Helping you connect with the land where you live.

What we are part of: 

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. 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 etc). That makes our home landscapes* frontlines where we must address our disconnect from the land we live on and wake up to our roles in the ecosystems we are a part of.

Yards, farms, pavement, and other human-centric landscapes
now cover 95-97% of U.S. soil,
leaving only 3-5% as undisturbed habitat for plants and animals.

For our team members and partners, we are committed to creating a working environment that is just, nourishing, and respectful. We’re a woman-owned business. Two of us are queer; three have chronic illnesses; four of us write poetry and stories; one is a single mom; one is a refugee; and at least half 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 helpers and contractors.

Meet Eryn & the Team

Eryn Joy Murphy (she/they)  – RLD owner & founder, landscape designer

 I grew up homeschooled in a Christian community in the California Bay Area, and then spent my college years trying to fit faith into a thesis at Willamette University. After university, I wandered and worked in Asia, where I learned to speak Indonesian in remote island villages, worked in Korea as an English teacher, trekked the Annapurna mountains, and lived 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 who 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 eco-somatic (“earth-body”) communities: nature-based ritual, permaculture and foraging, contact improv, meditation, and body-based healing. I studied group facilitation and trauma therapies. I started a business facilitating events and retreats focused on play, sensuality, and nourishment with nature. I also ran a intuitive 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, who are 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 contemplation, 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.

My design background comes from permaculture, a field dedicated to creating sustainable cultures and sustainable agricultural systems by learning from nature – which is what indigenous folks have been doing for millennia. 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 have 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. I am now considered somewhat of an expert on native plants in the high plains bioregion, although I still have a lot to learn. 

I am really passionate about education and advocacy for landscaping reform. I teach classes for adults and kids about creating habitat, volunteer on the Government Affairs board of Wild Ones Front Range, and act as a WOFR representative for the Colorado Native Landscaping Coalition. I also wrote an e-book, “The DIY Coloradoscape Guide,” with the intention of making ecological gardening more accessible for my neighbors. Ask me about teaching a class for your community! 

I mostly spend my free time crawling around on my belly in the forest and hopping from stone to stone in rivers. I also love making up poems, songs, dances, and recipes. Mindfulness meditation is a huge bedrock for me. I recently co-bought a farm in Costa Rica where I’m doing forest restoration and permaculture farming during the winters, while planning RLD projects for the summers. 

Franz (he/him) – RLD apprentice, project management

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) – RLD apprentice, project management

Poet, teacher, and perpetual student, I am guided by an ethos of learning-by-doing. As a trans ex-Mormon descendant from settlers and originally from Utah, I’m interested in ways of living that acknowledge the value of lived experience over categorization and harmful Western binary thinking, as well as ways to live in greater integrity with desert (or near desert) landscapes and the violent histories they contain. My interest in regenerative landscaping began in food sovereignty and organic farming work.

I’m a PhD candidate in the University of Denver’s PhD in English and Literary Arts, and I’ve learned that the best way to live an artistic life is to build a life you want to be in conversation with. My creative practice is fed through my work with RLD: moving my body and increasing my intimacy with the landscapes I inhabit through experiential learning.

As a teacher, I’m interested in land-based and experiential creative education. I encourage writers to develop self-sovereignty in their artistic practices, moving away from capitalist, scarcity-based models that block our creative pleasure and, therefore, creative potential. I curate programming and teach at Vocational Poetics, an online creative writing platform, and can be found in-transit with my dog Jupiter.

Ellie Roos (she/her) – Install Chief and Irrigation Whiz, Wild Rose Landscaping (RLD subcontractor)

Ellie of Wild Rose Landscaping has been collaborating with RLD for three years now, and 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 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.

Ameer Aljadie (he/him) – Install team (Wild Rose Landscaping subcontractor; Ellie’s right hand)

I am passionate about restoring degraded lands.
I am from the southeast of Iraq, where it is hot and humid and full of date palms.
I started working with RLD as a “helper” in 2023. I like working with RLD because I like diversity, different colors, inclusivity, and supporting and caring for the native environment. This year, I’m working directly with RLD as part of the install team.
I like to work alongside my helpers – the chickens, goats and the sheep – to do natural weeding and grass mowing.

Doug Rush  (he/him)  – Jack of All Trades (delivery; independent irrigation/hardscape contractor; 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 Apprentice

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!