dialing into garden design, naturally, with Living Lands

Alexandra Getches and Logan Kjep are on a mission to restore native plant life and wildlife habitats — one property at a time. The eco-conscious design duo started Living Lands — a habitat garden design and installation shop — nearly three years ago and haven’t slowed down since. 

These friends and business partners met while working for a grower in Cutchogue who specialized in native plants and instantly hit it off, bonding over a shared passion for design. Kjep, who has a master’s degree in landscape ecology and environmental design, started out designing container gardens for Brooklyn rooftops, while Getches’ design roots sprouted in California working on restoration projects in the Santa Monica Mountains for the National Park Service. 

In late 2020, after their plans were put on a brief hold while the world was turned upside down by COVID-19, they founded Living Lands.

According to Getches, it was the perfect time to launch because many people were investing in their homes. Kjep confirms, “It was a really big first year for us right out of the gate, and we are fortunate to be growing every year so far.” 

9:45 a.m.: Weeding and watering at the Sugar Shack 

To start our day together, I meet Getches and Kjep at a picturesque little house in New Suffolk overlooking Cutchogue Harbor called the “Sugar Shack” by its owners. Kjep proudly tells me he and Getches “touched every square inch of the outdoors here” and that this is their second biggest project to date. 

He explains they needed wetland permitting and approval from town Trustees on all native plants they installed. So they created maps of the existing plants that were there — a lot of invasive bamboo, miscanthus grass and mugwort — and then drafted a plan for native replacements. 

Getches adds, “We really love projects like this because it is waterfront, and it was covered in really nasty invasive plants. We’ve turned it into a native pollinator garden instead — we see bees buzzing all over the place.” 

Kjep explains why this is so important. “On Long Island, our biodiversity is plummeting,” he laments. “It’s been in crisis for decades, and a lot of that has to do with the way we treat our built environment.” He tells me because Long Island is filled with plazas, parking lots and open grass lawns, the native fauna doesn’t have anywhere to go for shelter and food. 

He continues, “We try to use a lot of native plants that provide shelter and food, like nectar for our pollinating insects, and create a really diverse, rich ecosystem that way. The invasive plants, a lot of which were brought here, don’t provide much for ecosystem services or food for wildlife.” 

Kjep says many of their clients seek them out because they care about wildlife habitats and native plants, but even the ones who don’t at first end up being fascinated by the subject.

“People are seeing new insects for…