We Need Water: Ripping Out Your Lawn

Welcome back to Season 2 of We Need Water! To kickoff our season we are speaking with Jessi Bloom about how to rip out your lawn. What are the benefits of doing this? Why would you do such a thing? And tips and tricks for how to plan your turf removal. We cover some of Jessi’s favorite tools, plants, and techniques for creating an outdoor space that requires less work and less water.

Jessi was born and raised in the PNW and has a strong background of horticulture and environmental sciences. Her early experience ranged in project management, from organizing restoration projects with community volunteers, to high-end residential and commercial landscape design/build. In early 2000, she decided to start an ethical business in the green industry to fill a niche for organic and ecological landscaping.  Seattle Times named her a “rockstar in the ecological gardening movement“, with her leadership combined with artistic design talents she led N.W. Bloom to numerous environmental awards, traveling nationwide as a speaker and is the best-selling author:  Free-Range Chicken Gardens (2012)  Practical Permaculture Design(2015)which is now in 6 languages; and Creating Sanctuary: Sacred Garden Spaces, Plant Based Medicine and Daily Practices to Achieve Happiness and Well-Being (2017) and its companion workbook Everyday Sanctuary(2019)  Jessi’s work has gotten press and been featured in many national and local media outlets from the NY Times, Better Homes & Gardens, Sunset Magazine, DISNEY, Martha Stewart Living, Mother Earth News, UTNE Reader, Fine Gardening Magazine and PBS’s Growing a Greener World TV. 

Jessi is passionately committed to volunteering in the community and sits on several advisory boards within the green industry and educational/environmental organizations; hoping to empower people, also raising industry standards, and helped develop the EcoPro program for WA State. Currently she was appointed as an Agriculture Commissioner for King County, as well a member of the WA DNR Urban and Community Forestry Committee.  She has 3  kids and spends time with them around their little farm, with a handful of animals and gardens to look after.  When she is not working, she enjoys the outdoors: snowboarding, hiking, her horses, running, yoga, biking, rollerskating and stays strong with Olympic weightlifting.

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