Kinship Landscapes: Empowering Transformation

“I can’t work inside,” says Michele Manske, founder of Kinship Landscapes. “I’m an outdoor girl.”

Aligning personal and professional values – crafting a lifestyle that satisfies both – is a common theme among those who start their own businesses, and especially among those who’ve gone through the UpStart program. For Michele, having both the accountability of the regular meetings and the opportunity to have all her questions answered by experts was what gave her the courage to launch what has become, after only one year in business, her dream job.

Serving the greater Madison area with landscape design, installation and maintenance, what sets Michele and Kindship Landscapes apart is the way she works with native planting and permaculture principles to craft your lawn into a dynamic microcosm that can combat climate change, create habitat for pollinators, and grow food for your family – all this while providing a beautiful urban oasis for you to enjoy year-round.

When a person is doing the work of their soul, you can hear it in their voice. Michele’s passion for the road she’s on rings out clear as she talks about the mission behind her business: the act of helping people unlock the productive potential of their bare urban lawns. This is a transformational process, and it’s all about community and interconnectedness. Plants live in communities just like we do, and understanding the cycles and rhythms and benefits of those communities is at the heart of what Michele does: cultivating the kinship between you and your garden. An artist all her life, Michele brings her unique point of view to her landscape design and installation process, and her goal is to help create spaces that are not just pretty for a summer but that will endure and transform with the seasons.

‘Transformation’ is a word that falls easily from Michele’s lips. “You can’t eat grass,” she laughs as she talks about looking around at the great swaths of empty space that we take for granted as the American lawn. “It’s transformational thinking,” she says about the vision to turn these unproductive spaces into something that can give back. But when Michele talks about crafting spaces that ‘give back’ it is not about demanding more and more gifts from this earth that already sustains us. It’s about humanity answering a call to nourish and sustain the earth.

This is a theme that is heard over and over in the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a book which inspired Michele and helped her focus that inspiration into this very specific effort. Kimmerer speaks deeply to the kinship between the earth and her inhabitants – the book’s subtitle includes the phrase the teachings of plants – and that kinship is what Michele seeks to foster and teach others to foster; the understanding that the relationship between the land that grows our food and we who eat the food is cyclical and reciprocal.

“We really need to pay attention to what we’re doing to our world,” Michele says. We can’t wait for laws and regulations to catch up to the work that needs to be done; “we can take matters into our own hands in caring for this beautiful place that we’ve been gifted.”

With the realities of the climate disaster undeniable all around us, many people are wondering what they, as just one person or one family, can realistically do. This feeling is surely familiar to many – the actions that are within our power feel simultaneously too small to be worthy and too daunting to begin. And yet, Michele says, “these small actions” of transforming the way we care for the earth in our own backyards “are not so small.”

Kinship Landscapes aims to demystify the steps to make edible- and climate-friendly gardens a reality. The process starts with a walkthrough of the space that will be transformed, working through a detailed set of questions from the big picture to the small details: what views would you like to preserve, what would you like to cover up, what are your favorite colors, what are your favorite foods…and on. What sets Michele apart as a landscape designer is that post-installation she provides you with a plant list that includes everything you could need or want to know about your new plants, including their varied uses within different cultures across different times. Providing this context allows you to cultivate an ongoing relationship with the plants who now share your home.

And speaking of relationships, Michele is going into this summer season grateful for the presence of her friend Jen Merth, who has her own Minnesota-based business called Wild Revival Landscape Consulting. Jen will be doing the physical labor of installing Michele’s garden plans this year so that Michele can spend more time at home with her new baby. Doing everything she can to leave a cleaner, healthier world for her children is one of Michele’s most powerful motivations. With Kindship Landscapes, she’s making it a little easier for all of us to do the same.

Connect with Kinship Landscapes online via Facebook where you can see before and after pictures, or visit their website to schedule your free consultation.