lesley learned to serve hors d’oeuvres, make small talk to adult guests, how to eat properly, and be polite. This helped her later in business – but not in elementary school. “From a very early age I was an adult; I was by myself a lot.”
Lesley, age 7, with Dad at a cocktail party
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As a reaction to this childhood, her own family of two daughters, two sons-in-law, five grandchildren and one husband (Charles Weston) all live in a compound in the middle of town. With three border collies, a beagle, one cat, and a hamster — no chance of loneliness now.
Weston-Miles Family at Uvas Canyon 2022
At age 12 Lesley and her parents moved to Sebastopol where her father taught elementary school and her mother worked as a bookkeeper. After high school she took a year off, worked in a local nursery, then majored in environmental science and field botany at U.C. Santa Barbara. Transferring to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, she changed to horticulture, started her senior year, then abruptly changed her life.
Lesley weaving a shirt fabric in Centro Uno 1977
Lesley spent two years in the lowland jungle of Centro Uno, Ixcan, Guatemala researching new crops and teaching Mayan villagers how to grow organic gardens and feed their families on land new to them. The area had no roads, power, running water, health care, or communication. It was also a time when the guerillas and the Guatemalan Army were ramping up conflict and the villagers and Ixcan were in the middle of the escalation.
Lesley almost died at least five times as did many of the villagers. But she made friends, taught, learned a lot, and managed to return safely to the U.S. to finish her degree. (She is writing a book about her experiences.)
After meeting Charles at Cal Poly, the pair designed a Waldorf School near Morgan Hill as a 5th year project, then moved to the city in 1980. Lesley started a landscape design firm, then in 1986 she and Charles opened Weston Miles Architects focusing on architecture, landscape and construction. Lesley later became licensed in architecture.
“I enjoy developing and making projects that help people experience life, community, trees and animals in a more understanding and interactive way,” she said.
The firm’s major project was to develop the two blocks of the historic Isaacson Granary on Depot Street, bringing it from dereliction to a place for popular retail, restaurants, and office space. The Granary was the 25th LEED Gold project in the world, meaning that it is highly rated as “green.” The front yard contains a garden with heritage fruit trees and plants meant to educate passers-by about what was the Valley of Heart’s Delight.
“Redeveloping existing buildings into new lives with different uses is one of our most significant green ideas and a challenging but exciting way to design and think differently,” Lesley said. Another recent project is the design of a pollinator landscape for the Hale Avenue extension from Main to DeWitt/Spring.
Flowers blooming at the Granary
Lesley says, “I also enjoy gardening and writing. I have a Substack, “I’ve got a Story for that” (https://lesleymiles.substack.com). I write about just about anything that comes to mind. Somehow I have six degrees of separation with many people and experiences over my 70 years.” During Covid, she developed four little free libraries in town; she has been a board member of the Downtown Association and the Chamber of Commerce. Lesley was Woman of the Year for the Chamber in 2023.
“My recent home gardening project became a mini-petting zoo. We bought an undevelopable property of 2 ½ acres a five -minute walk from our house and planted fruit trees among 80-year-old almonds and garden beds and then, lacking something else to do, got 18 chickens, five goats and moved in our daughter’s very old horse. It was not idyllic originally but, soon, everything calmed down and the animals are now a neighborhood hit!”
Lesley with Tech Trek Stanford Architeture Class 2010
And AAUW?
“I have joined twice, once in 1987 when our daughter was tiny, but that proved to be too hard to manage, and then again, 20 years ago, when Carol Holzgrafe asked me to go with the Evening Book group to visit Powell’s in Portland. Although I am often MIA, I am always available if asked to step in and help if it is teaching an architecture class for Tech Trek or helping out at the Wildflower Run or writing and helping with the Climate committee.
“What I really like about our AAUW is the enthusiasm, intellectual rigor and interest that we as a group bring to the community. It is hard to imagine what Morgan Hill would be like without AAUW.”
“The most significant experience I’ve had is working in 1977-78 in Ixcan Grande, Guatemala. I have documented my experiences surrounding the inception of the Guatemalan Genocide and my understanding of how it happened, with 40 years of historical perspective, into the manuscript tentatively called, No Hay Medio. It is that time that has informed much of my life. The beauty of families caring for children together underlined the importance of keeping family close so that we can all pitch in and help raise the children.”
Lesley uses her Spanish to help all members of the community and creates spaces that are open and educational to all and hopes that you take time to explore the Granary and, while there, check out the exhibit of Guatemalan weavings, including some of her own.
Carol Holzgrafe