The Garden Mind Journal
Stories from the garden, the road, and the seasons of growing.
Where the Garden Mind is discovered through stories
This is the Garden Mind Journal — a place for honest, slow writing about what the garden keeps teaching me. You'll find stories from the garden, from my travels, and from the seasonal rhythms of building a life rooted in growing things. Pull up a chair. Stay awhile.
The Garden Mind Manifesto: I'm Not Teaching You to Garden. I'm Teaching You to Grow.
I want to tell you something that took me years to fully understand about my own work.
I am not just a gardening "teacher".
I mean — I am, but just because I know how to build raised beds, amend soil, read a seed packet, manage pests without chemicals, plan a four-season harvest, and coax a plant back from what everyone else would've called dead, doesn’t mean I’ve done the hardest work of the garden practice. Yes, I've been doing this professionally for over a decade, and I genuinely love every muddy minute of it.
But that's not actually what I'm teaching you when we work together.
What I'm teaching you is how to grow.
What it takes, how it happens, and what it means in your life, not just your garden.
And here's what I've come to understand: that skill — once you develop it — doesn't stay in the garden. It can't.
12 Discoveries from a Spontaneous Seeker in Stockholm, Sweden: And what they taught me about designing the life you actually want
I bought a last-minute ticket to Stockholm when I just got back home from Europe two months earlier.
No research. No itinerary. A community gathering I love, a gut feeling, and a flight I felt insane for talking myself onto.
The anticipation was genuinely the worst part. My brain ran every scenario, “What if it's too cold? What if I can't navigate it? What if I just... don't belong there? What if it just isn’t worth it?”
And then I landed — and everything began making sense.
That's the thing about saying yes before you're ready.
The discomfort lives almost entirely in the before. The after has a way of taking care of itself (thanks Yes Theory).
The Gardener's Secret: You Can't Force It, But You Can Prepare for It
What Paris in Bloom Taught Me About Creating the Conditions for Growth
There is a moment every gardener knows — you walk out one morning and something suddenly appears. A tomato you'd nearly given up on is suddenly heavy on the vine. A perennial you planted last fall has pushed through the soil like it was never gone. You didn't do anything different that week. You might of even forgotten about it (we're all guilty of it).
Simply put, the conditions were just right, and the plant did what it was made to do. Grow.
I spent three weeks in Paris this past spring, and I saw that principle playing out across an entire city.
I had just come home from six weeks away — some of it travel, some of it the kind of deliberate stillness that's harder to justify but more necessary than almost anything else in an entrepreneurial life.
When I got back to New Orleans, I stepped into my garden and saw it with eyes I hadn't had before. I want to tell you about what changed, because I think it applies to your garden too — and maybe to a few things beyond it.
Rooted in Accessibility: Deepak’s Raised Bed Redesign
When your body changes but your garden doesn’t, even simple tasks can start to feel risky and discouraging. Deepak and his wife, both seniors with mobility challenges, wanted to keep growing their favorite foods, but their existing raised beds made that nearly impossible. Built years earlier by a traditional landscaping company, the beds were cemented in place, far too wide, and so poorly designed that Deepak had to step up and into them just to reach his plants—compacting the soil with every visit and putting his balance and safety on the line. Season after season of poor harvests left them frustrated and confused. They didn’t just need “prettier” beds; they needed a garden that truly worked for their bodies and their lifestyle—so they worked with Grow Greenfingers to help solve the problem within their budget.
From Boring Shrubs to Blooming Nature Lab:
Emilie’s Family-Friendly Garden Redesign
When you love plants but your yard feels like one more thing you’re “behind” on, it can be hard to even know where to start. Emilie, a creative mompreneur with a full plate, adored the idea of a beautiful, productive garden—but in reality, her front beds had grown into a wall of boring, overgrown shrubs and her veggie patch was choked with noxious weeds. Every time she looked outside, she saw potential buried under guilt and overwhelm. She didn’t want a crew to swoop in, judge the mess, and disappear; she wanted someone who would respect her vision, garden alongside her, and help her turn that neglected space into something her family could truly enjoy. That’s when she reached out to Grow Greenfingers.
Suitcase Packed, Garden Thriving:
How Jasmine Keeps Growing on the Move
When your calendar is packed and your suitcase is rarely fully unpacked, even the most beautiful garden can quietly slide into neglect. Jasmine, an attorney turned CEO, wife, mother, and frequent traveler with a large, close-knit extended family, genuinely loved the idea of growing her own food—but the reality of her schedule made consistent garden care nearly impossible. She didn’t want to give up on her edible garden; she just needed someone she could trust to keep it thriving when she couldn’t be there. When her previous edible landscaping company (and Erin’s former position as a Garden Manager) closed its doors, she turned to the gardener she already knew and trusted— going on 8 years now, was then Grow Greenfingers’ first official client!
From Filler to Full of Life: Cynthia’s Value-Driven Backyard
When your garden doesn’t match who you are, it can feel like you’re living in someone else’s dream space. You might feel like it looks “fine” on paper, but in reality, it falls flat, which is a sign that the design doesn’t align with your values. Cynthia, a fun, vibrant Senior Program Manager with a deep passion for life and her ancestry, had a backyard that felt nothing like the beautiful country of her Latino roots. She was stuck with a yard that felt like a generic template. A previous landscaper had lined her small space with rows of hedges and a standard lawn—plants that filled space but didn’t spark joy or invite her outside. With every drought, the lawn sank and browned, and felt more lifeless and limiting than alive and inspiring. She knew her landscape could be doing so much more for her—and that’s when she called Grow Greenfingers.
