Regenerative Gardeners Program

Living Systems Institute has been in a phase of metamorphosis since the passing of the organization's founder in January 2025, and before that a process of succession to new organizational leadership and new board members, begun in October 2023.

The Reinhabit program is a way for people to get trained in the one-of-a-kind LSI permaculture and regenerative method of gardening adapted to the Front Range Colorado climate that stores carbon, cycles yard waste on site, builds soil, grows food, and provides wildlife and insect habitat, all in one holistic approach. The program not only teaches people, but also provides gardening and landscaping services to homeowner clients, spreading the LSI methods to more backyards (and thus, creating wildlife habitat and food production around our neighborhoods).

However, this program was initially structured in 2014 and by now was unsustainable to operate—gardeners weren't getting paid a fair share, service was inconsistent to clients, and communication and record-keeping was chaotic. The program had sustained thus far due to the unpaid labor put in by the organization's retired founder, David. We needed to overhaul and relaunch the program with different prices, policies, and systems in place to make it viable.

Over May and June, 2025, we successfully rolled out a new program structure that had been redeveloped in close collaboration with the gardeners over the prior year. This new structure makes the organization seem more professional by having a dedicated manager supervising client accounts and gardener work, and maintaining better records all around. The new structure pays gardeners more appropriately and presents our services in a more professional light (see our updated website and brochure at Reinhabit.coop). The goal is to double our client base this year with our reformatted offerings and compete more directly in the marketplace. By providing more professional and structured service, while also uniquely educating and engaging our clients in how to participate directly with their landscapes, we hope to reach more customers who are looking for a reasonably priced, hands-on way to contribute meaningfully to the living systems around them.

We also restructured our central educational offering, the Carbon Cycling Certification. We now have 6 people enrolled, 2 lead gardeners and 4 active CC-certified gardeners. Additionally we continue leading our Four Seasons gardening workshops, which attract ~20 community participants to each event (our most recent Summer workshop on June 1 had 20 participants doing planting, chopping and dropping, and drip systems irrigation). In the upcoming Summer/Fall season we plan to expand into additional workshops on topics related to homesteading and resiliency, engaging more of our talented community in providing education (to be reported in a future impact report!)

With so many certified and in-training gardeners, the organization's next focus is to robustly promote the new Reinhabit offering to enlist more households as paying clients. Already the program has enlisted 4-5 new clients paying the new rates, which is generating earned income revenue for the organization and allowing us to pay the Reinhabit manager to provide consistent education, training, and supervision to our gardeners. Customer relationship & satisfaction rates are improving. Our goal is sustainable, attractive incomes for gardeners and exceptional service and happy customers (spreading our work through word-of-mouth) in our local communities!

Plus: we painted our sign by the street to better advertise LSI's location to our local community! See photo attached. :)