How to get started with Caitlin Spirlock of Luma Front Yard Farming

"These Petaluma lots are deceivingly small, but there's so much that you can do," @Caitlin Spirlock of Luma Front Yard Farming told me. We were standing outside our half-finished house with an overgrown yard. There is a lot to figure out: a fence for the dog that needs to wrap the whole house, how to change an existing deck into a useable backyard, how to get from the car in the driveway to the garden to the back door, and how to keep some privacy with kids playing out back. We booked a consultation with Caitlin because @Sachin Monga and I didn't know where to start. She arrives with questions. What do you envision for the yard? How involved do you want to be in the garden a year from now? She wanted to talk about using the outdoor barbecue because she has pulled several of them out of other people's yards recently, after years of underuse. She asked whether our dog was a boy or a girl, and whether he was trained or would pee wherever he liked, which turns out to be surprisingly relevant to what grass to consider planting. Caitlin helps you create a vision. "My background is for soil health and building habitat gardens, and I do it more by sight," she said. She thinks about the living system, she works by feel, and she needs to be in the space. What she helped us see was a meandering path that loops the whole property, native shrubs that feed pollinators and need little water through the summer, blueberries tucked among the flowers, and a native lawn you seed and barely mow. She suggested setting the vegetable beds against the house, where the warmth will help grow produce. "The sun that hits the house radiates and hits the veggies. So you end up with this microcosm of climate," she said. She described the kids walking the loop, picking strawberries and blueberries, watching the lifecycle of butterflies, and digging for potatoes. The appeal is obvious: they eat what they grow because they grew it. A consultation with Caitlin means in-depth, one-on-one time standing in your own garden, after which she sends you notes and photos from the visit. If you want to understand more deeply what the landscaping costs will become, that is the next move: she brings out her crew to price the job, then sends a proposal with plant choices and links so you sign off on every flower before it goes in the ground. If you’re interested in seeing projects from Luma Front Yard Farming, you can check out her Instagram @lumafrontyardfarming and reach out directly via her website https://www.lumafrontyardfarming.com/