Good afternoon! It’s currently 71 degrees and sunny here in Oakland, California. The mornings have been chilly. The California Asters in the front garden are flowering more every day.
Hi everyone! Glad you’re here, and feeling excited to be sending out this newsletter again, hoping this note finds you well as we move through this wild fall season.
Turning 30 last February was the initial kickstarting of some of this work and introspection. Took that month mostly for myself and by the time March came we found ourselves sheltering in place. This time turned into a weird at-home creative residency as garden installs were halted and potential new clients paused spending.
Lately, there’s a new sense of clarity in understanding the current state of Plantkind and what I have to offer. As well as where it leads and what could come in the following years. Knowing that new initiatives can literally grow out of the current landscape design offering provides much comfort and allows me to be more present without dreaming about what’s next.
One of the early ideas this past winter and spring was having Plantkind focused on a single concept. Putting a flag in the ground and realizing there are many types of gardens and outdoor projects we simply have no interest in. This is a blurb that I wrote for the new “Approach (http://plantkind.co) ” section on the site.
We design earth-y gardens with long term trajectories, messy native wild spaces, immersive sanctuaries, weedy and overgrown at times, spaces for friends to gather and safe wildlife habits always.
Over the past 9 months I’ve been working on a series of updates and projects to grow Plantkind into the sustainable, progressive and profitable business that it needs to be. For a while I’ve been thinking about this all as v3 of Plantkind. This version is simply a moment in time really, it’s not a neatly packaged thing. It’s always evolving, there’s more to un-learn and try again, something different to experiment with and a new plant to tuck into the ground for the first time.
It feels like all of these updates were simmering already and the impacts of Covid-19, even more racial injustice, the effects of climate change growing worse has just pushed them to the surface.
Here are the initiatives I’ve been focused on, for me they represent (http://plantkind.co/values) what Plantkind and the practice of gardening is all about:
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Native Plant Focused Gardens Only
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Modeling and Rendering Outdoor Spaces
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Racial and Environmental Justice
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Acknowledgement of Gardening on Indigenous Land
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Streamlined Design Process (http://plantkind.co/design) and Expanded Geographic Reach
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Online Learning Hub (http://plantkind.co/learning) to Make Gardening More Accessible
With everything going on these days, Iâve been giving myself and these new ideas lots of room to breathe. But now it’s time to open up a bit more, and there’s so much that I’d like to share about each of them. In the newsletters to follow I’ll dig into each of them way more with background, research and reflections.
With these updates I’ve re-thought and arranged how Plantkind is represented on the internet, what some might say is our web presence. The places online that I’ve been feeling most comfortable in are the ones that feel calm and human, less hectic and corporate. It feels exciting again to be able to shape places that represent the work I’m doing.
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New Website (https://www.plantkind.co/) How can a website be designed like a garden? It can’t really, but I tried. The previous version of the site worked, clients knew what to expect and so doubling down with even more info. Iâm most exited about the guestbook, being able to âleaveâ the site and the Welcome pop up.
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Newsletter (https://www.plantkind.co/newsletter) No longer called Offshoot, just the newsletter of Plantkind, not trying to be a cool curated brand newsletter. Starts w/ weather report inspired by my friend Vin to ground us, deeper reflections and written out ideas, handful of links at the bottom and the reflective prompt. More human, more from a person (me) and not a business. More privacy without spy tracking pixels, so Iâll never know if you open or click on links.
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Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/plantkind/) Mostly on auto-pilot as I’m scheduling posts in advance and they publish based on that schedule. Without the Instagram app on my phone these days, it’s not the most exciting space. But I’m checking in from time to time. In a way this feels like an archive of our work. It may evolve in the future.
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Futureland (https://futureland.tv/ethan) All of the behind the scenes work happens here, currently I’m working on a handful of project journals, one for the business, systems for getting organized, designing gardens, and our own native plant front yard. I’m sharing here most days.
I know that it can’t all be perfect, but I’d like to feel comfortable when sharing these digital spaces with new friends, potential clients and all of you. There is a vision and a world in my head that I want to represent out to any visitors or guests of these online spaces. It’s the trickiest to make those things the same. Actually being in one of the gardens is the ideal communication medium, but hoping this is the next best thing.
The most exciting part is what laying this foundation means for the future vision. All of this provides the jumping off point for making gardens more accessible, open sourcing our tools and methods, creating more education materials based on what weâre actively learning now. The key now is remaining focused so we can get to that longer term vision.
Many thanks to Sloane for her support in pretty much everything and for copy-editing the results of my stream of consciousness first cup of tea garden writing.
Oh, and please reach out to say hello. It’s been a while most likely and would love to hear what’s new in your mind and worlds.
Warmly, E
Listen to the season changing. Make a recording of this in any way that feels best for you and the plants around you.
Thank you for being here! This is an e-newsletter about the practice of gardening. Sent by Ethan, who is growing Plantkind (http://plantkind.co)
Magnolia Street, Oakland, CA 94607 Gardening on ** Indigenous (http://plantkind.co/values) land