Dropseed! Native Gardens and Ecological Restoration began last Fall when Chad and Kristen started sending Hidden Savanna customers in need of landscape help my way. I hesitantly answered the calls which were the seedlings for this new biz. 2022 was my first year as a legit LLC so I'm a gonna look back during this reflective Yule season to see what hell I've done. Turns out, the answer is....quite a bit! During Spring/early Summer I designed and installed native plant gardens in 15 yards and in late Summer/Fall I designed and installed nine yards. 24, not bad for a business that I thought would be limited to a tiny niche of nature nerds like meself. This winter I'm tweaking my methods, taking online design and ecology courses, getting state certified, designing! designing! designing! (lot's of design work piling up on my desktop) and doing restoration work by removing invasive woody plants in customers' yards and in nature preserves as a volunteer for Stewards of Kleinstuck and South West Michigan Land Conservancy.
Here are a few pics from the first year (remember "first year they sleep, second year they creep and third year they leap") so there's not a ton of growth to look at yet (except for the lush last image of my own yard which is year 2 1/2). I'm booked through early summer but will be accepting new clients for late summer/fall.
Huge thanks to all of my wonderful customers for trusting me with building much needed pollinator and bird habitat in their yards. Your new ecologically-friendly landscape is contributing to a vision of interconnected green corridors in south-west Michigan which is shared by groups like Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy, City of Kalamazoo's Natural Features Protection plan and independent native gardeners inspired by Douglas Tallamy's Homegrown National Park initiative.
