Our Guiding Principles
Respect All Life
Love’s Gardens is committed to practices that honor all life.
We consistently engage in Earth-friendly practices such as the use of non-toxic pest control measures, organic methods, and procedures to engender and preserve soil health. We work to restore and create habitat for birds, butterflies, and other members of the community of Life, for example by encouraging native plantings and supporting customers to envision their property as part of a network of “National Parks” throughout the country.
We see nature as our partner and teacher, cultivating “power with” rather than “power over” consciousness. We work with nature rather than attempting to exploit her. We adhere to the principle of wholism, approaching our work with the understanding that living beings can best be understood by considering the ecosystems of which they are integral, reciprocal contributors.
Co-Create Beauty and Sustainability
Partnering for Good
Our customers and subcontractors are valued partners in the work of Love’s Gardens. We respect that all parties bring their own unique wisdom and expertise—all are needed to produce the best outcomes. Together we co-create gardens and systems to actualize the customer’s vision in ways that contribute positively to the environment.
Together with our customers and partners, we design, install, and maintain Climate Restoration Gardens and landscapes that demonstrate resiliency through drought and other stressors. We utilize simple, cost-effective technologies that have a light impact on the Earth. We proactively utilize effective, environmentally friendly weed control techniques to insure beauty and sustainability. We focus on indigenous and locally relevant plants as a technique for facilitating sustainability and attractiveness. One of the ways we model sustainability is through our local focus, insuring Love’s Gardens and our partners are conserving fuel by keeping the work fairly close to home.
Restore Human/Nature Connection
Healing is Possible!
Love’s Gardens recognizes the great healing potential inherent in the human/nature connection. We nurture biophilia, the desire within humans to connect with the natural world. Inviting our customers to co-create the gardens of their dreams with us supports this feeling of connectedness.
Through interacting respectfully with the soil, soil microbes, plants, insects, birds, and other life forms in the garden, we restore right relationships with the more-than-human world.
Reveal Abundance
Recognizing Earth’s True Nature
Humans may create systems of scarcity, but the true nature of the Earth is abundance. That abundance is expressed, for example, in the fact that one gram of well-tended soil may contain up to “one billion bacteria, several yards of fungal filaments, several thousand protozoa, and scores of nematodes!”[i]
In the Santa Cruz area, we tend to think that there is a scarcity of water. This idea has grown exponentially in recent years as we have experienced record-breaking droughts. At Love’s Gardens, however, we focus on the abundance of water that is typically wasted, reclaiming it to nourish and sustain Water Neutral Gardens, gardens that thrive without the application of municipal or well water. For example, we design systems to harvest greywater from showers, baths, laundry, and bathroom sinks, and direct it into the landscape. And we teach people to harvest rainwater, insuring that it stays on the property to hydrate soil and plants and recharge the aquifer.
Other means of revealing abundance include planting food forests that provide a bounty of delicious, healthy edibles; supporting people to claim food sovereignty; and utilizing “materials of the 21st century”: locally-sourced, reused, repurposed, and upcycled resources.
[i] https://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/secret-life-soil
Inspire Possiblity
Dream Outside of the Box!
At Love’s Gardens we love to inspire possibility, encouraging customers to dream outside of the box. We create solutions that utilize the power of imagination in concert with our deep knowledge and decades of experience. We support our customers to develop a vision of possibility; then we help them manifest the garden of their dreams in a way that blesses the customer, their community, the Earth, and all Life.
