What Is Regenerative Design?
Regenerative design for landscapes, particularly in Colorado, focuses on creating environments that not only support human needs but also actively enhance the health and resilience of the natural world. This approach goes beyond sustainability by aiming to restore and rebuild ecosystems, increase biodiversity, and foster a deeper connection between people and nature.
Regenerative Design is a key area of interest for private homeowners to re-introduce self-generating and balancing principles therefore reducing effort and cost. A unique balance is discovered and designed at each property based on the elements present along with an overall integration.
Rebecca’s Gardens Design uses simple steps and approaches to transition from how your yard is now to where it can function better. It is our view that ecology has a significant effect on our health and daily lives, just as we have on it, for better or worse. Through good design, we have the choice to create better ripples and connections for ourselves, each other, and all life in the areas in which we live and thrive.
What Key Principles Can I Introduce In My Yard?
Key principles of regenerative design in Colorado include:
Soil Health and Water Management:
Regenerative landscapes often prioritize soil health and structure, along with water-wise irrigation, rainwater harvesting, and other factors contributing to sustaining a more resilient root system that supports the native landscape
By creating a variety of habitats and using native plant species, regenerative landscapes support a wider range of plant and animal life, making them more resilient to environmental changes.
Utilizing native plants that are well-suited to Colorado's climate and soil conditions helps to support local biodiversity and reduce the need for water and chemical inputs.
Restoring and Rebuilding Ecosystems:
Regenerative design aims to actively enhance the functionality and health of ecosystems, and the balanced function it provides in the wider regional niche, rather than simply minimizing negative local or immediate impacts.
Integrating Social and Ecological Needs:
Regenerative design acknowledges the interconnectedness of human and natural systems, striving to create landscapes that benefit both.
What Key Steps Can I Take Now?
Examples of regenerative design practices in Colorado:
Replacing lawns with native plant gardens:
This approach promotes water conservation, reduces the need for pesticides and fertilizers, and provides habitat for pollinators and wildlife uniquely thriving in this area. Native plants are typically more well adapted to Colorado’s high and dry extreme environment than plants flown in from other states, available at local nurseries.
Regenerative landscapes can include edible gardens that provide food for residents while also supporting local food systems and promoting biodiversity.
Collecting rainwater for irrigation helps reduce reliance on municipal water supplies and can also create a more sustainable landscape.
Using organic matter, cover crops, and other techniques can improve soil fertility and water retention, supporting select plant growth and ecosystem health.
Leaving space for a re-wilded area or wildlife corridors:
Letting nature find its balance can be very healing for the land. A little help here or there is good, but generally letting things ‘go wild’ in an area of the yard can be restorative in a ripple effect even into more cared-for areas. Also, connecting different habitats, especially along waterways, allows for the essential movement of animals, promoting biodiversity and essential adaptative balance.
By embracing these principles and practices, regenerative design for landscapes in Colorado can help create beautiful, functional, and resilient spaces that benefit both people and the environment in greater sustainable harmony rather than resulting in mounting triggers or stressors.
Schedule A Free On-Site Consult
WHAT TO EXPECT
• Schedule a free on-site assessment and receive a follow up estimate based on your project goals and the needs of the environment
• As an intrinsic part of the design process, you will have access to our educational sessions for growing your awareness and/or evolving your own design.
BENEFITS OF OUR DESIGNS
• We offer Design Services centered on regenerative principles suitable for bioregion and microclimate
• We cultivate soil health and structure, native planting guilds, and natural adaptations of species or terrain for purposes of ecologic health and resilience
• Our designers demonstrate Regenerative Ecology Value through certified REv Design principles and practices.
Just Have A Quick Question?
Request A Free 15 Min Call To Assess The Regenerative Opportunity Of Your Project
HAVE SOMETHING UNIQUE IN MIND? WE TAKE CUSTOM INQUIRIES
Got a Question? Schedule a brief phone conversation with our design lead.
Take A Mini Class With Rebecca’s Gardens Design
In This Mini Series
Let Your Inner Naturalist Come Alive
• Receive A Foundational Design to start with
• Observe + Learn principles in action on a Local site tour featuring Native Plants + Key Ecology in situ
• Take active ownership to Evolve your Design yourself, with our guidance, step by step during the series
• Participate in Hands On Practice in our Demonstration Session
• Receive Recommendations, DIY or other help with more affordable Implementation Techniques
• Schedule Seasonal Guidance, Schedule Continuing Consultations for at Your Property (optional)
Intro To Regenerative Design
with Geoflower Farm
INTRODUCTION TO
√ NATIVE PLANT SELECTION or LANDSCAPE RESTORATION
√ NATURAL SOLUTIONS TO ELEMENTAL IMBALANCE
√ IDENTIFY STRATEGY FOR IMPLEMENTATION
√ RESILIENT SOLUTIONS FOR YOUR PROPERTY’S NEEDS
√ SMALL SCALE AGRICULTURAL PRACTICE OR PRODUCTION (WHERE APPLICABLE)
√ TEAM BUILDING OR VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES FOR ECO-SOCIAL RESILIENCE WITHIN YOUR COMMUNITY
A Walk Through The Process
CO-CREATE AN INITIAL DESIGN
A DESIGN CONCEPT is the next step. This is a basic sketch, where we imagine and visualize a desired spatial layout with gestalt references. The focus here is really about laying foundations of form, functionality, and use of space, not so much what it will look like yet.
Your Conceptual Design phase includes:
• Site Observations + Analysis
• Listing Goals and focal-points, including visual preferences
• Sketches or basic reference drawings
• Digital mock up of ideas (optional)
LISTEN + OBSERVE
INTEGRATED CONCEPTS EMERGE
As part of your REGENERATIVE DESIGN process, this is an exciting phase.
We start with DIRECT OBSERVATION over time and use of your IMAGINATION to begin creating what you envision from what currently exists. This is the best way to get to know the property and truly understand what is needed. This initial step will help you highlight how your goals can fit into in the context of the informed environment by knowing what to listen and look for in the land. We elicit your experience for information as well as our own observations to help guide the initial assessment. This kickstarts a ‘conversation’ with the existing elements that informs the emerging design.
The purpose is to find the optimal relationships between various spaces in the landscape, as well as between the landscape and the existing home or environment, and also between those who use the space and the environment. We may use circles, bubbles, or swaths to indicate areas we are dreaming into being. Think outside the box, follow your hunches, imagine movement, experience, exploration and discovery. We ask which of our inspired concepts solve the identified needs or satisfy your preferences most elegantly, most originally, and most efficiently.
• Considering use of space, and new ideas
• Accounting for microclimate, elements, neighborhood or natural influences
• Listing challenges and possible solutions
• Dreaming new spaces into being
Colorado Photo by Lisa Olson
DEVELOP + EVOLVE YOUR DESIGN
HONE YOUR ORIGINAL DESIGN This phase provides you with a chance to insert iterations or revisions to your design for a fuller and more detailed development of your desired direction based on the initial concept.
Reference pictures for plants, materials, custom features, or additional research are also explored. Reference a curated plant list with native botanical names and reference pictures, as well as suggested local materials if applicable. As in permaculture, specific elements command their own layer, so that select layers highlight different relevant features of the whole design, including: structures, utilities, soft/hardscape, irrigation, lighting, permaculture principles, usage, etc.
What’s Involved
STEP BY STEP We guide each participant through tailored steps to begin to grow their participation in their own property or project. We introduce steps each individual will directly engage, such as:
√ a starting design or ‘basemap’ (start with ours and add to it yourself or collaborate from the start)
√ garden planning and schedule
√ native plant choices and sources
√ implementation choices or referrals
√ ongoing maintenance or care of their own property.
WE BEGIN WITH an initial assessment of your project goals, and use our green checklist to make sure this is a good process for you.
YOU EXPERIENCE, throughout your series:
(a) participating in a foundational design, as well as
(b) hands-on learning as you evolve your design with our guidance, plus
(c) optional techniques to implement on your own, with family or friends, or with volunteer help (over time)
SESSIONS ARE HELD AT our north boulder location for discourse and practice. Take what you learn back to your property to observe or implement in between sessions.
Our Clients
For over a decade, we have been working with homeowners and land owners who are interested in implementing regenerative techniques for their property or project either on their own or with other help. Now you can take the next step and learn how to think, plan, visualize, and implement regenerative principles for your own property. Creating direct relationship with your land helps restore a balance you didn’t know you needed, but is always there.
Our Installation Team Recommendations
We may suggest an installation team for your landscape or hardscape design. These are independent businesses with whom we have a trusted and experienced working relationship, and who have independently installed our designs over the years. Or you may choose to work with any installation team you prefer.
We can be present by hourly consult during installation during the translation of design to implementation. If we are not hired to consult during this phase, please be aware that interpretation and translation is therefore left up to the available installation management, as they are a separate business. Thank you.
See Regenerative Design In Action
SACRED ALIGNMENT
LAYERED NATIVE HABITAT
SMALL SPACES
Explore More At GEOFLOWER Farm
You Might Ask Yourself
Contact Us To Answer Your Questions + Continue Your Path Of Learning + Involvement
How Is Your Boulder Garden A Natural Part Of The Wild?
How Is Regenerative Design Scalable To Larger Regions?
How can I participate locally in groups that support our bioregion?
How can I participate in Rebecca’s Gardens Design: REv Design™ Mini Classes or Certification
INTRODUCING — REv DESIGN™
Our REvolutionary Design Method + Certification Program
DEMONSTRATE YOUR REGENERATIVE ECOLOGY VALUE WITH REv DESIGN
At Rebecca’s Gardens we proudly partner with Geoflower, a local Boulder education + practice incubator, to offer you:
REv Design™ Immersions — For education
REv Design™ Certification — For professionals
REv Design™ takes you on a deep dive into creating your own values-based approach to sustainable living, ecological design, and earth guardianship. With the guidance of our experienced design leads, your course will be held live at (or on zoom from) Geoflower Farm in Boulder Colorado. Here’s what’s involved…
First and foremost, we must define our values and address our commitment to participating in ecological resilience. We do this by recognizing ourselves to be earth guardians and more locally, guardians of the land. To be an earth guardian is to recognize that all life is connected. It is to be interested in those connections, in the intricacies and various components, the living systems all very multi-dimensional, alive, and real. We are motivated to live and to act from a place of mindfulness, compassion, responsiveness and care toward all living things, including the health and well being of our environments, natural elements, animals, humans, and self.
How does design articulate this purpose and mission? Design in this regard means to embrace nature’s patterns or best interests in harmony with humanity’s. This can be demonstrated through study, understanding, learning, and the practice of many approaches. For example, biodynamics, regenerative agriculture, native landscapes, permaculture projects, ecological planning, geomancy, even understanding the electrical magnetism of earth’s lay lines and how subtle energy fields are generated and harnessed by sunlight and natural elements in motion.
In this way, what it means to engage REv Design, is to engage values that can change our perspective, our worldview— our daily habits, even our identity. For when we activate change within ourselves, in the simple or courageous act of doing so, the world around us changes.
Using a breakthrough method of coherence that aligns design and vision, rEvolutionary Design is taking bold new steps to equip people and groups of all ages and walks of life — from children, to garden enthusiasts, homeowners, installers, and environmental leaders of many roles in our communities— with the education and tools necessary to be able to make necessary changes in response to today’s challenges and uplifting choices for our future. Each person who chooses to be an earth guardian in this sense creates a ripple effect in support of implementing more sustainable and regenerative solutions in this time of global transformation.
One of our core leaders, and program founder, Rebecca is an experienced REv Designer™, engaging forward thinking and experiential projects and classes to expand this balance of wisdom and heart. She and her colleagues specialize in custom projects for environmentally conscious businesses and non profits such as native landscape restoration, and regenerative principles for properties of all sizes and bioregional locations. She also engages cutting edge initiatives with local organizations and groups to increase land stewardship through awareness and education. It all comes down to each individual’s capacity for sovereignty. With a group of such individuals, we are prepared to experiment in making exponential change possible.
How does REvolutionary Design™ work?
FOR BUSINESS
√ design or build regenerative solutions
√ promote new perspectives for mutual benefit
√ make sustainable connections
FOR EDUCATION
Our Essential Training Series
REvolutionary by Design™
The Value of Resilience in Social + Ecological Systems
REvolutionary Design offers a trademarked certificate program, online and on-site in Boulder, CO, that trains and embodies today’s most forward thinking and empowered community members and regenerative leaders.
Our process includes implementing a simple yet effective process that leverages key tools, practices, and wisdom for both internal and environmental benefit. The basis of our program is founded on a unique blend of progressive worldview in the area of regenerative social values (integrative psychology), progressive philosophy (Steiner, Permaculture, and more), and embodied perception (shamanic environmental awareness).
Our methodology for this program features breakthrough practices easily applicable across a spectrum of current situations from ethical ecological solutions, to community design, and consumer education, as well as sampling successful takeaways among a broad range of inter-dependent industries from bio-dynamic farming to social cohesion, and better green business development.
Participants take the program as a journey, learning self-growth patterns, and eventually leadership strategies. The overall effect is to become self activated, where one more easily attracts constituents aligned with one’s values for greater synergy and efficiency, can manage team and projects from a place of authentic sovereignty, and aligns multidisciplinary goals with integrity.
Through certified REv™ Design work, long term benefits are as key as immediate steps. Participants are guided through a growth track customized to help support their unique goals and ability, highlighting self-awareness practices, interpersonal skills, honing techniques for learned skills of trade and/or business, and team building, cultivating the courage and foresight to make changes in their industry, and standing up for green values even where habituated attitudes or policy may be undervaluing the importance of timely action.
Seamlessly integrated into the program, each participant actively engages in chosen mindfulness practices to maintain the best version of themselves and their trade. Together, we choose to co-create a world where values such as symbiosis and compassionate awareness are re-defining community values, work ethic, and carving out a fresh path for healthy living connections in our lifestyles, industries, and around the globe.
Click here for our 2024 Schedule of Upcoming Classes + Immersions. Follow us on social media with videos, tutorials, testimonials and other ways you can participate.
Who Are Our REvolutionary Designers?
Representing a purpose-driven collective, REvolutionary Designers™ are intentionally committed to becoming leaders demonstrating progressive ecological together with social change. REv Design™ is embraced by those who seek to evolve themselves and to redefine their core mission or approach to life, community, and work as a way to come into harmony with the ecology of our inner harmoney and that of the planet with its diversity of elements and inhabitants. An essential part of this new approach offers steps to integrate interior awareness and culture with the result of finding a greater balance within and recognizing how that is intricately supportive of and connected to the world outside. In this way, aligned intentions that ring true from deep in our core can become a lighthouse of regenerative empowerment around us.
As Nicola Tesla recognized, “It is a mere question of time when humans will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.” In solidarity with this recognition, REv Design™ acknowledges that evolving our inner perception mirrors our ability to master outer manifestation with greater effectiveness through alignment with natural principles. In service of cultivating this balance, an inner [emotional/intuitive] alignment and heart passion, when holistically directed, can exponentially boost the structure [mental/physical] of our authentic ecological initiatives. The effect, though happening ‘through us’ can be observed as a ‘wave’ of effective collaborative and global REvolution. REv Design™ has gained niche popularity in Boulder, Colorado, from which founder Rebecca currently works.
Welcome To The REvolution
What Is Re-wilding + How Is It Relevant?
How Is Regenerative Design Changing Our World?
“PEOPLE TRAVEL THE WORLD OVER TO VISIT UNTOUCHED PLACES OF NATURAL BEAUTY.
YET MODERN GARDENS PAY LITTLE HEED TO THE SIMPLICTY AND BEAUTY OF THESE ENVIRONMENTS.
THOSE SPECIAL PLACES WE MUST PRESERVE AND PROTECT, EACH IN OUR OWN WAY, BEFORE THEY ARE LOST FOREVER.”
—MARY REYNOLDS, Chelsea Competition Application, 2002
Dare to be Wild is the story of one woman who sowed the seed of change... It tells the extraordinary and uplifting true story of Irishwoman Mary Reynold’s journey from rank outsider to winner of a Gold Medal at the Chelsea Flower Show. Mary grew up with a strong affinity to the environment and a belief that somehow it was her destiny to use her talent as a designer to put environmental issues centre stage. Wild follows her journey from naïve and impressionable ingénue to a impassioned and pioneering designer. Along the way, she gathers a team of eccentric and unconventional artisans whom she believes fully understand her vision and they are the only ones who have the ability to execute her plan for a wild garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. As this rag tag and bobtail crew begin their work in the intensively competitive but uniquely conservative and establishment atmosphere of Chelsea, the other competitors are amused at their methods and sneer at her crew of ‘hippies’. Soon however they realise that unconventional does not mean uncompetitive, and are forced to reassess their view when ultimately she triumphs and takes the top prize.
How Guidance + Education Changes The Service Provider Game
Perspective from our founder, Rebecca, on how to grasp the natural reasoning that supports opening to a new awareness of our part in the larger whole. In short, it helps exponentially to understand your context, meaning where you are in relation to the other elements.
“Briefly, my journey working with the natural world began in response to my health. I was told by my Eastern medicine practitioner to ‘get my hands and feet in the soil’ for the sake of my health. I began by learning how to trim and care for roses as an extra pair of hands in a client’s backyard. I asked if I could go barefoot, and happily felt the positive grounding effects of fresh spring mud through my toes. From there, my ‘help’ took off and grew from there.”
Now, after a decade of momentum, what we’ve learned has outgrown the ‘industry’ stereotype. And it’s naturally time to help reframe the narrative for our collective. People are hungry for a new understanding of Native Ecology - what it means to relate directly to nature as well as how it relates to their budget, the economy, their property and community. We all come into a greater holistic perspective from different priorities, so we naturally need to learn how to speak about it and take one another’s perspective. This can help us each along the way.
Questions we regularly get are: How to use less water? How to benefit the soil? How to attract and care for pollinators and small animals that benefit the land? How energy efficient is your landscape and green-building anyway? Green values are expanding, and that’s great, but What does ‘Regenerative’ actually mean in terms of on-the-ground application and care?
Over the years, I have had time to sift through, and to simplify the values and methods into this coherent offer designed to take folks from ‘regular landscape crew’ to ‘regenerative haven’. In this way, our service has evolved into these offerings as a way to mirror our own evolving understanding. We now know that the priority is to connect you with the land— and at the same time help you meet the challenges of a high market economy by providing new affordable and efficient opportunities.
We know that for those who wish to engage a service provider, there are many to choose from. Our interest and specialty now is to move beyond ‘going through the motions’, and to cultivate an exciting new way of harnessing the power of your land for mutual benefit— by getting your hands directly outside, with the plants, and your focus on the ground. It’s your ground after all, and as such you are its steward. Best to learn what it’s saying and how to support it to support you in the long run. That’s how we help.
We strongly believe that remembering our connection with nature offers tremendous benefit in all areas of our lives, including the potential for a better response to stress and other positive effects on our overall health and quality of living. We are dedicated to helping each of us find our unique wholeness again, restarting practices for self-care and curiosity about our Inner Nature, as well as releasing stress and finding our unique rhythm in tune with the rhythm and cycles of life all around us. We do this through working with our land, and rebalancing our Inner and Outer Nature.
