John Little on Caring for Gardens and Gardeners (#48)

Learn more about botanicbootcamp.com.JOHN LITTLE BIOJohn Little has been reimagining what urban nature can be since founding the Grass Roof Company in 1998.  Over the past 25+ years, John has designed and built more than 400 small green-roof structures and various other species-rich planting with walls engineered for nesting, hibernation, and year-round habitat.His nonprofit Care Not Capital pushes for a fundamental shift to redirect funds from one-off capital projects toward ongoing, human-powered stewardship that benefits both biodiversity and communities.Here are the core ideas John argues for—putting the best gardeners in the poorest places, moving money from capital into care, understanding that gardened places are best for biodiversity and people, moving novel landscapes higher up the Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) metric, understanding that a modern public space gardener is much more than a horticulturist, keeping waste on site and using it to make places beautiful and biodiverse, and putting soil and plants on roofs.You can connect with John on Instagram at @grassroofco and @carenotcapital.