The best yards begin with
healthy soil biology.

Here’s how to build it.

observe • go slow • design • integrate • harvest • iterate • renew

  • If your land looks like this…

    Barren, eroded, devoid of visible life

    Vacant backyard with brick walls, bare ground, and cobblestone pavement under a clear blue sky.

  • …and you want something like this

    Rich, green, full of life

    Charming white house with a manicured garden, winding brick path, lush green lawn, large trees, and flowerbeds in a sunny environment.
Start With Your Soil

The best way to get there is:

Whether you’re hiring us or doing it yourself, this is the proven process.

1. Till

While you should almost never till healthy soil, compacted dirt can use a friendly nudge to get going again.

Till organic matter (compost, leaves, kitchen scraps, soil amendments specific to your land) into the top 6-12 inches using a rototiller or broadfork.

Person using a rototiller on soil in a garden

2. Cover

Immediately cover the amended soil with several inches of wood mulch, grass clippings, leaves, etc. Order ahead of time from a service like ChipDrop.

This protects your soil from the sun & wind, conserves moisture and helps revive microbiology.

Two people working in a backyard. A woman is pushing a wheelbarrow filled with mulch, while a man walks behind her holding a shovel. They are on a paved area with a large pile of mulch in the background.

3. Plant

Finally, establish a diverse cover crop to kick-start the carbon cycle, stabilize nutrients, and provide next season’s mulch & amendments.

We choose a mixture of annual species like clover, buckwheat, cowpea, sunflower, annual flax, pearl millet, etc. as well as perennial ground covers like creeping herbs, myoporum, sunshine mimosa, purple heart, jade, and many more.

Field of wildflowers with white and purple blooms

Follow this process now, and you’ll be fast-forwarding the process that nature takes years and decades to accomplish on her own. Within just one year, you’ll be growing more than you ever thought possible!

Want some help with all this?

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