Every time I smell a tomato plant, I think of my grandmother.

When I was little, my grandparents grew beefsteak tomatoes along the fence beside their sidewalk. I can still picture myself walking down that narrow stretch between their sidewalk and the neighbor’s, surrounded by tomato plants that seemed enormous to me as a kid. When the tomatoes ripened, they would pick them and line them up in the porch window until sometimes the entire windowsill seemed to be overflowing with them. 

Decades later, I can brush against the leaves of a tomato plant, catch that unmistakable smell, and suddenly I am there again. That is one remarkable thing about plants. They become attached to people, places, seasons, and moments in our lives. Sometimes we do not realize how deeply those memories have taken root until a smell, a taste, or a flower brings them rushing back. I did not know it then, but experiences like that would eventually shape Wildscape Designs.

Years later, I was home from college for the summer, sitting by my parents’ pool with my niece. She was eating peaches, and somehow we started talking about where they came from. When I asked her if she knew, she told me she thought peaches came from a can. I remember explaining that the peach she knew started on a tree. Someone grew it, someone picked it, and eventually it was processed, packaged, and put into the can she recognized. It was a simple conversation, but it stuck with me. How had something as fundamental as where our food comes from become foreign to us?

Fast forward again. I was now in my mid-thirties, married to Kimberly, a father of three, and we had moved our family to Orlando. After living on several acres in South Florida, we found ourselves in a golf course HOA community, getting our first real introduction to suburban life. One day, the kids and I were playing outside in the cul-de-sac when a lawn care company arrived at a neighbor’s house and told us to go inside. When I asked why, they explained they were about to spray the lawn and we should stay inside for the next 24 hours. I remember thinking, "Is this really the relationship we want to have with the land right outside our homes?" There has to be a better way.

At the same time, gardening had already become something very different for me personally. I spent 15 years working in finance, and gardening became an escape from that world. I could leave the screens, numbers, meetings, and stress behind and go outside and work with something living. There was something therapeutic about it long before I considered calling it therapy. Kimberly and I also loved restoring homes. We loved finding something that had been lovingly used, worn down, or neglected and bringing it back to life. Whenever we renovated a home, the landscape became my part of that process.

Eventually, all of those seemingly unrelated experiences began to converge: a tomato plant that could transport me back to my grandmother, a little girl who did not know her peach grew on a tree, a lawn we were told our children needed to stay away from, the therapy I found working with plants after a day in the corporate world, and the joy Kimberly and I found in bringing neglected places back to life.

Those experiences became Wildscape Designs. But the mission was never simply to plant prettier yards. It was, and still is, to reconnect people: to nature, to their food, to the birds, butterflies, and other creatures sharing their little piece of the world, to each other, and sometimes even to themselves.

A garden engages all five senses. We see it change, smell it, touch it, hear the life moving through it, and sometimes eat from it. Somewhere in all of that, memories are created. A child picks their first blueberry. A family watches caterpillars become butterflies. Someone steps outside after a difficult day and spends twenty quiet minutes working in the garden. A particular flower reminds you of your mother. Or maybe, 35 years from now, the smell of a tomato plant brings your grandchild right back to you. I do not think we talk about that human side of gardening nearly enough, and that is what I want to discover here with you.

Yes, we will talk about Florida plants, wildlife, food, seasons, gardening, and what is happening outside right now. But mostly, I want to explore what living with nature does for us: the memories it preserves, the relationships it creates, the lessons it teaches our children, the way it can make us healthier and happier, and the simple joy of being connected to something living. That is why Wildscape Designs exists. That is what we mean when we say, "Live with Nature."

If you have any stories about how gardening has helped shape your life, I would love to hear them!

Sincerely,

Rick Ziska

Owner and Founder