Mission
Connecting People + Plants for a better world
I think there’s a perfect plant for every person, and that by connecting people and plants, we can create a better world. That’s why I offer hands-on, in-person workshops on sustainable gardening and in-person and virtual garden design and consultation.
My goal is to provide sustainable gardening workshops and personalized garden consultations for individuals seeking to enhance their connection to plants and outdoor spaces. My focus is on growing edible foods, medicinals, and native plants, especially in the Midwest region.
My Journey
I’m a life-long avid gardener and earth tender. I am also an herbalist, a naturalist, and a foodie. I specialize in growing and using edible, medicinal and native plants and practicing sustainable stewardship of the land.
I grew up on the South side of Chicago, weeding my mother’s vegetable garden and watching her tend her extensive perennial flower garden. By first grade, I was grafting cacti and succulents.
Most of my life, I was constrained by gardening in small urban spaces in Chicago and Washington, D.C. That didn’t stop me—in fact, I saw it as my challenge to create thriving gardens in unlikely spaces. For years, I tended community garden spaces on the National Mall in D.C., where I grew heirloom vegetables and herbs. I eventually returned to Chicago and created a “micro” food forest in my 1/10th of an acre Chicago backyard (with chickens!), complete with grapes, peaches and raspberries as well as traditional summer vegetables like tomatoes, cucumber, eggplant, and as many culinary and medicinal herbs as I could cram in. I also installed a native medicinal garden in the “hell strip” between the sidewalk and the street.
I worked at and helped run an all-volunteer community gardening space on Chicago’s West side, installing native and medicinal plants in the shaded perennial garden there, as well as in the shared food plots.
I became a trained volunteer through the Master Naturalist program to help the Forest Preserve fight buckthorn, honeysuckle and other invasive plants in Chicago’s extensive woodland areas. I also volunteered at one of the few remnant prairies in the area, collecting, processing and distributing native plant seeds to maintain the delicate ecosystem and preserve the historical and rare plants.
Now I split my time between Chicago and an acreage outside of Omaha, giving to the earth and receiving from the earth in reciprocity. These days I’m growing specialty lines of heirloom peppers from Sicily (not available on the commercial market), as many beans as I can trellis (and a few I don’t need to), and I'm re-populating the area with native and rare herbs, flowers, bushes and trees. And of course, I grow and make my own teas and medicines.