Todd Paul

His Work: Professional Gardener (and operating owner)

“I create my office space everyday when I go to work.”

Todd Paul tells me “I spend a lot of time outdoors in sunshine or in the rain or in the shade of trees that we’ve planted, tending to gardens. It’s very nice.” I ask him if he likes being outside all the time and he replies “Oh I love it. It’s nice to be with nature and be with plant material, it doesn’t yell at you or tell you horrible things— other than the weeds” he says jokingly and I can’t help from bursting into laughter. Mr. Paul continues to speak with a lighthearted, humorous and comfortable tone as he tells me more. He says to me “I’m in an office that I’ve created every day of the week.” He says “I get to paint with a palette of plant materials.” Mr. Paul makes every garden different even though he has his own style which can be seen through his work.

Talking about his workspace Todd Paul says “It’s a great space actually. I mean, what could be better? You’re out in the weather and generally it’s pleasant enough and we just kind of visit and do our work and have a good time. So it’s almost like playing in a way, for me it’s been playing for about 30 years. There’s work to it but we try to make it play so that it really becomes fun.”

I ask Mr. Paul how he feels working in the gardens and he says “well its always interesting to see because every garden is different so the newer gardens are always fun because it’s fun to watch the change of youth, young plants into a more juvenile stage and then into an adult stage and watching things grow and change and how the spaces change. It changes every day.”

I ask Todd Paul how he would describe the work environment that he works best in, allows him to be the happiest, most productive and efficient. He says “certainly the gardens that we’ve created and then these communities have been fun because we’ve created on the smaller sense and the larger sense. It’s really fun and interesting for us. Some people just do installation and then the walk away, and some people just do maintenance and they’ve never installed a garden, they’ve just maintained it, and then there are those like me—we install and we maintain so our connection to it is much deeper because we’re watching it over time.” He says it’s great because you get to see mistakes and how to fix them, get to really figure out what works and what doesn’t. “When the gardens happy It’s easy for us to be happy.”

I can tell how much Mr. Paul cares about his work and how important it is to him. He says “I sort of always have seen my goal to get people reconnected with nature because people live in a house and are kind of removed from the world that we can’t live without. We need each other. So it’s been my quiet goal and mission statement to actually create beauty, because it’s in beauty that people reconnect and get back to the symbiotic nature of our relationship—appreciation.”

Todd Paul thoughtfully says to me “I feel really lucky. I feel very privileged actually, that I still actually enjoy it. It’s a lot of work sometimes to create a garden that’s  healthy because we’ve created good soil and dug it down, tried to increase the nutrition in the soil. You learn how it actually all works and it’s different than what you would think you don’t just throw fertilizer down and it feeds the plant—it’s not how it works. Little organisms come and eat it and turn it into things that the plants can use and it’s a very symbiotic relationship. It’s very meditative actually too, I’m a part of nature and the birds.”

I ask Mr. Paul how he came to running his own gardening business. Todd Paul started this company 26 years ago and has been doing it ever since. He tells me “I grew up actually in green houses. My grandparents had greenhouses.” “I was washing pots and pitching drainings, and watering plants in the greenhouse, so I’ve actually done it all of my life.” “My mom was a big gardener equally, she loved gardens. So I’ve always grown up with flowers and plants and design of some fashion.” Mr. Paul works six days a week and the seventh day he works in his own garden. His crew varies from him working by himself up to five people working at a time.

When I ask Todd Paul to put his experience with his work into a few words he says partnership— symbiosis in that sense. Understanding. Beauty.”