Healing Roots Design wants to strengthen local ecology and create abundance for generations.
It’s a collaborative, ecology-first landscape partner that brings deep consultation, thoughtful design, expert installation and ongoing stewardship together in one relationship. And unlike many conventional landscapers or plant-focused installers, Healing Roots Design considers the whole system: the people, the place and the future of the land.
They work with people who want more from their land than conventional landscaping can provide. Combining beauty, biodiversity, resilience, habitat and long-term stewardship, their team ensures that clients get ecological expertise and a collaborative partner — so they never have to figure it all out alone.
We sat down and spoke with Keri Evjy, the founder, owner and CEO of Healing Roots Design, about the philosophy behind her company, the entrepreneurship lessons she learned from her father and the connections she hopes to inspire between people and nature.
Where did your career find its start? How did you get involved with your company?
As a child, I grew up in a high-energy, loving and competitive family with two brothers and lots of family and friends around. It was chaotic and overwhelming for me at times.
I remember often going out to the woods behind our house, taking a long bike ride, visiting the nook of the cherry tree in the front yard and allowing my nervous system to settle. I began tending the small garden I planted as a teenager to observe and interact with nature, to breathe deeper and to hear myself and remove myself from the drama of kids and fighting and noise.
Nature for me was a friend: mutable, textured, multi-colored, always changing and evoking a deeper inquiry out of the mind and into my body. The water and rocks and trees were my extended community. The joy of eating warm strawberries or growing of tomato seeds from the table greenhouse with capillary matting my dad bought me to nurture the plants for the garden helped me to land in my being, transforming some bent up anxiety from my childhood and letting myself be whole as a young girl learning her footing in the bigger world.
My company began as a seed from this quiet tending place. I seek to help people locate a sense of place and belonging to the earth, the ecosystems they live in, in service to the whole, and be an agent of healing for people and planet.
“Nature for me was a friend: mutable, textured, multi-colored, always changing and evoking a deeper inquiry out of the mind and into my body.”
How has your company grown over the years?
Entrepreneurship has been a spiritual journey.
For the first 6 years, Healing Roots Design employed me to design edible, medicinal and functional landscapes around Asheville while I co-taught permaculture design courses in Atlanta, Nicaragua and Asheville. I felt a deep and silent urge to begin writing a book, and I asked my only staff member at the time if he would train new staff so that I could step away from leading installations to write. Nudging Regenerative Life Design Playbook into life took me more deeply into this inner and outer landscape conversation, acknowledging that humans are our own ecosystems of behaviors, intrinsic characteristics, yields and predators. The more we observe ourselves with childlike curiosity, the easier it is to receive feedback, be a change maker and stay present. I also connected to my creative center that birthed Healing Roots Design (HRD), and my service came through crafting poems and songs while being a guide for young female entrepreneurs.
18 years later, Healing Roots Design has grown to staff over 12 joyful earthkeepers who elevate consultation, installations and stewardship, bringing beauty, biodiversity, resiliency and restoration to the communities we serve.
After surviving COVID and becoming an essential service through Hurricane Helene, I feel humbled by being a builder and co-creator of a more beautiful world, and to be consistently adaptable. Being initiated into what can be shared, tended and given away with nature as teacher, Healing Roots Design started a Land Steward Grant program this year to elevate earthkeepers in our community. The company is a conversation of my life, and those who are touched and compelled to discover their own connection with their body, mind and soil underfoot.
What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome?
Myself, and facing my fears of failure. My father was an entrepreneur. As a child, he talked over my head about the “grit” side of entrepreneurship, and I observed his long working hours, selflessness, risk taking, hard decision making, humility and course correction. As I grew to take on the entrepreneurial hat in my family, I have appreciated meeting myself anew as I overcome obstacles and reflect on how far I’ve come with that tenacity from my father — and the immeasurable help along the way.
“Starting meetings with a grounding exercise seeds thoughtful discussion, lively interactions and keeps us grounded and appreciative of the opportunities to live this one ‘wild and precious life.'”
Sometimes, it has meant trusting my instincts, not being liked but hearing and following through on my values, changing course, asking for help or building something in a way that feels true only to me as the visionary who interacts with the universe on this earthside mission unfolding in real time. Ideas like pausing to be grateful for personal, company and team successes, and the hundreds of gardens and ecosystems we have designed, installed and stewarded over time in our community. I’ve also found that starting meetings with a grounding exercise seeds thoughtful discussion, lively interactions and keeps us grounded and appreciative of the opportunities to live this one “wild and precious life.”
What is most important to you and your company now?
Post-Hurricane Helene, Healing Roots Design became perennial in staffing, meaning that for the first time, we employed staff through the winter to promote continuity with employment, provide reliable income and show up for our staff as they reciprocally were showing up for the design, install and restoration work in the hurricane’s aftermath.
At the same time, our relationship with our community is deepening. We announced our first Land Steward Grant to be awarded to a community organization in October, and I am delighted to expand gardens of resilience, food production and nature sovereignty in our community beyond the client stewards we serve, as a way to share in our resources and recognize the earthkeepers who diligently care for the healing and valuing of the land as a profession and practice.
Healing Roots Design is nestled within a cooperative home and land project which has helped us grow over the past four years. Now, we seek the discovery and purchase of a commercial hub to expand on our vision, tend to the nursery, house our growing fleet of vehicles and include a meeting place for our staff and blossoming community relationships.