A garden is not a product. It is infinite relationships, alive and always changing. Gardens are a practice.
Gardens are dependent on their stewards. Your garden reflects your values. The garden is the context and condition that allows you to spill outside and find peace, space, enjoyment, curiosity, play, and connection.
What is Gardening?
Gardening is sitting on a stone drinking tea in the morning. Gardening is bringing an industrial fan outside to blow the mosquitos away. Gardening is seeing how the dew pearls on the spider's web. Gardening is following your eye from problem to discovery — from the weed to the mayapple flower, to the bright red strawberry hidden under a leaf.
Gardening is observing, responding, guiding, questioning, learning, enjoying, allowing, celebrating, failing, frustrating. It is inherently collaborative. It is a prayer. It is hopeful, transformative, life-giving. As simple as sitting and looking.
Garden-ing: the act of being in the garden.
Gardening is not toil, mulching, gas-guzzling, mastery, murderous, forceful, perfect, or toxic.
Hire Us If
- You want more from your garden.
- You want to give more to the environment.
- You want to spend more time enjoying being out-of-doors.
- You want to make a difference in your community.
- You want to give your children the gift of exploration and play.
- You value craft, beauty, and a strong sense of place.
- You feel called to grow a garden.
- You want to feel closer to the earth.
- You're sick of the resource-intensive methods required to maintain a traditional lawn or garden.
- You want to support local flora, fauna, and increase biodiversity.
- You want to work with people who listen.
- You want to work with practitioners who are passionate, curious, experimental, and perpetually learning.
- You believe that failure is part of any successful project.
- You want to remember the earth as your home.
- You want to be hopeful about the future.
- You want to need less.
- You want a beautiful landscape that reflects your values.
Our Values
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Relationships first.
Water : soil. Sun : water. Soil : plants. Root : soil. Plant : caterpillar. Insect : bird. Deer : plant. Designer : client. Gardener : garden. Client : gardener. Designer : contractor : client. Client : laborer. Place : garden. Culture : landscape. Topography : geology. Cat : bird. Tree : cat. Child : garden.
- No gardener, no garden.
- "Low-maintenance" landscapes are joyless landscapes.
- Happy people make convivial spaces.
- Nourished gardeners nourish gardens.
- Garden Practice does not solve one problem by creating another.
- Garden Practice sources locally when possible and always endeavors to fairly trade value for value.
- Garden Practice loves natural materials and will always choose a renewable resource over an extracted one.
- Garden Practice does not use toxic chemicals or materials.
- Garden Practice prioritizes keeping carbon and water on site — we build garden compost spaces into our designs and keep water on site long enough to infiltrate into the ground instead of diverting to municipal systems.
- Garden Practice experiments for real. Opportunities for failure are built into our practice.
- Garden Practice loves people, plants, animals, insects, stone, wood, moss, metal, lichen, fungi...
- Garden Practice believes beauty is in the eye of the beholder.