Prospective Clients: Education and/or Design

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As year-round residential communities, often serving thousands of students, faculty, and staff, higher education institutions can expect the highest return for investment in garden spaces. They also have the opportunity to engage countless young adults in a lifelong love of gardening. Higher education is also a very competitive enterprise and horticulture is a very cost effective way of differentiating your institution from its peers. Horticulture is also something that donors will be very willing to fund.

Elementary and secondary schools present many of the same opportunities and face many of the same challenges as colleges and universities. The potential growth of online learning in the coming years means that it's even more important to help students develop life skills and values on campus and gardening offers more benefits than virtually any other endeavor (mental health, physical health, caregiving, growing food, art and design, STEM education, teamwork, patience, connection with the Earth).

The challenges to traditional retail are well documented. Beauty is a key component of being viewed as  destination and not just an errand. Planting design can bring freshness and a sense of abundance to any commercial area, regardless of the age of the buildings, and provide a backdrop for festivals, outdoor dining events, live music, and other celebrations, which bring in new shoppers, and give regulars a stronger sense of attachment. We can help with both design and event development.

As with college campuses, the objectives of creating a nurturing space for your community, and being competitive with your peers are relevant here. Designed meeting/work/lunch spaces and community gardens (for employees), are sound investments, that also demonstrate your commitment to sustainability.

In addition to the considerations for business districts, the ability to offer local food and/or cut flowers can greatly enhance the guest experience. Even where growing space is limited, cottage-inspired containers of flowers and herbs will resonate with staff and visitors.

Even before Covid 19, many of these important cultural amenities were facing challenges. Curb appeal has always been a successful strategy for attracting visitors, and when large enough garden spaces offer opportunity for rental income and special events. There are also opportunities for education via initiatives like a Shakespeare garden, featuring the plants of a given nation or region, and many other creative themes tied to your mission and history.

Heirloom flowers and antique roses are an important ingredient in any cottage garden planting, more so when working with historic properties. While a specific plant from the relevant period may no longer be available, original photos and descriptions of historic plants can help select an existing cultivar which captures or spirit of the original planting.

Cottage plantings can be relaxing or invigorating depending on the fragrances, textures and colors of plants chosen. Gardens can be sized and enclosed to a degree that's desirable for healing, grieving, celebrating, or resting. In good weather, outdoor waiting rooms can help patients and caregivers pass the time.  Children's gardens can  provide a safe space while parents are at appointments or procedures. 

Gardens play a significant role in the history and culture of every major world religion, and paradise is often envisioned as a garden. Faith communities usually have space for gardens, and the qualities the cottage garden style is an excellent representation of the partnership between the human and the divine. An abundance of biodiversity, life, movement, color, fragrance, ephemerality, and plants in all phases of life and death is a very spiritual place.

In recent years, more golf courses have embraced naturalism and organic methods. Many have farm to table dining, souring ingredients locally or regionally. Consistent with these moves towards authenticity and natural beauty, cottage plantings, the addition of kitchen gardens and cut flower beds, can help return to the wild beauty of when these clubs were first founded in the late 19th or early 20th century.  Heirloom plants and antique roses can bring back the colors, flavors, and fragrances of the Gilded Age. 

Places that honor those we've lost and provide comfort for their friends and families should offer a special quality of natural beauty.  Cottage plantings, as well as meadows, support wildlife, evolve over the course of the year, and are fundamentally uplifting. In the case of historic cemeteries, veterans' monuments, and other sites which have few, if any, new burials anticipated, groundcovers and meadows can take the place of turf, saving maintenance costs, fossil fuel, and the noise pollution which landscaping equipment imposes on the neighboring properties. Using native plants creates important habitat for birds and pollinators.

Turfgrass is necessary for sports and picnics, but it's a terrible waste to have so much public space devoted to an unproductive monoculture, which requires weekly mowing for more than half the year. Every municipal parks department has space that could be repurposed into garden rooms of various sizes for yoga, play areas, performance spaces, farmers' markets, community gardens, pollinator gardens, fragrant sitting areas, healing gardens, children's gardens, and other ways of helping people connect with nature and one another. This work can be supported by private donations and fundraising events, and most, if not all, of the maintenance can be done by volunteers.