Clara Weatherall grew up in London. She went to live in the Philippines in 1987 when her husband, Percy, was running the Jardine Office in Manila. In 1991 they moved to Hong Kong. She was chairman of the Keswick Foundation (started by Maggie and her father, Sir John Keswick), for ten years. She and Percy, whose great-great-grandfather was William Keswick, returned to live in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 2006.
Maggie Keswick first went to China when she was 4 years old. She was educated in Shanghai and Hong Kong and, in Britain, at Oxford University and the Architectural Association, London. She was married to the architecture critic and historian Charles Jencks, with whom she made the famous conceptual garden at Portrack, near Dumfries.