Today we’d like to introduce you to Maddie Poling
Hi Maddie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am the founder of Sacred Space Gardens, a sustainable gardening company in the Twin Cities. I started Sacred Space Gardens out of necessity. I was a homeless, single mother, with twin 1 year old daughters. I needed to do something that I could choose my schedule and feel good about what I was doing. I was able to significantly grow the company over the years and had 25 employees last year (2023).
When I started Sacred Space Gardens, I didn’t know a ton about gardening. I was weeding gardens and learning by trial and error as I went. My clients were asking me to do more and more, bigger and bigger projects came my way and my employees wanted more training. I took advantage of many courses, seminars, conferences on gardening and one of them was the Master Gardener course through the U of M at the Landscape Arboretum to learn more about horticulture techniques and soil health. It was a great experience but they did not (in my opinion) highlight truly sustainable gardening methods nearly enough.
Over the years I realized more and more how mismanaged our lands are. I was witnessing unnecessary chemical applications, excess fertilization, plants that didn’t belong here, and large unused lawn spaces.
I took this as a sign to niche down and specialize my business to be sustainably focused. We are very low-emissions. Our tools and machines are all electric, or people-powered, and we choose primarily native plants when we install gardens, to restore wildlife habitat in the urban environment. We encourage wild spaces and only use natural fertilizers like organic compost.
Now, we are thriving in a niche market and it has been a successful 7 years for us, with many more to come. For the past two years I had been feeling a pull to engage on larger scale conservation efforts and sustainability initiatives within the government or a nonprofit, thus I decided to sell Sacred Space Gardens in early 2024. Our new owner Mark McGuire is doing a fantastic job at the helm and bringing Sacred Space Gardens to the next level with his decades of business leadership experience and love for sustainable landscaping. It has been a joy to see Sacred Space Gardens beautify spaces around the Twin Cities with zero chemicals and low emissions.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Our biggest challenges are staffing and seasonality. These go hand in hand. Since the winters in Minnesota are harsh, we have to let most of our amazing staff go for the winter months. This is difficult to retain specialized, skilled gardeners. Although this is the most difficult part, we make it work every year, and are always amazed at the new crop of gardeners we hire. There are many talented young people out there, wanting to make a difference in the world, and are interested in gardening/sustainability. They continue to inspire Mark and I.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Sacred Space Gardens is a sustainable gardening company. We are on a mission to create beautiful gardens with native plants to increase wildlife habitat in the urban environment. Our team is skilled in garden design, maintenance, installation lawn care, and seasonal planters.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Starting a small, seasonal business is risky enough, but we took it further and franchised our company in 2022. The franchise is still new and we do not have any franchisees just yet but are starting to look for franchisee partners in the Midwest soon.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sacredspacegardeners.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/sacredspaceminnesota
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sacredspacegardeners
