Today we’d like to introduce you to Yis Leibowitz.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’ve always wanted to work outside. I started in Louisiana over 10 years ago working at a market garden and urban farm. This led to wwoof(ing), the world wide organization for organic farming. I traveled and learned as much as I could about sustainable and regenerative agriculture, only to discover that I wasn’t inclined to live in the country, having grown up in cities my whole life (NYC and Philly). So, I started working at a landscaping outfit in New Orleans. I proceeded to work at residential and commercial companies there, in North Carolina, and suburban Philadelphia. I also got a degree at Temple University in Horticulture, once I had honed my interest in on plants. Right before I created Wilmy Scapes, named after Wilmington, where I started the business, I was a crew leader and manager at another landscaping company. They had taught me a great deal and I’m grateful for everyone along the way who has lit up the path. At some point, I got the gall to do it myself and go out on my own.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth at times, very rough at others. I had to make a move with my company, all my equipment and belongings, to Philly. The morning of the move, when I had all things packed up, the truck battery died. Then, about halfway through, it poured, which was not predicted in the forecast, soaking everything. Adding insult to injury, one of the tail pipes literally ripped off while on the highway. It turns out that there was so much rust on the frame, that the truck wouldn’t pass inspection. This meant I had to get a new truck. On top of that, not having a yard to store all my stuff yet, I needed to find a storage place. The only one with available trailer parking and drive up units was in Manayunk, so every day, trying to get my feet on the ground, I would drive there (with the financed truck) to load up before going to a job. This meant about an hour and a half before I could even do any actual work. Then the storage place turned out to be crooked, jacking prices after 2 months, not to mention people urinating on the trailer and throwing trash, beer bottles, and blunt wrappers in it. There are many more stories like this…but in each trial, with the right dose of patience, faith, and support, there was sunshine after the storm.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Lawn Conversions. I have been doing a lot of these this year. For those unfamiliar, that means taking out a part or all of your lawn, and converting into a diverse, planted bed/space. This could be meadow, pocket prairie, polyculture or mixed border, among many other types of plantings. I love plants, to understate it, and garden design…so I am thrilled to be doing these projects where I can enrich someone’s yard with hundreds of new plants. This sets me apart from the average mow-and-blow operation and traditional landscape companies. Much of landscaping can degrade the land–remove this plant, take down that tree, spray that weed, soak the lawn with this chemical, add more sod, etc. All of these processes in one way or another lead to desertification, distruction, loss of biodiversity and ecological value, and largely miss out on beauty. I am putting in landscapes that include more than lawn and large seas of mulch. I am putting in all kinds of beautiful plants and materials for our area, many native, that increase the innate beauty and ecosystem services of the land. This makes people’s residences feel more like gardens than landscapes. Don’t get me wrong–I do mulching, mowing, hardscaping, and many traditional landscaping services, too–I have a lot of experience in them and do not denigrate that. Nonetheless, I am regularly doing projects that push these boundaries and move the needle in a much more lush direction.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
Philly is sometimes dubbed America’s Garden Capital because there are more than 50 public and botanical gardens/arboreta in the greater area, some of which people come from out of state and country to visit, such as Chanticleer and Longwood. There is a long history here of horticulture from John Bartram and the DuPonts forward. I frequent these gardens and they inspire me a great deal. So what is most important to me is to bring that excitement and passion to my customer’s doors. I want to bring a piece of that experience from, say, walking 20 acres of a pleasure garden, to someone’s 1/4 acre property. Ultimately, it’s the plants that matter most to me, which in all their splendor, invite a myriad of visitors from my customers to specialist bees to hummingbirds and rabbits, and so on and so forth. I keep extensive lists of my favorite plants for our area, sorted by month of interest, native/non-native, wet/dry site, sun/shade, pollinator species, etc. This helps inform my design recommendations.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wilmyscapes.com
- Instagram: @wilmyscapes
