After years of gardening in my own yard and teaching as my day job, I found myself between teaching positions. I realized how often my friends helped me or I helped them to manage some large gardening undertaking, and how increasingly acquaintances asked my advice about their gardens and thought that this might be an opportunity for me to make a living doing something I loved. Everything in my life has led me to this point from my mother’s love of the natural world and her desire to find order in it, to my political activism in defense of the earth, to my studies of landscape painting in art school, even my years of teaching preschoolers respect for our planet and the joy that is derived from planting things. I feel extremely blessed to get to work outside every day and enjoy the beauty of the natural world, to work to increase and refine that beauty in a garden setting and to work with all the wonderful people that I have worked with over the years. I am also grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with my clients, each of us bringing our skill to the table to accomplish what alone we could not. It is through learned discourse and debate that we sharpen our work and create lovely spaces in nature.
