Episode 9: Do What You Love with Nicole Landers of Community Healing Gardens

Nicole Landers, Co-founder of Community Healing Gardens

In this episode, we visit Community Healing Gardens co-founder Nicole Landers in Venice Beach, California. Nicole has discovered that, when you do what you love, wonderful things happen.

“All good things grow with love… if you put that in your ethos and live that model, the sky’s the limit.”

One of the many garden boxes near Rose Ave in Venice, California

Nicole Landers & Community Healing Gardens

Nicole Landers is the co-founder of Community Healing Gardens, a non-profit that serves communities from Venice to Watts. Her goal and the goal of the program is to strengthen the community through urban gardening.

What we hear in this episode is that Nicole and her organization are growing a whole bunch more than food. They’re growing the lives of families, the livelihoods of adults in need of work and inspiration, and feeding the community through their job re-training program, outdoor education and culinary classes, school garden, and over 70 garden boxes that line the streets.

“Any time you do something that’s community-related that’s a beautification unless it’s impeding someone’s livelihood… you’ll get a positive reaction.”

We learn early on in this conversation that the model Nicole is using to create Community Healing Gardens is repeatable. If we listen to ourselves and the people in our communities, we each have the power to enact positive change. 

One of the many garden boxes near Rose Ave in Venice, California

Community Healing Gardens Veggie Box

Community Healing Garden Boxes in Venice, California

Clean Technology

Community Healing Gardens also incorporates clean technology into its greater program. Listen carefully to how they educate the community on sustainable technologies and water their veggie boxes with water made from air!

Interested in creating a program like Community Healing Gardens in your own community? Nicole shares ideas on this too.

“This is definitely not a get rich job. This is get rich in a whole other way rich.”

Nicole Landers, co-founder of Community Healing Gardens

Nicole Landers, “All things grow with love.”

6 of Nicole’s Tips for Creating Positive Change and a Program Like Community Healing Gardens

• Surround yourself with people that know more than you about the subject matter.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
• Be authentic with the people you work with and empower those people so they can empower you and your project.
• Volunteers are at the heart of organizations like Community Healing Gardens.
• All things grow with love.

“when you do what you love, life throws you some really great things to move it forward.”

Nicole and me in Venice following our conversation. Photo by Josh “Bones” Murphy

I can’t wait for you to hear Nicole’s story and the unfolding of her life, and the incredible organization she created with the help of her co-founder and team.

Learn More About Nicole & Community Healing Gardens

Learn more about Nicole on LinkedIn here. See her Tedx talk here. And follow her on Instagram @GirlieGreen1 here.

Learn more about Community Healing Gardens on their website here and find them on Facebook and Instagram @communityhealinggardens.

Thank You, Fiskars!

This episode was made possible thanks to the help of Fiskars, the maker of gardening tools, craft supplies, and sewing scissors. Thank you, Fiskars for your support and help to make this show a reality!

Milkweed growing in one of the garden boxes.

Community Healing Gardens garden box

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At Home with Justine Kahn, Founder of Botnia

A Visit to the Home & Studio of William Ryan Fritch