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The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast
Featuring stories from leaders who are pushing culture toward a more resilient future, this show explores the frontlines of transformation—where real estate, land stewardship, community, and regenerative thinking intersect.
Hosted by Neal Collins, each episode spotlights the innovators, designers, developers, and changemakers who are reimagining how we live and relate to place.
The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast
Cultivation as Connection: Jennifer Jewell on the Human Impulse to Garden
Gardening is often portrayed as a pastime, an optional extra woven around daily life. Yet across history and across cultures, people have shaped land for reasons that reach far beyond necessity.
Jennifer Jewell, host of the acclaimed show Cultivating Place, has spent decades listening closely to gardeners and land tenders. Through those stories, she uncovers a pattern: cultivation is one of the most enduring ways humans connect to place, and its impact reaches well beyond the edge of the garden bed.
On this episode, we explore why people cultivate and how gardening shapes land, community, and our relationship to place. From pandemic-era growing to the role of ecological landscapes in real estate, this conversation reveals how gardeners contribute to the health and resilience of the places they tend.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
We often use that word subsistence, but you would be hard pressed to find any subsistence farming situation that did not include things for beauty, things for good flavor, things for ritual, right? So, like even if the primary thing is we need calories to eat, that isn't how they that isn't how they prioritize what they're growing completely. And that I have always found an interesting and important thing to note.
SPEAKER_00:A show about human environments and how they can be used as a force for good. Conversations that educate and inspire people looking for a different way to do real estate. I'm Neil Collins, and on this episode, I'm joined by Jennifer Chool, a leading figurehead of the gardening world where we dive into our impulse to cultivate and how that intersects with real estate. Long before industrial agriculture or fenced-off fields, humans were shaping the landscapes around us. In fact, much of the Amazon rainforest is now understood not as untouched wilderness, but as a vast human-sculpted food forest, an ancient expression of our species' relationship with the land. And yet today, most people aren't growing their own food. Few of us would even call ourselves farmers. But that doesn't mean we've severed the connection. Quite the opposite. There's something in our DNA that draws us back toward soil, toward beauty, toward life. And you see it everywhere. From backyard raised beds and balcony planters to lovingly tended public gardens and sprawling English landscapes. Gardening is simply universal. It's global and it's deeply personal. Which brings me to today's guest, Jennifer Jewell. Jennifer is the longtime host of the popular show Cultivating Place and one of the most thoughtful voices in the gardening world. Her work explores a simple but profound question. Why do people garden? Whether it's for nourishment, creativity, ecological care, or family tradition, Jennifer helps us understand this act not just as a hobby, but as a practice of connection, stewardship, and meaning. This is a conversation about gardening and how it relates to real estate, but also about being human. So without further ado, let's get into it with Jennifer Jewell. Jennifer, it is a real pleasure to have you on. I as I was always telling you before we hit record button, it's people often tell me that I'm in their ears and that they feel like they know me. And I have the same pleasure after listening to probably dozens upon dozens of episodes of Cultivating Place. So it is a real pleasure to have you on to the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast.
SPEAKER_01:It's a real pleasure to be here. I'm excited about this topic and you steering these conversations into the world where we need them.
SPEAKER_00:Jennifer, how I wanted to start this off is I'm fascinated with the conversations that you have on your podcast, but I don't know too much about you and about really what enabled you to get into the podcast and gardening. And I want to talk a little bit more about the framing of gardening. But the thing that that stood out in your background whenever I was doing research is that you came from Colorado at, I think I read 8,000 feet elevation, which is a really unusual spot that doesn't necessarily equate to somebody that that really gets into gardening from just the harsh conditions that I would imagine comes from that elevation. So uh is that a good place to pick up some backstory?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Um that is exactly right. I I was um I'm the middle child of three daughters, middle daughter of three, and my parents moved to 8,000 feet in Colorado. It wasn't exactly, but we moved to Colorado a couple different places, ended up at the 8,000 feet where I grew up. Um, because my father was getting his wildlife uh biology PhD program work done in Colorado. And so they traveled across the country pregnant with me, and I was lucky enough to be born in Colorado. And uh my father's work really focused on wildlife biology and uh land reclamation in the West. And my mother was a pro became, over the period of time that I was young, uh a professional gardener, worked in nurseries, designed and installed gardens, maintained gardens, worked as a, you know, like typical um kind of stay-home mom making work work. Uh she did everything. She would do flowers, she would do Christmas trees, she made reeds, she did all these things. She did a lot of native plant work, uh, as well as more kind of, you know, traditional Western colonial kinds of plants that she also loved, the peonies, the roses. And um, you know, I think as a child, of course, you don't know that it's hard gardening. But when I was a young adult and moved to Seattle, where I started my first family and got my first real person job, um, I really thought I was the world's best gardener, Neil, because I could literally put anything in the ground and it went, oh, I'm so happy to be here. And uh whereas in Colorado, it was, you know, it was harder and you had a shorter season and, you know, heat and dry and wind and snow. Um, so Seattle made it easy uh once it made it look easy once once I got there. And um, yeah, so that's that's how I came to be at 8,000 feet. But only in hindsight did I understand that my mother was a rock star putting putting her uh garden together where she did.
SPEAKER_00:I'm curious. So you moved to Seattle. What what is those early career paths? Was it-I mean, I see you as a journalist and a storyteller, but you're also overlaying gardening and how uh how did you see that in terms of occupation and in relationship to livelihood?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I um so I have always loved to write and read. And so I went down the English, you know, major pathway and world literature. Um, that's eventually what I got my degree in. And I was it was actually working at Microsoft on their Encarta encyclopedia as an editor and content creator, simultaneous to creating my very first own garden as an adult. Um, that I started to realize how much I loved gardening, how really important it was to my life for everything, for beauty, for physical activity, for existential like happiness. That was really important to me. And so I started to do some volunteer writing about gardens. And then I was like, wait, maybe I could get Encarta to like add entries on every famous garden in the world. Um, I really just had the garden bug, which I still do, but I was rabid at that moment. And it was, you know, so this was 1995 to the year 2000. So it was a like a very uh energized garden world in the US, especially on the Pacific Coast. So, you know, Heronswood and other specialty nurseries were really active, and specialty plant nurseries across the country were like really at a peak. Um, you know, the the dot-com boom, uh like who knows what? Like there were all these factors that actually led to the decline of small specialty nurseries, primarily around the cost of land and real estate, like pricing these kinds of endeavors out of the places they had been. Um so the the overlay came right there at at Encarta and me thinking, well, if they don't want me to write about this, I can figure out other ways to write about it. And then, and you know, once you get into whatever topic you're in, you know, it could be knitting, it could be food, it could be music. For me, it was gardening, you find how big a world this one topic actually encompasses. And I was just really um my head exploded with the history and the diversity and the interest and um and the biodiversity of this topic. So when uh my former husband was, he matched with a residency program. No, he was on residency in Seattle. He matched with a fellowship program in the United Kingdom. And we went there for two years, and I did not have working papers. I had a two-year-old daughter and a newborn. And so I just like hauled them around in the car, visiting every famous English garden I could, and um, you know, and then pitching stories to uh magazines around the world um about these gardens and about gardening in general. And then when we got back to the US, I raised my girls and did a lot of freelance writing about gardens and gardening. And so to make a very, you know, long story even longer, Neil, it was when we relocated to Northern California. So by this time we're at 2007. And so I'd been writing for Glossy magazines for about 10 years. And I had this kind of existential, you know, come to Buddha, let's say, about what I was doing and what that was perpetuating in the world. And what I what I came to feel was that the way that garden media had evolved over time was so deeply in service to marketing and advertising that it skewed what we looked at, why we were looking at it, and how it was presented to us in ways that really distorted what our mainstream culture then as a result came to think garden meant and gardener meant and gardening meant. And it it really became further and like increasingly contracted into this two-dimensional superficial commodity, especially as I was watching my daughters get older, Neil, I was like, this is gross. I don't actually like to be a part of this cycle that I am now recognizing. This is not why I started to write about these things and interview people, and I don't want to do that anymore. And I, when I moved to Northern California, I sort of gave up my garden editor job at a magazine out of Colorado. And I thought, well, what am I, what, what, how do I want to do this? How do I want to talk about gardens and gardening in the world? Because I do want to. And like literally the first week I was in our the our small town in Northern California, um, driving down the road, and I'm, you know, got the girls in the car, we're going somewhere. And I hear uh uh our local NPR affiliate station, North State Public Radio, had a call out for public service announcement writers, volunteer. And I was like, wait, that's it. Like radio, public radio, which is public access on all the time, educational, communal. Um, that's the place to talk about this. Because then it doesn't matter what your garden looks like, it doesn't matter what you look like, like we can get beyond this container of the pretty picture, which has its uses. Like we love pretty pictures, right? But um you can change what we mean by pretty when you talk about it meaningfully, which you can do on the radio without holding one standard of beauty. And so I walked into my radio station in 2007 and I said, I think you need a garden program, and I'd be happy to do that with you. And they went, okay, crazy lady. Are you sure you can come up with a whole year of ideas? And I was like, pretty sure I've got you covered. And um, and now we're about to celebrate our 10th anniversary uh in February. Five, 500 episodes from all over the world. And yeah, it feels good.
SPEAKER_00:That's incredible. Well, congratulations on 10 years.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I just want to step in. Um, it's actually been almost 20, but I did the first seven. Um, so it started in 2007, 2008 as a local program. And like my station's so little, we could we couldn't figure out how to do a podcast at that time. Um, and so I don't I have almost no archives from from that period. And then it became Cultivating Place, this more global program in 2010. So that's celebrating. I was like, 10? I've been doing this longer. Um, so cultivating place is 10. Um, but as an old woman that I am, my the it's been almost 20, which is great.
SPEAKER_00:It is. I'll back that up. Congratulations on 20 years. Um and to me, whenever I hear you talk particularly around the culture and and what you're um really trying to dissociate, I I think of like Martha Stewart and the how we garden and the you know this lifestyle that it comes with. And I'm curious, is is that those early producers, whenever you go to a radio show, were they thinking that you're coming in and saying, I want to do a show about gardening, of how to garden and tips and tricks. And um, you know, maybe it's the Martha Stewart or the whole earth catalog. Like, were they thinking that, or were they really trying to uh help infuse the spirit of of what I would call, you know, why we garden? And it, those are your words, not mine.
SPEAKER_01:Um well, I I think they're I think, yeah, I think they're all of our words, but the um no, they had I I think they th they weren't at all sure what I was doing. Um and the way I kind of pitched it was I want to showcase interesting people doing interesting things in gardening and horticulture around our region. Because and and then I don't even think I exactly knew what I was doing, Neil. I just knew I wanted to talk to people in a different way. And so over the course of that first seven to eight years, like you, I could start to see patterns of like, oh, we have like the rose people over here. Like there are these very discrete groups, right? Like the rose people are fairy, like rose, and then there are the native plant people, and then there are the orchid people, and then there are the bonsai people, and then there are the vegetable people. But what you could see is that when you put them all together in their gardens, in their garden clubs, in their plant societies, in their botanic gardens, like they really impacted the whole culture of my region, economically, socially, culturally, environmentally specifically and food system-wise. And so I like my brain starts ticking of like, what am I like, what if this is a really cool thing. How do I get this to be more overview so people can really see what growers do in the world? Um, and while they might be in their little siloed pods in in some cases, when we put them together, they make this incredible fabric. So, no, the station had no idea. I had no idea. We just kind of went with it, and then organically we're like, oh, but wait, it's also this and this. And then all of a sudden, you know, I'm talking about, you know, changing the paradigm of how we think about gardening. Which I I mean, I'm not saying I invented that. I think it that it was a it's a zeitgeist that came along with not just the native plant movement and the climate change, you know, news, you know, but there were there are a lot of voices that start to coalesce over these last 15 years.
SPEAKER_00:How do you articulate that purpose around the paradigm change?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, there are a lot of ways, and they have gotten distilled to be more articulate over time. But at this point, the way I, the way I speak about it and try and define it so that it's not too defined, right? Is um that I hope my conversations with other people are elevating the way we think and talk about gardening into its most expansive expression. Because I think sometimes you will say the word garden to to one person, they'll say, Yeah, you know what? I didn't actually have time to get my tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers in this summer. Like the garden is that summer vegetable garden. That's what it is. Other people, it's their flower borders. Other people, it's their orchard, other people, you know, like there are just and and that's the other thing is we the word garden comes with some connotations um and baggage that can be a little um exclusionary sometimes. So, you know, I'm I'm talking to a Native American elder who leads a consortium in my part of the world, um, who have just gotten 3,000 acres of land back, and they are clearing invasives and they are building exclosures so that cattle can't get into the creek so that the native riparia can return and the beavers come back, and then the beavers have engineered all of this like beautiful uh waterway that allows the water to slow down and percolate. And, you know, all of a sudden the meadow is holding all of this, not just carbon, but also water storage. And it was very specifically cultivated this way, right? And so I'm, you know, as I'm learning these things, I'm like, that is gardening. Like that is a very identical impulse to my mother pruning her roses so that she would get more blooms over here, or you know, cutting back your, I don't know, your something, your anything, your fruit trees in the winter, so that you have proper structure on the tree. Like it's intentional people partnering with plants in their place for a reason. And the way I'm articulating it now, because as I look back over 500 episodes, I'm like we think about our detrimental impact on the world. And what I can see, or yeah, I can see from these 20 years of talking to gardeners around the world and all their different varieties, um, is that like we think about different plant species or different animal species as a keystone species, right? As like an oak, the genus oak holds together whole ecosystems as a keystone because it feeds and provides shelter and forage and whatnot, habitat for so many other organisms. And if you look at the best of what people growing plants for all the reasons we grow plants in their places, at their very best, like that is what gardeners are also doing. Um, now I know they also do some terrible things, like we introduce invasive plants, we spray Roundup all over everything, we put out lawn and call ourselves gardeners. Like there's a spectrum. Um, but at our best, which is why I try and differentiate between like gardener and a big G gardener, like one who's really activated all of the pathways to grow the world better. Um, I see that group of people as a keystone species. That's how I articulate that. It's long-winded, Neil. I don't know how I don't know what else to say.
SPEAKER_00:That's why we do these long-form podcasts, Jennifer. To really get into the marrow of what you're talking about here. And I love the big G gardener because I I I see so many different people that that fall into that category. And I'm curious, especially as we are are going through such a rapid technological modern age, how you see the the pulse of the gardening movement? I mean, there you're kind of describing, you know, there's pockets of different people that do different things, but um how did how do you see that? I mean, you you have guests on from across the globe and uh all different types of approaches towards stewardship and cultivation. Um how would how would you describe the the state of gardening right now?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think like much uh like many lenses through which we try to see the world, I think it's in a little bit of it's always in a state of flux. Um, but I think it's even more chaotic right now. Except that I think that almost everybody who cultivates plants right now, and again, for whatever reason they're doing that, right? It could be for cut flowers, it could be for a job, it could be all the reasons food, beauty, ritual, money. Um we understand inherently that it is uh an act of power and agency. Whether or not we fully harness that, I think is the the next question. So uh I I'll give you an example of this. During the pandemic, and then just recently in under our current administration, but first in the pandemic, we see this huge uptick in people gardening. Okay. Economically, this doesn't make any sense, Neil. It is way more expensive for us to grow our own vegetables than it is to support the farmers who do it efficiently and knowledgeably. So it sounds like something we're doing because we're trying to like be economic and grow a victory garden, but economically in our world today, that makes no sense. So there's some other reason we do this. And I think it's a natural instinct to engage with our own survival, and that partnering with plants has always been part of our survival, no matter what culture, what time period across the history of humans walking on two feet on this planet. And we are attached to our plants, right? We carry them as seeds, we carry them as food, we carry them with us wherever we go. It's like such a beautiful instinctive story that you hear over and over again. The house is on fire, you grab your photographs and you grab your seeds, like kids first, right? Kids, dogs, but cats. Um, but these this is something people instinctively reach for when they are having to leave in a hurry from somewhere. And that's that's built into our DNA, right? And so I think right now we are seeing huge cohesion in an understanding that the way we garden has a direct and positive impact if we see, if we do it right, on this climate change biodiversity loss dilemma that we are all facing, that is huge and impossible to tackle or even get our heads around. You know, like 72% of all birds gone since 1972, you know, whatever the huge numbers are of insects lost. We can't really see that. I mean, we can see that we have fewer birds, we can see that there are fewer insects, but we can't actually put our heads around these big, huge global problems. But we do know that the way we garden has some tiny little benefit to that problem. And that feels, especially in these times when everything feels crazy and out of our control, like a tiny bit of agency and resistance and reclamation. What I think, however, is that when I look at the numbers of how many people in the US self-identify as engaged in gardening. And you know exactly what I'm talking about because you are dealing with house after house after house that is fronted by non-native, over-irrigated, overfed, over-mown turf grass, right? The word garden looks different to everybody. But most people like want to engage with it. And I think we need to find more access points that make it clear to people that their engagement with plants has a direct and visible, tangible impact on something else they care about a lot, like birds or biodiversity loss or climate change. And I think for me, you know, the the environment, like the turn your garden, your yard, your property into three-quarters native plants, and you will make the difference, is a beautiful formula, but it doesn't get to everybody. Whereas if you try and open up those access points to include things like economy and community and culture and spirit, you start to find more access points for more people to see themselves as being gardeners, even if they didn't fit some mold they thought it meant. That's my hope. And that I think, I think we are seeing this. I think we see this in the seed movement. I think we see this in the um food sovereignty movement of cultures around the country. I think we see this in land back and indigenous communities. I think we are seeing it. And I think the more voices come together to like show all the different ways to get there and different models for how to do it, the more we open up the invitation authentically to more people to like ease in to, okay, I'll I'll plant this and then this, and then I'll take out a little more lawn, and then I'll add a little more food that I will then, or flowers that I will then share with the wildlife and my neighbors, you know?
SPEAKER_00:It I I'm really not sure where I'm gonna go with this. It's more of an observation, and I'm curious your thoughts back on that, I guess, is um it seems like in the United States, our context, we're getting further and further removed from the generations that say, you know, I remember this deeply from my childhood memories. Like my my parents did this, or I spent weekends at my grandparents, and they had a big garden. Um and and but if you go to different countries, that that visceral memory is still within this current generation of, yeah, that was my parents, that was my grandparents. We're a couple more removed from that. And I guess in in the spirit of creating a bigger tent and trying to catalyze more gardeners, is it orienting towards the youth? Is it you know trying to go after homeowners? Um, you know, where what's the what's the b best lever that you see to to open up the pathways for Capital G gardeners?
SPEAKER_01:I think food is a natural way to engage with people. Um but I also see like in in the interviews that I've held and in the groups of people I speak to around the country, that also just any form of connecting to something real feels amazing, you know, and so um I think one of the things I say over and over again to the groups I speak with is if you are sitting in this audience right now and you consider yourself a gardener of any experience, it is a mandate. Like I am telling you, it is a mandate. You must share this more abundantly. You must share what you know, you must share it with anyone, you must share it with everyone. We, the gardeners that are here now, like we are the seeds that can inoculate the rest of the ecosystem. And, or the mycorrhizae, I'm getting my metaphors mixed. We are the beneficial mycorrhizae that can inoculate the rest of the ecosystem. And we can't do it by well, I'm sure we could try, but I think it's our best pathway is to share how much love we have for it, how much joy and and agency and healing and meditation and you know, like neurological regulation this activity brings to us. And people do want to know, like they, how did you grow those flowers? What is the name of that flower? What is that food? How do you prepare it? Um I didn't know that even had a seed. I didn't know the seed was there. So I think by and large, people from my generation and people who look like me, so very, you know, like Western colonial descent, we are the furthest removed in many cases, especially if our, you know, immigration patterns were more than one generation ago. Um and we tend to have uh we we tend to think of gardening as a as a private in endeavor, and um and one that is kind of if not frivolous, superfluous. Like it's a hobby and that's kind of cute. And that's you know, how sweet that you garden on a Saturday. Um, but it isn't held in the same esteem, not in word or in deed, as, you know, being a doctor, a lawyer, a banker, or whatever. And, you know, one of the things that is clear to me as the mother of daughters and the daughter of gardeners is like this is some of the most important information and skill sets we can pass to anybody else. This is in fact more important than uh those other things because of all the benefits and pathways it opens up for us.
SPEAKER_00:That's incredible. It I've talked about this a couple of times on the show before already. Um I've spent a lot of time abroad, and what what's very interesting, particularly couched within the real estate industry, is that I hear these sentiments of, you know, I I gardening is just it's it's almost for the elite. It's this luxury lifestyle of you have the time and the means to do it, but then on a more global context, it it gets flipped of uh we garden because we have to. Yeah, this is this is not for the folks that can just afford to to have the lawn. And you know, even going back towards the Victorian era. Um do you see that that divide within the country of gardening gets put at an interesting social status?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and it's it's a funny, weird perception that has never been true. It looks that way, but it has never been true. And and what I mean by that is that there is this perception of it's a leisure activity of the people who have the time and money and land to do it, and or it's a labor, it is a subsistence activity, or it is, you know, the mow and blow team that you hire. Like those are the gardeners. They're coming in to mow, blow, go. So it's a weird dichotomy. But when you go, I mean, I'm sure you experience this on in your conversations, the the truth is all in the middle. It's, you know, my little home garden on a dis uh suburban street uh that is full of like roses and herbs and grasses and trees. And like you go to the garden club or the Native Plant Society or the Audubon Society or the local public park where they have some plantings, like it's all it's like, yeah, it's there is a whole reality of what gardening is that is not either of those two dichotomies. Um, and that's what I that's what I want to focus on. Um, so that we break that myth because either one of those myths is excluding a lot of pathways into this joyful human impulse.
SPEAKER_00:I and I think that's the most rewarding thing that I get out of your show is that it it has such diversity of people. You know, it could be the people that are really into arborist or indigenous stewardship or mushroom cultivators. Right. Um, you know, it just such a vast array of topics and it really showcases the plurality of culture. Um, and and that's what's so fun is like that that's what keeps me coming to the the trough to feed, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:And and I think this is one of the great joys of traveling outside the United States or outside of the highly industrialized um first world, if you will, um, is that for the rest of the world, it's just part of, it's it's everyday part of life. And it's it's not necessarily I mean, we often use that word subsistence, but you would be hard-pressed to find any subsistence farming situation that did not include things for beauty, things for good flavor, things for ritual, right? So like even if the primary thing is we need calories to eat, that isn't how they that isn't how they prioritize what they're growing completely. And that I've always found an interesting and important thing to note.
SPEAKER_00:I it really, you know, the the most stark example I've ever seen of this was in Ladakh in northern India. It was the most gorgeous place with so the abundance of flowers was incredible. Yeah. And, you know, they're not eating them. I mean, it there's pollinator benefit, and they knew that, but it was just such an incredible, stark realization of like, wow, the the beauty that they're cultivating intentionally is on purpose.
SPEAKER_01:Is on purpose. And it has been for centuries, right? Like they grind these into dyes and pastes and powders that are celebrated in all of their seasonal rituals. You know, their clothes are are covered in it, their buildings are covered in it. Like it's it's everything. It's at the root of everything.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. And and this is where I, you know, I come from uh southern Louisiana, where the culture is tied so intricately to the food and the land and and how we cultivate and the the sharing of culture from African nations to the indigenous, uh, to the French and the Akkadians. And it's just like, oh my goodness, this is um, you can tie this very much towards gardening and and what goes into the dinner pot at the end of the day, or how we celebrate with people that if we take the time to go back and actually research those roots and the linkages. Um with that though, I want to take almost an abrupt right turn into uh the the belly of the beast here, which is real estate. And I'm I'm so curious because you told me right before we hit record that you were in New Jersey and a lady had mentioned, you know, we should we should really focus on the real estate industry. I'm I'm curious uh why you think one of your listeners was enthusiastic about that, why they might bring up that suggestion and and your thoughts on it.
SPEAKER_01:So I think it it actually kind of goes back to the story you were just saying um about your experience in um India, right? Is is we we all go through our days doing what we do, and we often just don't see what's all around us. And so when you listen to a conversation that you might host or I might host, you begin to be able to read the world around you differently, like different elements become legible. You know, so you have a program on, um, or I have a program on green roofs, and all of a sudden people are like, I have noticed so many green roofs around my city that I didn't even understand were there. Like what we focus on uh expands. So I think that as we are able to change the way people see the world around them, and it's not just a green blur or an architectural suburban, you know, endless nightmare of mundane monotony and repetition, we can value things differently. Once you see that the songbirds and the monarch butterflies are, you know, flocking to your neighbor's garden because they have a native plant hedgerow and a lot of flowering plants. Most people want that. They're, they think, oh wow, that is beautiful. That feels good. And yet, as you and I both know, we can go anywhere in the United States and take a picture of a street of houses that have nothing but non-native foundation plants and non-native turf grass, that is, using an outsize number of resources. And so if somehow we can make that click in the real estate world, that a beautiful garden full of biodiversity and life is storing carbon, diminishing costs of the house, adding habitat, increasing biodiversity, adding to the overall value of the neighborhood because it is beautiful and attractive and interesting. Um we have a major platform on which to change the way our standard home landscape is presented in the world as a default. Because right now it is default, right? The the and I think if you get homeowners to change their mind, then you have more and more houses coming on and off the market with beautiful gardens. If those beautiful gardens are supported by a landscaping world that can care for those gardens, they remain well-cared for gardens, which are easier to sell, easier to buy. Therefore, the real estate agent will say, wow, that is actually an asset to this piece of property. I'm gonna highlight it in the description. And then a gardener sees it is like, oh, I want that garden as well as that house. And then hopefully you have, you know, a developing mindset. And we are seeing more of these. It's glacially slow, but we are seeing more of these where there are horticultural standards set by the development that are around native plants and certain numbers of trees, and um, you know, no spraying and uh no runoff, so that the capacity of the landscape really does hold the water and control surface water quality as well as the aquifers underneath. And I think we're especially seeing this in the West, but I I think it's traveling east also for the same reasons: fire, uh, drought, and um this biodiversity loss that is really heartbreaking to most people, no matter what your politics or your religions or your economics are.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. Um there's a lady that my wife had visited down in Malibu, or maybe it was in Topanga Canyon, and she had she was one of the first in California to ever get approved for gray water and black water. Um, and she had a big permaculture yard, and she was the only house in the neighborhood that didn't burn down because the water the storage of water within her landscape was so high comparatively. And you know, there could be other factors there, but um certainly for a lot of different reasons. You know, we we've been at trying to crack this nut for enough years now to where you have to develop this theory of change and and you have to see it as like, are we trying to influence the homeowner, which is very different from the realtor, which is different from the developer. Um, and then there is the the larger industry as well. Um, because the the homeowner gets does get their earful with the realtor that the realtor on the selling side tries to you know talk about the benefits of of the garden while at the same time the buyer's agent walks through and says, you know, you can just take out that orchard because it's in the way of whatever you know outbuilding that you want to build there. And um you can even look at it from the appraiser of like there's there's no value typically uh ascribed. They're looking very much at, you know, we need to find an apples to apples comparison of this three-bedroom, two and a half bath home to something that that's very similar. I don't know if you have any like any kind of direct, like what what's your gut instinct on that? Where where do you start to change the needle of culture so that people can start to see what what's not already there within this industry that we all have a relation to? You know, we're all ne seeking shelter and belonging. But where what's that domino that you think is really important to push over first?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I I think you could come at this from so many different angles, but for me the most realistic right now is each individual choosing this value and then sharing that value in every step of their life. The garden is important to me. It it has a monetary, quantifiable value to my piece of land. I so I I shared with you the story of um selling our house in Ballard, Washington in 1999, early 2000. And we had one of the only existing backyards with a garden, and somebody uh wanted to subdivide it and actually build another like little house in that backyard. And we uh in the the bidding war that ensued on this house, there were other people who said, we love this house for the garden. That's the only reason we're bidding on it. And um, and we chose uh actually a slightly lower offer in in favor of a person who wanted that garden. And, you know, I I think again, like when we go to buy a house or sell a house ourselves, I think we have to hold that value and say, you know, because I think a million people will say, I want to live on a street like a tree-lined street. Nobody says I want to live on an asphalt parking lot. And so I think we just have to keep articulating it. And um, and I think that as we as gardeners, we we have to be a little bit realistic with time and energy and effort. So, you know, I would say that my garden, you any gardening person would walk up and say, okay, that's medium maintenance. There are ways to make a biodiverse garden that is environmentally efficient with water and inputs that is less high maintenance. And I think that has to be one of the things we we hold in our own minds as as we try and move this needle, is it doesn't have to be all things that need to be cut back and pruned and fed and babied all the time. Like we can create beautiful, diverse designs that do what we what ecologically and culturally, functionally we want them to do, and not be a nightmare for someone who doesn't, like that isn't their jam to like work all day in the garden. Um, and I think that that'll be part of the vocabulary as we move forward, as we see more and more native plant gardens have been created in this last 20 years, you know, and some of them do become just a weedy mess because nobody knows how to take care of them. Um, and I think as a cohort, we all have to be working to make this more accessible and more mainstream and more legible as beautiful, functional, and not a nightmare of maintenance. Um, and we know we do know there are ways to do it. Uh so I think we we have to help the realtors and the developers and the contractors see that as a possibility and value the extra time it might take also devalue a tiny bit efficiency and um inexpensiveness, you know, and and this is this is the wisdom of the plants and and all of our natural systems. Fast isn't good. Fast means shorter lived, fast means less actually efficient for the ecosystem. Um slow and interrelated and diverse, kind of complicated, like that is an ecosystem service that most processes rely on, except us as humans.
SPEAKER_00:That's good. Before we started this crazy wild journey of regenerative real estate, I saw more homeowners, whenever they were selling their house, give instructions of how to change the sound setting on the surround system than they did about the garden and the plants and the lifeless that that came with it. And it it's one of those testaments to really set an intention of the kind of people that we want to work with and the type of properties, because now there is so many different operating instructions and just education of this is what it is to really help to inform not necessarily the succession of you have to garden this particular way as it's been, but here's what you are inheriting and taking over the responsibility and the stewardship of. And that's what I would love to see more of is people being just cognizant that they're they have they are the tenders of space and and place and um yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I love that concept that you would you would put your house and garden on the market, no matter how big or small your garden is, with a life list and a care list, um, so that people know more about it and see the stories and then can make educated decisions about what to keep, what to maybe let go. Um yeah, it should be it should be mandatory. And um, because if we come at it as educated, caring people, then we are asking the recipients to meet us on that level instead of the, well, you know, I mean, when I bought the house that I am in in 2014, the owners had completely covered the entire tiny suburban lot with decomposed granite. Completely. And they were like, isn't that great? Isn't that so efficient? I and my response was, it's awful, except for that you just gave me a blank slate. So I can make whatever garden I want. Um, but it's awful. Like that is not one fireproof or you know, carbon storing, or it's just nothing. It's yeah. Slowly. We change the world slowly, Neil.
SPEAKER_00:We sure do. No, I this is I think it's the power story. It's the approach that we take with our brokerage latitude is how do we actually what I'm interested in is not so much the transaction itself. Um, you know, I after a couple hundred of those, you you kind of become immune to it. I I really am just like such a sucker for what it what's that story of stewardship, so that we can inspire and educate along the way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And and if we can do that, particularly around these really interesting points with big transactions, big life markers of somebody closing a chapter and starting a new one in a in a new space, um, to know where they are, I just think is so important. And it opens up the doors for to the community, truly. I mean, this is why I think urban gardening is so fun of you can spread joy and beauty in community just hanging out in your front yard.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I love it. I love it. And I I think this this uh focus on, you know, if you take on the real estate piece and, you know, uh someone else, you know, maybe there's a there's a bunch of you, but then other people are working on the contractor piece and other people are working on the developer piece, and other working on the city planning piece. Like if there the more there are of us coming at it from different points, the the better the chances we move the needle faster and with with more effectiveness over time.
SPEAKER_00:Jennifer, I want to I want to end with uh a question I'm sure you get all the time. Um, but what what kind of gardener are you if we're to look outside? What what's growing? Is it tidy? Is it a complete mess? You like it?
SPEAKER_01:It is not a money shabby show. It is not a complete mess, but it's probably close. Um I am a uh I am I am a happy, kind of haphazard uh gardener of of everything that takes my fancy. So as I look out the window, um, and my uh my house is set right at the end of uh an oncoming street. So literally cars sort of feel like they're gonna drive right into the house. And so when I first bought the house, which was like in the throes of a very unhappy divorce and a lot of chaos and tumult in my life, I had a feng shui person. Now, I I didn't even know what a feng shui person was, Neil, but a friend said, you gotta, you gotta do this. Like the energy is, we gotta work on the energy. And this person was lovely. And she said, the first thing you need to do is you need to plant yourself a protective barrier so that the energy of the street does not come right at the house and you and you aren't unprotected. So I, of course, used the concept of the sleeping beauty rose, and I love roses. Now, I also live in a place where we don't get water for, you know, 10 months or whatever, a long time, um, six to seven months every year. If, and if we're lucky, it's a little shorter, but if we're not, it's a little longer. And so I have very, very drought-tolerant um iceberg roses that are then fronted by all natives. So native salvias, native manzanitas, native grasses, and now it's just this like crazy wild tangle at the front of the house. And it's this deep border, and it's very fragrant, and it's filled with like sparrows and quail and lizards and the community feral cats try and get in there, but there's enough of a tangle that the like little creatures can get away. Um, and it's kind of the same. Like, you know, there's pots of basil and tender salvias that probably didn't get cut back last year. So they're in their second year and they look a little funny, but I still love them. And um, in the back, I have uh a lot of natives. And like there definitely was a design at some point, and I'm sort of living within the design, but I also just I go out when I can. I enjoy, I water, I cut, I cut flowers, I pick herbs, and it's an old enough garden that it's forgiving. So if I don't do anything for a couple of days, everybody still likes me.
SPEAKER_00:I love it. Jennifer, it is such a pleasure for everybody that hasn't tuned in to our show. Uh, cultivating place is just an amazing resource and and true gift. Uh, so thank you for the the work that you do. Uh, I can't wait to to publish this and get everybody's response because we've got a lot of gardeners that tune in. Um so thank you so much for coming on, Jennifer.
SPEAKER_01:Ah, thank you. And thank you for the work you do. Like, we can't have regenerative real estate without gardeners.
SPEAKER_00:We need a absolutely yep.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. Good. Keep up the good work. Thank you for the invitation. It's been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:I'd love to hear about the projects and ideas you're working on. The best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn, just search Neil Collins. And if my team at Hamlet Capital or Latitude Regenerative Real Estate can help bring your vision to life, whether it's buying or selling a home or developing a community integrated within a farm, do not hesitate to reach out. Let's build something meaningful together.