Interesting in joining our RLD apprenticeship program? Check it out!
About the RLD team:
We work in the high plains bioregion of Denver, Colorado, on the land of the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Ute, and Sioux peoples. Here, we are part of a short-grass prairie ecology at the base of the Rocky Mountain foothills.
For us, native plant landscaping is an act of ecological reconciliation. We garden to restore abundance for ourselves and for our more-than-human kin. We garden to find out what it’s like when we all come home together.
We see the climate crisis as a result of participating in nature in a way that’s dissociative, disconnected, inattuned, and joyless. Colonial patterns keep us perpetually at war with the human soul and with our wild planet; this includes monotonously mowing monocultured lawns to hold back nature’s beauty. We see our home landscapes as frontlines where we can wake up to the land we live on, to our responsibilities and joys as members of this ecosystem.
We also believe that ecological health has to include economic and social health. We are committed to upholding a working environment that is just, nourishing, and respectful. We design our services to be accessible to people of all means.
RLD is a woman-owned business built around an apprenticeship model. We are a diverse group. Half of the RLD team is queer or trans; three are parents; many of us are artists or poets; and all of us believe that rocks can talk if you listen hard enough.
In practice, RLD is also bigger than just this core team; we have an awesome network of regular helpers and collaborative contractors.
“[…] The consensus among landscape ecologists is that 3-5% of [U.S.] land
remains as undisturbed habitat for plants and animals. In other words, for our
own use, 95-97% of all land has been altered or developed in some way,
leaving only a small fraction of the landscape as truly ‘undisturbed’ habitat for wildlife.”
-Professor Douglas Tallamy, “Bringing Nature Home”
Meet Eryn & the Team
Eryn Joy Murphy (they/them) – RLD Founder, Owner, and Manager
I grew up in the California suburbs, surrounded by carpets of lawn. I didn’t really feel like a part of nature until my twenties, when my wandering feet led me to an indigenous village in the Chitwan jungle of Nepal.
The jungle is where I started to feel at home in nature and in my own skin. I walked through it barefoot every day with an old man named Junebaba, who had grown up deep inside the rainforest and who became my friend. We walked silently, slowly, listening. I started to feel the earth and dance with the birds. The insects sang in my blood.
When I moved to Colorado, I got involved in permaculture, foraging, animistic herbalism, nature-based ritual, contact improv, meditation, somatic healing therapies, and eco-sensuality. I spent a lot of time crawling around in the forest. Eventually, I began running events focused on helping people connect with nature, offering eco-somatic coaching sessions; and working for an ecological landscaper in Boulder.
All of this helped me get deeper into my body, which began to unlock deep grief and resistance to feeling the grief. Over time, I began to notice where I was full of shit. E.g., I taught workshops about partnering with nature, but my yard was growing nothing but invasive weeds. And partnership with humans and the business world, which are both part of nature, completely freaked me out. I was using “nature” to try to escape.
I knew I wanted to work in partnership with nature in a more grounded way. I kept remembering the interweaving of human and non-human community that I had felt in that jungle village. I kept seeing an image of myself digging with a shovel. Eventually, I decided to dedicate myself to figuring out what a suburban habitat restoration business would look like. In early 2021, I launched Restorative Landscape Design.
RLD has been more successful and fulfilling than I ever envisioned. My dream now is to continue to support people to convert their yards to ecologically-attuned landscapes; to nurture the RLD team into progressively greater strength and resilience; and to step into more education and activism. (Ask me about teaching a class for your community!)
To be honest, I mostly taught myself how to do this job through sheer determination and time. Trial and error has been my biggest teacher! But I do have many human teachers to thank. I am a Certified Permaculture Designer through the Denver Permaculture Guild, and I got my start working with master landscaper Joe Lustig at Lusciously Local. I studied native and medicinal plants with many teachers, including curandero Doug Simons in New Mexico; green witch Willow Arlenea in Boulder; local nonprofits like WOFR and HPEC; xeric lawn experts like Tony Koski; and through the “Colorado Native Plant Master” program. Kenton Seth ushered play back into my life when he showed me how to build crevice gardens, and the whole RLD team is continually teaching me how to pay attention to details with love. Most of all, I owe great gratitude and joy to the local plants and landscapes themselves, for talking to me and working with me. They remind me every day of the delight, beauty, and grace of Colorado.
Caden Werner (they/them) – Landscape Designer and Project Manager
I grew up in the Denver area, moving from Ontario with my family when I was five. I became fascinated with plants early on, spending many weekends wandering the aisles of the plant shop where my grandma worked, and helping her tend to the tomatoes on her porch.
Most of my previous career was on farms and in greenhouses, immersed in the domesticated side of the horticultural world. Pivoting toward the wilder side of gardening has been eye-opening! I’ve loved learning about the pre-colonial ecology of the area and the many symbiotic relationships between plants and other organisms.
Most of my free time is spent with my mischievous dog Layla, exploring the woods, chasing squirrels, and barking at passersby.
Layla (she/good girl) – Chief Officer of Employee Morale; Snack Quality Inspector; Head of Squirrel Patrol
Layla is arguably the best-looking member of RLD, as well as the best at digging holes.
Doug Rush (he/him) – Jack of All Trades (irrigation, construction, hardscaping, beekeeping, delivery, muscle)
I started building homes when I was 17, so I’ve been a carpenter for 50 years and a landscaper for almost as long. Let me know if you want a flagstone path made out of fairy dust.
I started beekeeping 5 years ago and realized bugs can be cool as s**t. I like most animals better than people. I started planting things about 10 years ago and realized plants can be cool too. Now I work with RLD and run the Jefferson County Bee Club, so evidently even some humans are growing on me.
I am hopeful, and I am in awe, of the resilience of nature when we don’t try to bend it to our will. Look at Chernobyl and the Rwandan wilderness preserve. Returning green turf desert in Denver to productive natural habitat is also the s**t. Everything feeds something.
I’m looking forward to another season of helping people see the creatures that they wouldn’t if they didn’t start with their own yards.
In my free time, I’m given to flights of whimsy. Have been known to frolic on occasion.
Cass Eddington (they/them) – Landscape Designer, Project Manager, and Educator
As a poet, I love landscaping for the names of the plants on my tongue as I learn about them, both the latin and the common names: Sphaeralcea coccinea, or Scarlet Globemallow, or Cowboy’s Delight. But really I’m here for the dirt. For the furred sickles of blue gramma catching the golden glow, the smell of Agastache rupestris (licorice: in the mint family). For the presence I experience in my body.
After a year-long itinerancy at artist residencies in the woods and desert, I had a hard time coming back to the city. But I knew I needed to root in order to grow. If I couldn’t live in the woods, I could at least get closer to the earth through ecological landscaping.
I hold a PhD in English Literary Arts from the University of Denver and have over a decade of experience in both higher ed and community education settings. Through Re/Visionary, I offer project-based creative facilitation and place-based collaborations. I can be found experimenting in the kitchen, playing with other artists, and exploring the wild edges with my dog Jupiter.
Ellie Roos (she/her) – Irrigation Specialist (Wild Rose Landscaping)
Ellie of Wild Rose Landscaping has been collaborating with RLD for three years now, sometimes as a subcontractor, sometimes as an independent contractor whom we refer. Our clients rave about her.
Ellie begin landscaping professionally in 2017 as a way to earn money to support her young family. Since then, she has worked hard to build a world where her children and future generations will find joy. Ellie’s joy comes from solving puzzles and feeding the wildlife with the gardens she builds.
Ellie’s company focuses on irrigation and maintenance of native gardens. Ellie is passionate about preserving and protecting the environment, which is why WRL uses only sustainable practices (such as composting, rainwater harvesting, and natural pest control) to ensure that your landscape is not only beautiful but also environmentally responsible.
Gregory Gorskiy (he/him) – Crevice Garden Specialist
Greg is a crevice garden aficionado and one of Eryn’s graduated apprentices.
Professionally a horticulturalist and massage therapist in training, in his off time he is a creative who loves making art with any range of materials, whether they be clay, wool, paint, the digital, or elements of nature. Hence – crevice gardens – these natural sculptures are a joy to build and a treat to look at!
Daniel Rowen (He/Him) – Field Manager
Born in Colombia but raised in New Jersey; the mountains and trees and rivers have been running through my blood since time immemorial. No NYC skyscraper could ever compare to the welcoming embrace of a dark forest and a blue lake. Being adopted, I never felt like I belonged, yet nature always made me feel like I was home.
I spent many years working in local tree nurseries and garden centers. I loved the work and the people, but the mass commercial use of pesticides and herbicides in conventional horticulture never sat right with me.
As I danced through life like the leaves on a warm autumn day, managing trees and perennial yards in the Denver area, I came across Eryn looking for help with her budding landscaping business. I loved the passion she had for the work, along with her quirky loving approach to the land and the people she was working with. I feel that my own love for nature and 12 years in horticulture/ cultivation, coupled with my passion for regenerative and natural farming practices, pair nicely with Eryn’s vision for a more colorful and cleaner future we can all be a part of.
Stella Corso (she/her) – Landscape Designer
I grew up in the Connecticut River Valley where I spent my summers working on a tobacco farm. After moving to Colorado in 2019 to pursue my PhD in English & Literary Arts at the University of Denver, I fell in love with the landscape—particularly the subtle beauty of the prairie grasses in all their muted color variety against the craggy, rocky terrain.
I worked as a farmhand for Lost Greens Farm before finding the RLD apprenticeship program. As a writer, editor, and educator, I enjoy the contrast of working outdoors in the sunshine and getting my hands dirty during the warmer months, and I feel especially gratified knowing that the beauty of restorative landscaping design is also in service of ecological sustainability. Overly manicured lawns are so passé.
Check out my publications, podcast, and upcoming readings and workshops at stella-corso.com.
Sev (they/them) – Apprentice Landscape Designer and Project Manager
I first got involved with Restorative Landscape Design through a class Eryn Murphy led on how to start an ecological landscaping business. RLD’s focus on restored relationships with each other and the land, as well as investment in employee and client education, was such a breath of fresh air, and I was hooked! I dream of co-owning a similar business someday, and I’m STOKED for the opportunity to build relationships with and learn from some of the region’s loveliest souls and brightest business people as an RLD apprentice.
Outside of RLD, I’ve spent my career with local nonprofits, most relevantly as the lead of a program that gets residents involved in projects that restore open spaces to native shortgrass prairie. I also pick up plant-y projects wherever I can in my personal time: tending my own tiny native and edible garden, getting neighbors involved in shared HOA landscapes, spreading native seeds while I forage, and giving away home-grown seedlings, to name a few.
When I’m not working with plants or neighbors, I’m usually falling asleep on the couch with my dog to a Mae Martin show. That, or connecting with other queer folks, learning, or thrift shopping for pretty things.
Danielle Petersen (she/her) – Apprentice Landscape Designer and Project Manager
I’m here to bring a little more “wild” back into the world — both to the land and to the humans who tend it. By wild I mean alive, intuitive, listening, brimming with soul. What I call Wild Soul Living.
Before stepping into native landscape work, I spent years in project management and marketing for Fortune 500 brands — coordinating multi-million-dollar campaigns, aligning cross-functional teams, and moving complex projects from idea → implementation. That foundation still shapes the organized way that I work today.
Alongside that, I’ve spent years in earth-based study and human-centered healing. I’m a Master Gardener, Clinical Herbalist, women’s pelvic floor practitioner, ecopsychologist, and ontological coach. My work has always centered around helping people reconnect with their own inner wildness.
But my deepest teachers have always been the plants.
Now my goal is to bring more native plants into our urban landscapes — restoring ecological function, beauty, and soul. To me, restorative design is about relationship rather than control. My hope is to be a resource, a guide, and a good worker for the land — helping create spaces that remember what it feels like to be wild, resilient, and deeply alive.
Zach Lewis (he/him) – Apprentice Landscape Designer and Project Manager
Zach grew up in South Florida and was surrounded by tropical plants grown by his master horticulturalist dad. But the plant bug did not bite him until his future wife asked him to take care of a broccoli plant. He has had a thriving vegetable garden ever since, and was inspired to get a permaculture design certificate, a masters in urban planning, and a master gardener.
Zach founded and led Garden to Table from 2013-2016, a nonprofit that worked on food policy, harvesting and distributing fruit from neglected neighborhood trees, building community gardens, providing education, and operating a 1 acre urban farm near downtown San Jose, CA. His next endeavor was helping launch Public Space Authority, where he focused on public space development and consulting, with plant integration always top of mind.
With the onset of the pandemic, Zach made the decision to leave his job and become a stay at home dad in Denver. It was here that he first experienced true seasons, and a budding love for perennials and ornamentals took hold. He has been studying the plant life here ever since, experimenting in his garden and constantly learning more about native plants and how much beauty there can be without using much water.
Zach has since become a CO Master Gardener and Certified Rocky Mountain Certified Gardener. He is motivated to get rid of as much traditional grass as possible, and help people find new love in the copious beauty of native and climate-compatible plants available to them.