Since 2008, I’ve had the great pleasure of designing, installing and caring for Catskill gardens for humans, birds, bees, bugs and butterflies. While I’m no longer installing and maintaining gardens, through garden coaching and landscape design, I relish meeting and working with humans seeking guidance in creating biodiverse and beautiful gardens and landscapes.
I’ve always loved plants, trees, the Earth and all of Her critters believing we are all connected in this Web of Life, so it has been encouraging to learn that Indigenous People view Earth as Relative, not as resource. When we view a tree as a relative our view and how we relate to the tree changes. Nature as relative applies to a spider, a bird, a woodchuck, a weed. After all, “a weed is but an unloved flower,” said Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Humans love my garden spaces because they offer beautiful oasis from the hectic world while being ecologically responsible maintaining a high level of biodiversity and regenerating naturally. My goal is to introduce as many people as possible to a new way of relating to the Land, honoring all the current residents in the garden-making process while also seeking to retain wildness in as many spaces as possible to support ecological and human resilience in Climate Crisis.
My design process evolves from classic design techniques, native flora, Western herbalists, shamans, somatic therapists and Traditional Ecological Knowledge – indigenous peoples’ methods of land relationship and land stewardship. People around the world are studying plant sentience and human – plant reciprocity. The Western industrialized view of Nature as resource for consumption forgets that Earth is Mother and Sacred, that trees, plants are alive and have rights to exist just as humans, animals, insects, water. If you are interested in this sort of work, please visit the following organizations for more information: Sacred Instructions, Bioneers, Plant Pioneers, and read this article from Yale Environment 360. When you decide to work with me in nourishing your Land, you will be exposed to these various concepts. The time is now for new ways of relating to and working with the Land.
COVID-19: For a home apothecary, consider adding edible and medicinal plants: garlic, horseradish, oregano, sage, elderberry, rhubarb, fruit trees and transforming the term ‘weed’ into ‘friend’. Many of the best medicinal plants are judged as weeds and grow wild in our landscapes.
New Client Update 2024: I am happily accepting new clients for Garden Coaching and interactive Landscape Design and look forward to working with humans who seek to enhance biodiversity and beauty on their little patch of Earth-Heaven. Currently new Garden Coaching visits and Co-Creative Landscape Design sessions are booking into mid-September.
“WOW! I’ve just begun to scour the surface of the information you sent.
Your Garden Coaching service is amazing and worth so much more. Invaluable!”
– Lara Turney, Associate AIA and Design Consultant, Studiolo, Hudson, New York