The Beaut of "And”

A Minnesota gardener shows it's possible to combine permaculture principles with ornamental horticulture

- MEGHAN SHINN

Heidi Heiland has made a career indeed a life-out of gardening. She says it's something she fell into as a teenager, but perhaps it was meant to be. Her great-grandmother gardened on an East Coast property designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman, one of the first prominent female landscape designers. Growing up in Minnesota, Heidi found herself drawn to the craft.

As a 16-year-old working as a "water girl" for a townhome developer in the late 1970s, she noticed all the gardens relied on the same three annuals: red salvia, yellow marigolds and white sweet alyssum. There has to be more than this, young Heidi thought. So at age 17 she began her own gardening business, Heidi's Lifestyle Gardens, to offer more creative planting to the community.

Heidi did not study horticulture or landscape design at a university, but over the course of her career she has earned many certifications and received awards for her work. She is especially proud of her training in horticultural therapy, permaculture and, most recently, regenerative agriculture. She values gardens and gardening for their potential to help the health of humans, wildlife and ecosystems, a point of view that informs all of her decisions. 

In 2016, she bought a garden center just outside of Minneapolis, expanding her business to Heidi's GrowHaus & Lifestyle Gardens. At the Grow Haus she sells all types of plants and gardening items, and she continues to provide garden design, installation and maintenance services. The focus remains on sustainability-in what she sells, how she operates the business, her team's approach to design and maintenance and the education she shares with customers and clients. The garden center revolves around Minnesota-grown plants that succeed in the climate, with an emphasis on native species and on those that feed wildlife and people.