Welcoming its fourth year in 2025, the Ecological Gardener Training Program with Waxwing EcoWorks brings together hands-on skill-building and in-depth exploration of our relationship with the natural world. Over 16 weekly classes, the program equips community members with the tools to design and nurture healthy habitat gardens while advocating for the wellbeing of our local ecosystems.

As we begin enrolling the next cohort of Ecological Gardener trainees, we checked in on one of our 2024 graduates, Susan, who is using what she learned in the program to transform her property near Lancaster, PA into an oasis for native biodiversity.

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It’s a typical drive through the Lancaster countryside to get to Susan’s home outside of Strasburg. Little floating islands of rural suburbia wade in a sea of cropland and pasture. A tale of two landscapes unfolds out here: farmland and lawn. We might consider the tractor a keystone species in this human-made ecosystem. 

But pulling up to Susan’s property, I’m caught by a change of scenery. I dock my vessel on a special island where the tractor is losing ground, literally.

A tawny carpet of leaf litter sweeps across the front slope where, just a month ago, turfgrass reigned supreme.

It’s the antithesis of seasonal lawn care. Rather than being diligently raked and hauled away, these leaves are here to stay: the foundation of fecundity; an ecosystem-in-progress. 

In eco-gardening parlance, Susan’s steep, northwest-facing front lawn is inspired by sedge meadow ecology. Over 1700 plugs poke out of the leaf mulch like tacks on a corkboard, now setting roots for next spring’s growth. This community consists of four different species of sedges (Carex spp.) peppered with showier characters like red cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), eastern beebalm (Monarda bradburiana), hairy beardtongue (Penstemon hirsutus) and, fittingly, Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii). Such an arrangement was intentional for this highly visible space, balancing splendid variation and density with a garden-like presentation apropos for the public gaze.

Susan–who likes to go by Susie–tells me that the planting has already stirred curiosity from neighbors. She welcomes the conversations as a way to encourage folks to see our living spaces anew. “Native gardening promotes dialogue and encourages people to react in a different way,” she tells me later on, reflecting on how her experience in the Horn Farm’s Ecological Gardener Training Program expanded her perspective on the power of a small planted space. In this residential setting, she sees an opportunity to foster not just ecological health, but a revival of our relationship with nature: a pathway toward more positive, healing interaction with the land and each other.

Setting Roots and Sending Shoots

Like many folks who find their way into the rabbit hole of ecological restoration, Susie has always been fond of natural spaces. An avid hiker and frequenter of local preserves, curiosity brought her to the Lancaster Conservancy’s Habitat Advocate Classes in 2023. These experiences helped transform her appreciation into conviction about the importance of reviving nature in ecologically bereft spaces (read: lawns). 

Newly retired and ready to take action, she decided to enroll in the Horn Farm’s 2024 Ecological Gardener Training Program (EGTP). From February through May, 2024, weekly classes and field trips helped her move from tinkering with native plants at home to making intentional and informed design choices. When it came to the personal project that students undertake in the course, Susie’s focus was a shoe-in. She would set aside part of her yard to apply design tips and install a planting. In the ensuing months, the project would take off like any landscape spared of the tractor blade: blossoming exponentially. 

And so here I was, admittedly baffled when Susie led me first to the backyard to start our property tour. As it turns out, her sedge meadow slope is only the latest iteration in a yard-wide vision launched by the EGTP. In fact, the slope is the product of hiring on the Waxwing EcoWorks team; the rest of the yard is her own enterprise. Around back we visit a 700 sq ft area bordering the property corner–her “original” project site–now covered likewise with a thick carpet of mulch.

With the enthusiasm of a composer explaining her score, Susie conveys to me how the EGTP gave her the rudiments she needed to make work like this more approachable and digestible–to take ownership over something that seemed like a landscaper’s specialty. “It feels much better than taking a shot in the dark” she tells me. In rhythm with the hands-on lessons covered by the course, Susie got to work at home: measuring out the space, calculating plug counts, sheet mulching (localizing the impact by sourcing wood chips from down the road), testing the soil, assessing land use history, and observing the area’s ecological indicators to whittle down a plant palette.

I’m enamored by her self-assurance and excitement as we study her designs: a preview of what’s to come. For Susie, a big plus of the EGTP was bringing the otherwise esoteric concept of “design,” down to earth. Many aspiring eco-gardeners are paralyzed before they begin, mired in questions about where to place plants, how to space them, how they’ll behave, and, of course, what on earth to put in the ground.

Through the EGTP, Susie figured out how to navigate the overwhelm of options, coming up with a design that integrates function, habitat value, and year-around enjoyment.

It was far from desk work. When we talk about bringing “design” down to earth, we mean it literally.

A crucial part of Susie’s process was visiting local preserves with similar qualities in the baseline landscape: glimpses of what her property, centuries ago, might have looked like. She borrowed inspiration from the Lancaster Conservancy’s Shiprock Woods Nature Preserve alongside native meadowlands managed historically by fire. Coupling these references with the current state of her space, which bears a legacy of agricultural use, she arrived at a point of clarity about what her mini-habitat would be best equipped to host, and maybe even aspire to.

The resulting design is a thoughtful arrangement of 14 species. Different layers (from groundcovers to understory trees) allow her to maximize the square footage for biodiversity. Touchingly, the vision includes a seating space to enjoy the garden up close and personal–another echo of the training program’s teachings. In designing spaces for ecological health, we’re not just setting aside parcels of nature: we’re allowing ourselves to be part of the healing. We’re not ecological islands, after all. 

Diverse Refugia, all at Home

Any ecological gardener will tell you that sheet-mulching a lawnscape is enormously satisfying. Susie is no exception; in fact, with extra mulch and cardboard to spare, the process became infectious. What began as a relatively isolated project to mend a corner patch of her yard has now threaded its way into a quilt of activities across the property, including a natural border along the property line, re-designed landscaping around the back patio, and, of course, the whole front yard with her new friends at Waxwing.

One can venture to guess that 30-40% of the landscape is now set aside for ecological gardening bliss.  

As we survey these other works-in-progress, Susie shares with me another lesson gleaned from the EGTP. Even a modest-sized property like hers has its fair share of microhabitats. Little patches of yard here and there might have subtle differences in hydrology, soil drainage, shade, contour, and direction–all ecological “foundations” that suggest the suite of plants best suited for one area versus another. Inspired by the EGTP’s field trips to local reference landscapes, Susie took notice of the surprising variations that span her home turf. She closely observed existing conditions and found parallels within local habitats and plant communities. Rather than imposing her whimsy on the land, she has relied on the land’s wisdom to guide decisions.

There are many pathways for restoring a piece of earth, but when we build relationships with landscapes around us and listen, we’ll find that we’re not alone as restoration designers.

And so, in just a few steps, we move from a planned patch of shade-tolerant shrubs to a “hot and dry” exposed strip warranting meadow species. The area around the patio stacks even more functions, with a plan to install clumping grasses, buttonbushes (Cephalanthus occidentalis), and arrowwood viburnums (Viburnum dentatum) that can provide a natural buffer from runoff while dispersing water flows to other areas of the property. Wrapping up our stroll at the sedge-meadow hillside where we began, I can’t help but think of what this will look like in just a few year’s time. Take a sizable hike through multiple ecological communities, and condense it to a few paces around a house. A spot of refuge for a whole region, in a time when nature needs all the refuge it can get.

For all the savory nuances of design, reference landscapes, and plants, the lesson here is simple:

Plants are valuable allies for the shared well being of ourselves and the natural spaces we depend on, even in the smallest patch of land.

Like a heap of scraps becoming compost, just another area of turfgrass in tractor heaven is being deliberately turned over to the benefit of all life. As Susie puts it to me, the Ecological Gardener Training Program helped her see the potential of “taking small spaces and making them better for the world.”

The Joy in the Little Worlds

The EGTP is an incredible resource for practical insight. But for most trainees, Susie included, it also inspires introspection. She now sees ecological gardening as more than just a means to a regenerative end. She sees it as a process: an unfolding interaction between humans and the nature of which we’re a part–a rediscovery of our place in the landscape, rather than above it. She is motivated by the notion of reparation: of paying back for our extractive relationship with the land. Overall, she sees ecological gardening as an act of love: an invitation to work with the land rather than against it. 

She recalls to me the transformation that emerged in her as the class progressed, inspired by the attention to detail that came with observing plants on the landscape:

“I learned how to see plants in a different way. All of a sudden, I was seeing all the things I didn’t know I didn’t know.”

She jokingly shares with me how she can no longer take a casual stroll through meadow or forest, always pulled to the trail’s edge by another fascinating seed head; a pairing of plants; the finer elegance of those common species often overlooked in their ubiquity: of mayapples, Virginia waterleaf, and meadow grasses. Seeing all of this beauty in the seemingly mundane underlines her commitment to bring nature home, and she feels this is a deeper gift of the program–that invitation to deep noticing, which may be just as healing to people as the action we take to restore the land.

I stop to take a picture of Susie posing in front of her sedge meadow slope. Below to my left, I catch a glimpse of something peculiar in the basal green of a wild violet (a volunteer, but welcome in a place like this). We peer in to sight a red caterpillar circled with black studs like cactus needles. Susie gasps with exhilaration, and in that moment I can hear the truth of the love she’s told me about. “That’s a fritillary!” she exclaims. A variegated fritillary (Euptoieta claudia) like this has piqued her interest before; she spotted one while going about her eco-gardening routines some time ago, and it spurred her into a flurry of research. She’s always interested in learning more about who she’s building habitat for.

“I’ve already seen, even at the beginning, more happy critters here than I’ve seen before.”

That’s a promising foretelling for an island of biodiversity that’s only just starting to bloom. And with the help of the Ecological Gardener Training Program, more and more folks across the region are planting refuges like this, and not just independent homeowners like Susie. Ecological landscaping professionals, community doers, teachers, and advocates are popping up like plugs in leaf mulch, all inspired to turn the tide and re-balance our relationship with the wild spaces we depend on.

It’s only a matter of time before little islands like Susie’s merge into a continent.

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Join the Ecological Gardener Training Program in 2025!

Registrations close on Monday, January 27th at 12PM EST.

Over 16 weeks of hands-on learning with our educational partner Waxwing EcoWorks, trainees dig deep into designing and nurturing native plant habitat to help build back biodiversity in the places we live, work, and play. Learn more and let us know you’re interested at hornfarmcenter.org/ecological-gardener-training/

Scholarships are available to offset program costs.

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About the Author: Andrew Leahy

Growing up in the foothills of Ricketts Glen State Park, Andrew spent his early life in the embrace of Northeastern PA forests, sowing the seeds for his ongoing enchantment with the natural world and its stewardship. While studying English and Music Composition at Muhlenberg College, he gravitated toward nonprofit engagement as a work study student in the college’s Office of Community Engagement. Now, going on three years at the Horn Farm Center, Andrew manages social media, develops and teaches educational programs, coordinates volunteer events, and collaborates on marketing projects, large events, and organizational capacity-building. Through all of this, he is a dedicated student of the land, with a life’s mission of learning (and providing spaces for others to learn) about bioregional ecology, regenerative agriculture, permaculture, foraging, and locally-focused ways of living in reciprocal relationship with nature. Andrew has completed the Horn Farm’s Land Steward Training Program (2023), Ecological Gardener Training Program (2024), and teaches monthly foraging walks, alongside co-teaching the Horn Farm’s new Forager Training Program.