Jacqueline has been a landscape educator for over 26 years. When she left New Zealand for the USA in 2009 she was the Head of Department of Landscape Architecture at UNITEC in Auckland. One of her main research interests while at UNITEC was developing strategies and techniques for recovery of Pacific landscapes and communities after devastation by cyclones. She also developed an archive of the plans and drawings of internationally recognised garden designer Ted Smyth, in order to record and preserve his work. Jacqueline’s own landscape practice focused on planting design, an interest which has informed all of her work with challenged communities.

Jacqueline currently lives in Southern USA and is an Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture at Auburn University where she teaches into both the Master of Landscape Architecture and the Bachelor of Environmental Design.

While she maintains her passion for gardens through the teaching of landscape history and theory, the focus of her design studio teaching explores the use of the urban planning and design paradigm known as Landscape Urbanism, an approach which frames the urban landscape itself as the connective tissue that brings community, infrastructure, amenity and liveability together in a sustainable and adaptive way. This work builds on her outreach experience in the Pacific, especially when working with communities attempting to recover from the shattering effects of tornados. Jacqueline has explored landscape urbanist design techniques in such diverse places as Alberquerque, New Mexico (home of Breaking Bad), Chattanooga, Tennessee (home of the song ‘Chattanooga ChooChoo’), and Birmingham, Alabama (birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement). Publications about these studios have become important resources for communities that live in in the urban landscapes that she has helped to revive.

​Just having (more or less!) conquered the challenges, both climatic and biotic, of gardening in the South, Jacqueline and her husband Rod Barnett are transferring to the prestigious Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. They are looking forward to living and working in the Midwest, where the deer and the antelope play.

​Book Publications:

Rogers, K., Schumacher, S., Hill, D., & Margetts, J. (2011). New Mexico: Cultural and Social Ecology of Architecture. Auburn University.

Margetts, J. (ed). (2012). Chattanooga 12: Riverwalk Investigations. Auburn University.

Margetts, J. (ed). (2013). Cross to Sloss: Resitiching the Magic City. Auburn University.