Meet Callae Gedrose | Regenerative Garden Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Callae Gedrose and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Callae, how did you come up with the idea for your business?
My journey in gardening began more than twenty years ago with my own garden. Over the years I’ve refined my gardening and design experience to evolve with a changing ecological awareness. As a lifelong Coloradan, I have a keen understanding of our unique environment. Our population and development has expanded exponentially over the years and I didn’t like what I was seeing. Urban expansion, along with the American sprawling lawn, is dwindling our water resources, destroying our precious ecosystems, and adding to the challenges of a changing climate. These changes don’t serve the health of our state or planet.

In 2020, I became a certified soil advocate through Kiss the Ground, a nonprofit “promoting regeneration and healthy soil as a viable solution for our wellness, water and climate crisis.” Kiss the Ground focuses mainly on agriculture but I took their research and practices and applied it to urban gardening. I didn’t realize I’d actually been practicing regenerative gardening myself over the years.

During COVID, I decided to take the leap and start my own regenerative garden design business to raise awareness in our communities and rebuild the lifeless landscapes in our neighborhoods into thriving urban ecosystems. Over the years, I was helping friends with their gardens and I finally decided to turn it into a full-time business. When I first launched Honeywood, I didn’t really find any other garden landscaping businesses in Colorado like mine that I could model myself after. So, I started from scratch and ran with it.

I decided to focus on what I do best, removing lawns and growing water wise, native, pollinator gardens. I’m teaching my clients about responsible land stewardship and the importance of using holistic practices to work with nature instead of against it. My main mission is designed around building healthy soil, sequestering carbon, supporting biodiversity and ecosystems, and creating resilient gardens and landscapes.

What should our readers know about your business?
Honeywood Garden Design only practices regenerative gardening, which means building healthy soil, creating thriving ecosystems rich in biodiversity, protecting our air and water, and avoiding chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Beautiful landscapes are our goal and healthy gardens are our priority. Specializing in restoring landscape function above and below the ground based on holistic, creative, and environmentally responsible application is our founding principle.

What sets Honeywood apart from other landscaping businesses is our small niche centered around regenerative gardening and replacing conventional landscapes with native, water wise, habitat gardens. We focus on quality, not quantity. It’s important to us that our clients are just as invested as we are.

Getting here was not easy. It required strict dedication and determination. I had to teach myself everything from the grueling tasks of setting up a business, creating my own website and content, marketing, and running day to day operations while still being creative and design gardens.

I overcame challenges by taking it one day at a time. Running a small business is incredibly challenging and stressful as I’m wearing many different hats. At the same time, it’s also incredibly rewarding. I’ve learned to have patience, set strict boundaries, and value myself and what I have to offer.

I want the world to know the importance of regeneration, not only in our own backyards, but in our agricultural systems, and how it can affect positive change locally and globally as we continue to face climate changes, land degradation, dwindling biodverisity, and mass extinctions.

My story can be anybody’s story. We can all make a difference by starting in our own backyards and reconnecting with nature and each other. We just have to start!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If my best friend was visiting the area, I would take them to some of the hidden gems in Colorado that most people who moved here haven’t yet discovered. I would start in the prairie, move through our majestic Rocky Mountains, and stop at some of my favorite farm to table restaurants in the city. Most importantly, some of my favorite gardens would be on the itinerary, such as Denver Botanic Gardens, Lisa Negri’s Summer Home Garden, and the amazing Wash Park habitat, perennial gardens created by Skyler Smith.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I want to dedicate my shoutout to Kiss the Ground, The Biggest Little Farm documentary, author and horticulturist Lauren Springer, and the following books:

Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas W. Tallamy
Lawns Into Meadows by Owen Wormser
Call of the Reed Warbler by Charles Massy
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Gardening in a Changing World by Darryl Moore
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Pastoral Song by James Rebanks
Soil by Matthew Evans

Website: https://honeywoodgardendesign.com

Instagram: @honeywoodgardendesign.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/callaegedrose/

Image Credits
Honeywood Garden Design