SPEAKING • GARDEN CONSULTATIONS • THE ECOLOGY OF YOU™
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INVITE TODD TO SPEAK
Engaging conversations about gardens, ecology, resilience, and what the living world can teach us about ourselves.
Todd Breitenstein, The Grateful Gardener, brings decades of hands-on ecological experience, teaching, and an enduring sense of wonder to garden clubs, libraries, schools, conservation organizations, community groups, and wellness audiences throughout Massachusetts and beyond.
LEARNING FROM NATURE. TOGETHER.
Todd has spent a lifetime with his hands in the soil and his attention on the living world. His talks begin there.
A garden is never simply a collection of plants. A forest is never simply a collection of Trees. Living systems are built through relationship: soil, water, light, diversity, disturbance, adaptation, and time.
Todd brings those relationships to life through stories, practical experience, science, humor, and the observations of a lifelong gardener.
Some programs stay firmly in the garden. Others follow Nature's lessons into questions of resilience, wellbeing, community, and what it means to live as part of a larger living system.
Every program is an invitation to notice something differently.
FEATURED TALKS
ECOLOGICAL GARDENING
GOODBYE LAWN: Explore practical ways to move beyond the conventional lawn and create more diverse, resilient, useful, and ecologically alive landscapes.
NATURAL GARDENING & LIVING SOILS: Go beneath the garden to discover the living relationships that make healthy soil possible and practical ways to garden with those systems rather than against them.
PERMACULTURE: LEARNING FROM NATURE'S DESIGN: An accessible introduction to seeing landscapes as interconnected living systems and using Nature's patterns to create greater resilience.
NATURE & RESILIENCE
TREES TRIUMPH OVER ADVERSITY: Explore the remarkable ways Trees respond to disturbance, injury, competition, and change, and what their resilience can teach us.
HUMAN WELLBEING
HEALTH, WELLNESS & THE POWER OF NATURE: Explore what science and lived experience reveal about Nature, gardening, stress, attention, connection, and human wellbeing.
THE ECOLOGY OF YOU™: COMING HOME TO HEAL: What if some of the principles that restore depleted landscapes can also help us understand ourselves?
Looking for another topic? Ask Todd about a custom program.
TUESDAYS WITH TODD
Want to get to know Todd first?
Join Todd online for Tuesdays With Todd, a free monthly series from South Shore Permaculture exploring a whole season of gardening, permaculture, soil, plants, ecological design, and learning from Nature.
From practical garden questions to the bigger ecological picture, there’s a whole lot more to explore than can fit on this page.
Join us online. Bring your questions. Get to know Todd.
A TALK SHOULD FEEL ALIVE
Todd isn't particularly interested in standing behind a podium and reading slides. His programs are conversational, visual, story-rich, and shaped by the people in the room. Questions are welcome. A handful of soil, a photograph, a Pea shoot, a Tree outside the window, or something someone notices may become part of the lesson.
The goal isn't simply to transfer information.
It's to help people see differently.
WHO TODD SPEAKS WITH
GARDEN CLUBS & HORTICULTURAL SOCIETIES
Practical, engaging programs for gardeners at every experience level.
LIBRARIES & COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS
Accessible programs that invite curiosity, participation, and ecological thinking.
SCHOOLS & UNIVERSITIES
Living systems, ecology, food, resilience, permaculture, and Nature-centered learning.
CONSERVATION & ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
Ecological restoration, soil, Trees, water, habitat, sustainable gardening, and whole-system thinking.
WELLNESS & WORKPLACE AUDIENCES
Nature, energy, resilience, regulation, relationship, and human wellbeing.
EXPERIENCE
Todd has been speaking publicly about gardening and ecology since his first Sustainable Gardening program behind The Grateful Garden in 2014. Since then, he has presented for garden clubs, libraries, schools, conservation organizations, community groups, health organizations, professional audiences, and events across Massachusetts.
His experience includes the Boston Flower & Garden Show, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, Massachusetts libraries and garden clubs, schools and community organizations, and years of teaching permaculture through South Shore Permaculture.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
“Everyone at the guild loved your talk!! Your work, not only with plants, but also with people is so important now.”
— Kathy, Garden Guild Member
MEET YOUR SPEAKER
TODD BREITENSTEIN | THE GRATEFUL GARDENER
Todd is a lifelong gardener, conservationist, ecological restorationist, educator, permaculture practitioner, and creator of The Ecology of You™.
His education and training span Environmental Policy, Ecological Restoration, conservation, Permaculture Design, and Organic Land Care. But much of what Todd teaches began somewhere less formal: gardens, forests, restoration sites, community projects, and a lifetime spent paying attention.
LET'S GROW A CONVERSATION
Planning a garden club program, library event, class, conference, retreat, community gathering, or workplace experience?
Tell Todd a little about your audience and what you're hoping to create.
Not sure which program fits? That's okay. Start with the audience and we'll grow from there.