The garden is more than a hobby. It's a way of living that reconnects us to the soil, our food, and each other.
My Roots
Gardening and farming are deep in my bones. For four generations, my family has cared for the land and made their livelihood farming on the high plains of Texas and Oklahoma. I grew up on a cotton and peanut farm, working the fields alongside my brothers, dad, granddad, and great-granddad.
My Mamaw and Pop always cultivated a large family garden that we all helped tend. It was a place of joy and provision for our multiple families. That garden would give our four families countless quarts of fresh and canned produce. Every year, in the middle of our busy lives, we would stop to come together to harvest. Everyone pitched in, from the young to the old, plucking, shucking, and canning the produce from the family garden.
It was hard work, but it was a simple and sweet way of living that I’m afraid so many miss out on these days. This is where my passion for growing gardens comes from. It's more than a hobby. It's a way of living that reconnects us to the land, our food, and each other.
Bennie Brown, our “Pop”, weeding the garden
My Family
My wife and I moved to Colorado almost fifteen years ago, and I wanted to pass on this way of living to my family. So I started a garden. In my ignorance, I thought my experience would transfer over to immediate success in Colorado. This place came with its challenges, but after a couple of years of failures and successes, I began to figure out some things and see my garden start to thrive.
My kids have now grown up, wandering through the garden, picking fresh tomatoes and pulling carrots. This has instilled in them a love for fresh vegetables and contributed to them enjoying a wide variety of foods and eating healthier.
My years of gardening in Colorado have taught me a lot and not just about how to grow plants. It has taught me to slow down and take in simple beauties, that nature and agriculture have a lot to teach us about living and eating in a way that produces restoration and health.
Our kids in our first garden
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer, restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community because, without proper care for it, we can have no life.”
Wendell Berry
Our Gardens
All of our gardens are built with the goal of renewal and regeneration. Renewal of our environments, soils, food systems, and personal health. At Mile High Garden Co., we practice and teach regenerative, raised bed gardening.
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Regenerative gardening focuses on the process of renewal. By boosting biodiversity, managing water, and growing healthy soil, we can cultivate life from the ground up., growing healthier plants, environments, food, and people. This form of gardening is built on ideas of organic gardening, no-dig practices, permaculture, and other sustainable gardening movements. At its core, it’s all about the health and care of the soil.
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One of the things that makes gardening in Colorado challenging is the native soil. The soil along the Front Range is mostly clay and can take years to build up to become growable. That is why we build raised beds or raised row gardens. We have found that by building the beds on top of the existing soil, we can create a more productive and easier-to-manage growing environment.
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We can't promise a perfect garden - those only exist on Instagram. However, we can help you avoid costly mistakes, shortening the distance from start to success and growing you as a gardener. We promise to do everything we can to help you create a more beautiful and bountiful garden.
Follow our journey.
