The land is alive!
About the RLD team:
We work in the high plains bioregion on the unceded land of the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Ute, and Sioux peoples, in what is now called the Denver area. 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 – of coming home. We garden to restore habitat for our more-than-human kin because we all belong here together.
We see the climate crisis as a result of participating in nature in a way that’s dissociative, and thus both inattuned and joyless. Inherited colonial trauma has us engaged in perpetual war on the human soul and on our wild planet; this includes dutifully mowing lawns to keep them from looking like the wild places that we drive out of town to visit. Our home landscapes are therefore 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. For our team members and partners, we are committed to creating 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. A third of us are queer; three have chronic illnesses; six of us write poetry and stories; one is a single mom; one is a refugee; and we all believe that rocks can talk if you listen or look hard enough!
In practice, RLD is also bigger than just this core team; we have an awesome network of helpers and 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 (she/they) – RLD founder; land liaison
Specialties: Native plants, regenerative systems design, bossing
I grew up homeschooled in a Christian community in the California Bay Area, and then spent my college years trying to fit ethics into a thesis. After university, I wandered and worked in Asia for some years. I learned to speak Indonesian in remote island villages, taught English to kids in Korea, and stayed for a while in an indigenous village in the Chitwan jungle of Nepal.
The jungle is where I started to wake up to my body’s participation in nature. I walked through it barefoot every day with an old man named Junebaba who had grown up deep inside the jungle and became my friend. We walked silently, slowly, listening. I started to really feel the earth. The insects sang in my blood.
In my mid-twenties, I moved Colorado, where I got involved in permaculture, foraging, nature-based ritual, contact improv, animistic herbalism, and meditation. I studied group facilitation and somatic healing therapies. I started a business facilitating events and retreats focused on play, sensuality, healing, and nourishment with nature. I also ran a somatic counseling practice and worked for a permaculture-inspired landscaper.
All of this helped me get deeper into my body, which began to unlock deep trauma/karma/grief and subsequent resistance to feeling those difficult emotions. Spiritual bypassing became handy. Over time, I began to notice where I was full of shit; e.g., I talked a lot about partnership with nature, but at home 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.
In my early thirties, the pandemic killed my business, and I took the opportunity to step away from that life. I knew I wanted to work in partnership with nature in a more grounded way, so after a period of praying with the Earth about it, 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.
The business has been more successful and fulfilling than I could have envisioned. My vision now is to help more and more people convert their yards to native plant gardens, and to do more more activism and education.
I mostly learned how to do this job by looking for the knowledge with determination, and by building the business step by step. But I do have landscape design training; I am a Certified Permaculture Designer through the Denver Permaculture Guild. My first landscaping job was with Lusciously Local, an ecological landscaping company in Boulder. I studied native and medicinal plants with many teachers, including with 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. My best teachers, however, have been the plants and landscapes themselves. I am an animist, and I believe in listening.
I am most passionate about helping people learn to listen to the land, and about education and advocacy for landscaping reform. Ask me about teaching a class for your community!
I spend my free time slithering around in the forest and hopping from stone to stone in rivers. I also love writing, dancing, and cooking. Mindfulness meditation has been really helpful for me, and silent retreats give me a backbone. During the winters, I do forest restoration and edible gardening at a farm that I co-own in a tico community in rural Costa Rica, while planning for upcoming RLD projects.
Franz (he/him) – Project Manager
Specialties: Soil science, edible gardens, and crevice gardens
Born and raised in the foothills outside Denver, I grew up playing in forests, wading through rivers, and exploring mountains. Despite that, I spent much of my 20s in big cities across North America, losing myself in corporate skyscrapers and cramped subway cars. Fortunately, every time I came home, I found myself again — in those same forests, rivers, and mountains.
Cass Eddington (they/them) – Project Manager
Specialties: Education, community art, and coming up with ways to make RLD better
Artist, teacher, and perpetual student, I am guided by an ethos of learning-by-doing. After a year-long itinerancy at artist residencies and 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. 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 name: Sphaeralcea coccinea, or Scarlet Globemallow (colloquially known as Cowboy’s Delight though Indigenous people took delight in them long before that archetype entered the scene). 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.
As a trans person Originally from Utah and a descendant of Mormon pioneers, I’m invested in reparative approaches to the violent destruction of settler-colonialism. Through embodied knowledge and relationship building, we address the violent histories we contain, making room for something new to grow.
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.
Doug Rush (he/him) – Jack of All Trades (delivery; irrigation and hardscaping; 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.
Gregory Gorskiy (he/him) – Crevice Garden Specialist, apprentice project manager
Greg is a crevice garden aficionado and one of Eryn’s trusted 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) – Apprentice Project 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 received my bachelors degree in media and global communication, but my heart was never in the work. I made a trip to India during college and could feel the forests as they welcomed me back to a place I had never been before. To be surrounded by such magic and connect with the people who had been there for thousands of years gave me a new appreciation for an intense hands-on relationship with nature.
I came home and began working at a local tree nursery and garden center. 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 the cannabis industry boomed after 2014 in Colorado, I decided to follow my passions for plant healing and new adventures and head west. I soon realized that it was nothing more than another disconnected industry; far more concerned with profits and corporate growth than healing people or the earth.
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) – Apprentice Project Manager
I grew up in the Connecticut River Valley where I spent my summers working on a tobacco farm. More recently, I have worked as a farmhand for Lost Greens Farm in the Cole neighborhood. 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.
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. A win-win situation! (Plus, overly manicured lawns are so passé.)
When I’m not busy reading cultural theory or entertaining my two unruly cats, I can be found perusing the Botanic Gardens or hiking along the front range (which is where I do my best contemplation), or volunteering at Pepper’s Senior Dog Sanctuary. I also co-host a literary podcast called The Ritter. Check out some of my publications, as well as upcoming readings and writing workshops, at www.stella-corso.com.
Caden Werner (they/them) – Apprentice 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 career has been 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, exploring the woods, chasing squirrels, and barking at passersby.