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“I walked by your garden with my son, and we saw a butterfly. I mean, when's the last time you saw a butterfly? It's been a minute.” - My neighbor here in the Central District, sharing his experience walking past the sidewalk garden.

Jump to the end for a longer story about a neighbor interaction in the garden, God in A Brown Coat. 

 

Growing a garden can be about more than just plants. It's about connection - with yourself, with your community, and with your health. I look forward to working with you to create your dream garden!

Feb 18 - 22, Seattle Convention Center

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Come see a transformed Convention Center this week! Full of lushness and life (and big boulders, trees, greenhouses and more), the NWFGF is a testament to talent and grit, and to the power of working in community. This weekend, I worked with my extraordinary colleagues Aya Mizoroki of Flora Forma (lead designer), Cora Morrison of Alula Designs, Dawson of the People's Gardening Collective and Grayson of Avid Landscaping to bring together a demonstration garden for the Washington State Nursery and Landscape Association. Lush, harmonious and abundant, the design transports us to spring. Check it and all of the other displays and vendors out at the show this week!

Jan 10 2025

When I left my ear buds on the counter, opting for quiet communion in the garden, I hadn’t thought that without them I would meet one of God’s messengers. Weeding the three year old garden out front, a slightly unhinged shout snaps me out of my garden-haze. Words always do in this state, and I have to stand and brush my hair aside, refocusing soft eyes onto real questions and real people.

 

Worn brown coat to her knees, hood surrounding her weathered face, askew teeth, she gleefully smiled and shouted “it’s a lady!". I was momentarily lost. Do I engage with her or fear her? She is coming toward me and I stand and smile. As her smile brightens and her step remains consistent in pace, she makes exact eye contact and says again “it’s a lady!!” Practically skipping this time. As she passes me she says to herself, “I don’t know why I always thought it was a man doing this, but it’s a lady!”. And I stop and realize, she’s been walking. Walking this street, this neighborhood, probably for decades. 

 

She’s been walking and watching my gardens grow. She’s been engaged with my hands and my spirit and I’ve never seen her before.

 

And I say something like “a man! I better work on my backside, I guess” but what I say does not penetrate or matter, she’s telling me what is what at this moment. “Women know how to do it” she says and I interrupt and say “we make things beautiful. Women know how to make things beautiful”. And she is 10 feet past me now, and turns to fully face me and fully make eye contact, in that rare way that you realize when it happens that it rarely happens.

 

“YES” she says “When God comes. When he comes and it is finally his, it’s going to be like this!” her arms sweep open, energetically gathering up the bounty of plants creating a knitted tapestry that give us a place within it all. “It’s going to be so beautiful!” She beams from side to side “Sooo beautiful! And, and…” A huge smile across her face, she’s gazing into the middle distance now, trying to grasp, condense, synthesize the vibrational chest-energy humming within her, of God in her heart and spirit, her connection to the soul nearly visible to me. She is trying to make me understand that it will be okay, it is okay, that the universe is beyond our greatest comprehension and it is all goodness. “I call that grace” I say. And she gleefully claps her hands because she cannot wait for another second to be in it, to see it all, to be free. And she says “YES! That’s it!” Enchanted that I get it, that we got there together, she walks away.