How I Got Here
A brief history of my work.
In hindsight, gardening professionally was an obvious choice for me, though I took a winding path to get here.
I am originally from the Berkshires, where I grew up in gardens and around gardeners whose work I always admired. Cooking with fresh ingredients was part of daily life in my family. I was in 4-H with livestock and I began seriously learning about ideas like permaculture before I was even old enough to drive.
Early in my career, I worked all kinds of summer jobs in food and horticulture and spent my winters in the mountains as a ski instructor and student of outdoor leadership.
For college, I set aside a dream of going to art school in favor of science. I studied forestry and agriculture at UVM where my course load included extensive field work in ecology, natural history, and conservation.
At the time, the local food movement and regenerative agriculture were just coming into their own nationally. Steady employment was hard to find and “foodscaping” was not yet a viable livelihood like it has become over the past decade. Captivated by farming, I worked on organic vegetable farm crews in Vermont for 5 seasons. I had done a project growing out rice varieties from Japan to trial for commercial production, and it was so compelling that I started toward a PhD in plant breeding in earnest for a year before choosing to study Ecological Design at The Conway School instead. My change of heart came when I saw how, in design practice, I could immediately start working in a more people-oriented career with better leverage for positive environmental impact.
I spent the next 7 years gaining experience in the sustainable design world locally on Martha’s Vineyard. In my role at Island Housing Trust, I was awarded a Martha’s Vineyard Vision Fellowship for a GIS research project assessing site suitability for affordable housing development island wide. I later worked for South Mountain Company where I got to do a mix of administrative and client-facing work. My career there came to an unexpected halt after my daughter was born and returning to the office full time simply did not work for our family.
In the years since I had stopped farming, I never stopped growing food. Gardening was sometimes a side hustle and always something I did at home. I stayed fluent in my own garden, listening to niche podcasts, and absorbed in books about ecological agriculture. I had vague notions of starting a market garden one day and enough sense to know it wouldn’t be economically viable. I don’t like selling vegetables anyway. I like systems thinking, building soil, and working in close relationship with clients.
When my work time became rare and precious, I knew I would need to do something that keeps me healthy and happy in order to stick with it. Not just for myself but also to model that for my kid. I wanted to get back into field work and food, so I started a garden consulting practice.
I opened KGMV in 2023 out of determination to keep growing professionally and support my family. It quickly became a beautiful, thriving little business thanks to great clients and trade partners. I’m so happy to be here and grateful for your support!
How I got to Martha’s Vineyard
To answer a question familiar to all islanders, I’ve been here year-round since 2016. I met my husband Oliver, who grew up in Chilmark, off island when we were classmates at Conway. After graduation, we set out on a long road trip thinking we would find work somewhere warmer than New England. Our criteria were that we would like to live within biking distance from daily destinations in a place of our own where we could grow figs, lemons, and olives in our yard. Then we got jobs here and, except for the lemons and olives, the rest fell into place.