Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
REGENERATE has clients in Oakwood, Kettering, Xenia, Wilmington, Troy and out to Cincinnati. They do everything from small front yard installs to designing a full property ecological sanctuary.
What is regenerative landscaping?
“Creating, maintaining, and repairing ecosystems is the ethos of regenerative,” Thomas said.
He explained further.
“There are two pillars to regenerative. There’s the ecological pillar and the self-sufficiency pillar. The ecological works with healing the soil, promoting biodiversity through creating habitat for wildlife with native plants,” he said. “And then creating opportunities to be self-sufficient through growing food and medicine. Empowering one another to grow some of our own food is very regenerative in the community.”
Landscaping in general is thought of in the framework of aesthetics only, Thomas says.
“We want our gardens to be visually dynamic, but we’re also working within the ethical framework, in terms of repairing some of the damage we’ve done through development in urban and suburban environments. We’ve plucked the strands of the food web so certain native insect larvae can’t get to their plant host. That is directly related to the conventional approach to landscaping.”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Soil health is also a fundamental component of the regenerative approach to landscaping, he said.
“How crazy is this: In a single teaspoon of healthy soil, there can exist more microscopic life forms than there are people on the planet. There’s literally another universe under our feet and it grows our food.”
Back to his roots
Thomas grew up in San Diego and moved to Minnesota at age 10. His mother worked in garden nurseries and as an aqua landscaper throughout his childhood. Starting at 15, he would help her dig out ponds on job sites.
He drew and painted from a very young age, and attended film school in San Francisco, where he worked on indie productions and animations while developing an interest in sustainable food and farming practices.
Thomas came to the realization that working digitally all the time was not for him, and felt called to return to the land.
“The peace that I felt at a young age around my mom and her gardens surely brought me back to it.”
He gained experience working on farms in California, Costa Rica and New Orleans before moving to Dayton in 2018 with his family, including sons Rio and Brook, now 7 and 10.
“Dayton really grew on me when I got a feel for the creative energy here. It seemed like a good place to put down roots. That’s when I seriously decided to create this business.
“I’ve known a few people over the years who transition from visual art to landscape design. A lot of the foundational things you learn as an artist will translate — structure, color theory,“ he said. ”This is even more exciting because when you’re a painter you paint a picture and it’s done and forever static. Here you’re facilitating something that’s larger and changing. The goal is to let nature take its course, you just give it extra opportunity to do that.”
Ramping up
“We really start to ramp up in February and March. A typical day for me in the winter is a busy hodgepodge of behind-the-scenes activities such as client emails, brand-building, ordering plants, and other types of planning for our upcoming busy season of March through December.
“If it’s a typical busy season day, I’ll be up at 6. My girlfriend has two kittens and they’ll often wake me up. I don’t eat breakfast — I will drink coffee. I usually go to Press while I do an hour of morning emails and check social media.
“I spend an hour running errands for the day, picking up supplies and materials. Then I meet up with these guys (gestures to Eric and Cameron) on a job site. We’ll have all our tools and equipment picked up for the day. We do a walk through on the plan and I get them going on it.
“We launched an official maintenance program last season. That’s available to folks whose gardens we installed as well as others. We’re working on cultivating healthier soil and bringing in the practice we learned in organic farming,” he said.
“Around 9, 10 a.m. I will either run to go pick up something I realize we need for the job or go work on a design project.”
Energy exchange
“I lived in San Francisco for a long time, which is a really dense city, and the most efficient way to get around is a bicycle. That’s what inspired the trailer. Our overall mission is to offer folks an alternative option to conventional landscaping, which has a huge carbon footprint and is very wasteful. This is another way for us to push ourselves to find new ways to explore being regenerative.”
Thomas paused to fit carriage screws on the bicycle trailer that is being built with cedar wood. The fresh, earthy smell of the wood drifts through the February air.
“You think of gardening as so peaceful, which it is, but when it’s in a business context there’s all these other things. Those moments that you do get, you really do feel it. When I get to put my hands in the dirt and plant.”
Always an artist
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
“I have a little design studio in my home so I go work on an upcoming project. I’ll get a couple hours in of design work so we can keep the projects moving and break ground. The only function of a design is to be the blueprint for a build, but because of my background I really like to tell the story in the documents. They’re often stand alone pieces of art and a lot of clients have them framed.”
After the design work, he reengages with the job site and puts in work together with his teammates.
They work with daylight, and exhaustion.
“There’s an ebb and flow to the deadlines. When it doesn’t get dark until 9 p.m., it’s hard to call it a day at 5. As a seasonal field, you have to cram a lot in the spring and fall.
“We work with nature, so we aren’t fully in charge. At a certain point, whatever happens, happens. Once you embrace that, there’s a rhythm and a cadence. We might get a rain-out and it’s so busy but we’re going to miss a couple days because it’s pouring. Somehow it makes sense, we need a break. If you live in the natural patterns of things, there’s a trust that comes with that. We try to apply it to our lives in general, not just work.”
Family time
When the work day does wrap up, the gang might go to Barrel House for a drink, or Thomas goes to hang out with his sons.
“For me to decompress, I’ll go to the gym at the downtown YMCA. If I can’t muster the energy, I’ll do the sauna.
“If I have my boys, once I pick them up from school, that’s pretty much the only way I can turn off work. When you maintain a business, it’s a hustle. You can’t really shut it off. But when I’m with my boys, it is their time.
“We go to the Y for an hour. Brook will play basketball, Rio will run laps or do some weights. They’ve been in school all day, so some kind of physical exertion is fun.
“We go to the park and try to be outside. Then we go get ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s or Graeters. They start school at 7 a.m., super early, so that means we’re up at 6 getting ready. They were like, ‘Ugh Dad — this sucks!’ and I was like ‘I agree!’ What if we get ice cream to have something to look forward to at the end of the day?"
Chasing light
“The way the light is turning towards the end of the day, I squeeze in some more peaceful things. Watering and tending to plants, the more intimate meditative part of it. It’s just me and the plants. It re-grounds me and gets me back to what got me there in the first place.
“I’m not a great cook. I love fresh food, but when I cook for myself and my kids it’s super simple. It’s not my forte, but everyone around me is a really good cook, so I get to benefit from that.”
Thomas’ girlfriend is Katie Mathews, owner of plant-forward restaurant Indigo, which recently opened at The Silos.
“At this point I have a real hard time eating vegetables from a grocery store, ‘cause I’ve eaten the real thing fresh from the garden. It’s so different. I pretty much don’t each vegetables in the winter. I don’t buy tomatoes in January. I’ll eat broccoli and greens and stuff like that because you can grow it local. There’s a few really great organic farms in this area — Foxhole Farms, Mile Creek, Green Table Gardens, Dayton Urban Grown."
Every quiet step
“Quality time is important to wind down. With Katie and I both running businesses, we have to find that when we can and really sink our teeth into it. Sitting out on the front porch in the warm months is my favorite thing to do, listening to music and having a glass of wine. Trying to disconnect from the chaos and be people together.
“If it’s the winter, I’ll often have three or four books going. I just finished a really cool book called ‘A Tale for the Time Being’. It was recommended by a local herbalist, Janet Lawson. She’s amazing, probably in her 70s with this beautiful white hair and all these great stories,” he said.
Speaking of books, thinking about the regenerative approach to landscaping, specifically soil health, reminded Thomas of a line from one of his favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver:
“Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.”
MORE DETAILS
Find out more about REGENERATE Garden Co. at regenerateohio.com and see examples of their work on Instagram at @regenerategardenco.
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