Ecologist, Farmer-Florist & Gardener at Boxwood Burrow Flower Farm & Nursery
If you could make an arrangement just for yourself, what would you create and why?
I would create a natural, soft arrangement in a muted palette, filled with texture and movement and arranged in a simple clay or stone compote. I’m drawn to flowers like common yarrow, Jacob’s ladder, butterfly ranunculus, flowering oregano, peonies, larkspur, and something unexpected like fritillaria, a flower native to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where I’m from.
I love arrangements that feel as though they’ve been gathered straight from the garden and placed in a vase. Natural, a little wild, and not overly composed.
I especially love mixing native plants with more traditional cut flowers. I think there is something really special about showing that native plants can be just as beautiful and luxurious as a peony or rose. They bring depth, texture, movement, and, perhaps most importantly, a story to an arrangement. These are plants that have evolved alongside the wildlife around us for thousands of years, so why not celebrate them?
What is it about box turtles that has stayed with you, and how does that show up in the way you tend your garden?
When I moved to Maryland a little over a year ago, I discovered the eastern box turtle, a species native to this region, and it completely re-ignited my lifelong passion for turtles. Turtles have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and I’ve always felt a deep sense of responsibility toward protecting them. Discovering that I could combine that passion with my work as a gardener and garden designer was a real lightbulb moment. I thought, How cool is it that I can build gardens that help turtles?
Box turtles don't simply show up in the way I tend my garden, they are one of the reasons I garden in the first place. I design my gardens, and created The Box Turtle Garden Guide so others can do the same, with the goal of directly supporting eastern box turtles and the broader web of life around them.
I focus on creating habitat-rich landscapes that provide the things box turtles need to thrive: food, water, shelter, nesting areas, leaf litter, and places to forage and move safely through the landscape. And when you create those things for a box turtle, you inevitably create habitat for countless other species, too.
Eastern box turtles are incredibly long-lived animals, and their evolutionary lineage stretches back hundreds of millions of years. Today, however, they face serious threats from habitat fragmentation, urban development, road mortality, and pesticide use.
My hope is to use gardens as a tool for conservation. One backyard habitat might seem small, but when enough people begin planting with wildlife in mind, those individual gardens can become connected pieces of habitat, a patchwork of corridors that gives turtles and other wildlife more places to live, forage, and move safely.
That is really the heart of Boxwood Burrow: creating gardens that are beautiful for people, but also meaningful to the wildlife that calls them home.
Boxwood Burrow is a small-scale flower farm and native plant nursery where flowers meet ecology in Pasadena, Maryland. Kyla specializes in growing seasonal cut flowers and native plants, while creating practical resources to help people grow beautiful gardens that also support wildlife, with a particular focus on creating habitat for the eastern box turtle. She recently created The Box Turtle Garden Guide, a practical resource for gardeners who want to turn their own yards into habitat.
You can find Boxwood Burrow at the Anne Arundel Farmers Market every Saturday through the end of October. Floral subscriptions, garden consultations, The Box Turtle Garden Guide, and other offerings are available at www.boxwoodburrow.com
photos courtesy of Boxwood Burrow
