EMPOWERING GARDENERS OF ALL LEVELS
Kiss the Ground’s Introduction to Regenerative Gardening was created to show everyone, everywhere, that they can be a gardener. Designed with all levels in mind, the course begins with the history of gardening and then takes students from understanding their soil and what to plant, through troubleshooting potential issues, and finally to harvesting.
Tashanda Giles-Jones, the course designer and teacher, will guide you through the material that features community leaders and guests with expertise in gardening, composting, regeneration, policy, and more. Our goal is to provide students with the knowledge and tools they need to confidently – and regeneratively! – begin or continue their gardening journey. This 8-module course includes lectures, demonstrations, panels and interviews with industry leaders and experts, a curated list of readings and resources, and a monthly webinar for graduates.
Interested in a more advanced course? Check out our Advanced Regenerative Gardening course.
Take this course at your own pace ANYTIME, ANYWHERE.

WHAT IS INTRODUCTION TO REGNERATIVE GARDENING?
The practice of gardening is a story of human ingenuity and connection to the land. The cultural techniques passed down from generation to generation can be witnessed in seed swaps, seed saving, and the sharing of triumphant successes and dismal failures associated with growing food or flowers.
Regenerative Gardening puts an emphasis on soil health – making the priority of your garden on improving the soil by using different regenerative techniques. By increasing your soil health, this allows your garden to thrive in many ways on its own with water and pest management. In this course, take part in a beginner’s gardening journey to learn the basic skills, tools, practices, and knowledge required to grow in any space, container, or climate. All levels are welcome.
WHAT YOU GET
An 8-module program packed with content including lectures, demonstrations, interviews, expert panels, challenges, homework, and curated lists of further resources + recommendations.
Access to a worldwide community of like-minded and inspired gardeners.
Monthly webinars to connect with the KTG team, your fellow soil advocates, and experts
Lifetime access to all course content and Kiss the Ground’s Resource Library
Explore Enrollment Options

$ 149.00
ONE TIME PAYMENT
+ Lifetime access to 8 course modules filled with recorded video learning sessions
+ Access to an exclusive community for peer-to-peer interaction and support
+ Access to graduate resources

$ 74.50
2 PAYMENTS
+ Lifetime access to 8 course modules filled with recorded video learning sessions
+ Access to an exclusive online community for peer-to-peer interaction and support
+ Access to graduate resources
Course Modules
Become familiar with the history of gardening, including the basic science concepts and skills required to garden successfully. You will get inspired through intentional work that dives into identifying your comfort level and exploring your personal gardening identity.
Learn how to successfully prepare your growing space by identifying gardening zones and developing your own garden plan.
Learn the basic components and properties of soil formation and its function.
Get immersed in the life cycle of plants (from a seed to an adult), learn how to recognize when a seedling is ready for transplanting, and get prepared to start your own seeds.
Explore the importance of NPK in plant growth, develop a fertilizing plan for plants you plan to grow, and learn how to troubleshoot basic growing issues related to nutrient deficiencies.
Learn to the difference between (and how to identify) beneficial insects versus pests, and use that information to create an integrated management plan.
Learn how to identify a plant problem using a formulated process so that you can recognize various problems and input the appropriate solutions for common plant problems.
Learn the correct time and basic techniques utilized in harvesting in order to store your harvest and save seeds for next season’s crop rotation.
Tashanda Giles- Jones
Guest Lecturers and Interviewees
We are so honored to bring you this course in collaboration of people across the regenerative landscape. The following experts are present throughout the course as guest lecturers and/or interviewees.

Stephanie Leah

Dana Swarth

Kathleen Blakistone

Eddie Cortez

Brie Wakeland

Rachel Black

Kourtnii Brown

Temu Asyr Bey

Keira Adams

Yancy Comins

Calla Rose Ostrander

Matthew Van Diepen

Don Smith

Spiritual Garden Coach, The Root Pause
Stephanie Leah
Stephanie is an eco-spiritual practitioner guiding others on responding to climate change from the practical and the spiritual. She has earned masters in both Urban Sustainability and Spiritual Psychology and has extensive experience in developing and implementing eco-valuable services and solutions that create environmental impact reductions, connect people with the natural environment and their higher selves. She uses gardening as a tool to slower living and to maintain a deep connection to earth and community. Her father passed down the knowledge of kitchen gardens while living in the hills of Silver Lake, Los Angeles. Stephanie has worked in the conservation field for over a decade and truly understands the need to respond to our climate crisis from a loving presence.

Garden Educator for Garden School Foundation
Dana Swarth
Dana Swarth has been deeply involved in garden education and organic agriculture since 2006. She has taught at both rural and urban elementary schools and at the community college level and has farmed throughout Central America and the West Coast of the US. Dana is certified in Permaculture Design and ran her own small vegetable farm with a vibrant CSA in Mariposa, CA before moving to LA. She currently serves as the Garden Educator at Annalee and Leapwood Avenue Elementary Schools in Carson.

Co-Creator, Moonwater Farm
Kathleen Blakistone
Kathleen Blakistone is the co-creator of Moonwater Farm, an urban food space created for collaboration, communing, and creation. Kathleen lectures at Cal Poly Pomona in urban agriculture and as a master gardener, entrepreneur, and urban shepherdess, she actively engages with a community of soil stewards, food sovereignty leaders, and placemakers. Her recent presentation, Food Within Reach, was chosen as a winning entry in Pando Populus’ collegiate competition for LA County resiliency. Kathleen also sits on the board of Urban Saddles – a non-profit expanding the equine experience for BIPOC community members. With her leadership, the team at Moonwater Farm has established a participatory model of planning and programming that centers diversity, inclusion, equity, and dialogue as a means to understanding different perspectives and interconnectedness.

Groundskeeper and Horticulture Specialist, Environmental Charter Schools
Eddie Cortez
Born and raised in the South Bay of Los Angeles, local natrualist, plant-person, green-space caretaker. Environmental Horticulture enthusiast and permaculture practitioner, am always seeking ways to build a greener, cleaner, prosperous, and safer community. Groundskeeper and Horticulture Specialist for Environmental Charter Schools since 2009.

Food Preservation Instructor
Brie Wakeland
Brie Wakeland is a UCCE Master Gardener and a Garden School Foundation Garden Educator. Brie is passionate about creativity, culinary arts, health, and wellness. She studied under the late Chef Ernest Miller, and became a certified food preservation instructor through Slow Food in the Spring of 2017. The same year Brie attended the Sandor Katz Fermentation Residency Program in Liberty, TN. Brie also teaches cooking and gardening at A Place Called Home, Los Angeles County Arboretum, Culture Club 101, Highland Hall Waldorf School, The Gourmandise School, and within the Los Angeles Public and County Library networks.

Programs Manager, Garden School Foundation
Rachel Black
Rachel Black is a native Vermonter living in LA. With a background in wellness and sustainability, she is currently the Programs Manager for Garden School Foundation. Rachel is a vital part of the city’s food access movement serving on both LA Food Policy Council’s School Garden and Urban Ag Working Groups, a certified Master Gardener, Slow Food Preserver and California Naturalist, and a board member of Black Thumb Farm. In her spare time, she loves playing co-ed flag football.

Policy Consultant, Sustainable Economies Law Center
Kourtnii Brown
Kourtnii Brown is worm wrangler, soil slinger, and the Founder and Director of Common Compost in Oakland, California. Her on-site community compost projects empower sustainable resource recycling and improve local food systems throughout Alameda County. Before Common Compost was hatched, Kourtnii spent 15 years as an environmental policy analyst working to strengthen natural resource management and build community resilience to climate change, with field experience across the Asia-Pacific region. She currently consults on compost policy initiatives for the Sustainable Economies Law Center that educate community composters from around the Bay Area on how to participate in shaping local compost rules and ordinances. Kourtnii also co-founded and serves as the Steering Committee Chair of the California Alliance for Community Composting, which is administering a $1.35m grant program with the California Department of Resources, Recycling, and Recovery through March 2023.

Executive Director, Compton Community Garden VP, Holistic Divine Innovations
Temu Asyr Bey
Temu is Plant Based chef, Author, Designer, Agriculturalist, artist, wellness coach, teacher & Philanthropist from Compton CA. He has dedicated his life to bringing high quality health foods, plant medicine & resources to his community and general public. His organizations & businesses focus on self sustainability & connecting to nature.

Project Manager, Compton Community Garden Director, Holistic Divine Innovations
Keira Adams
CEO/Founder of Keyssentials , Director fo Holistic Divine Innovations & Project Manager of the Compton Community Garden. Spend my teenage years studying environmental science, effects of plastic consumptions & outdoor education. Currently studying herbalism & forms of holistic healing.
www.unlockingthepowerofnature.com

Program Coordinator, The Growing Experience | Founder, Hands in the Soil
Yancy Comins
Yancy began working at The Growing Experience to help lead the farm’s Micro-Enterprise program , Club Y.C.M.E. (Young Creatives Micro- Enterprise) in which he helped youth in the community develop a small business utilizing the farm as a product source. Yancy is now working on our CSA expansion program through a grant with the USDA.

Strategic Advisor - Phoenix Rising Resources, LLC | Coordinator - Carbon Project at People, Food & Land Foundation
Calla Rose Ostrander
Calla Rose attended Waldorf School K-12 in Boulder Colorado and has focused her education and career on advancing solutions for climate change. She received her BA in International Political Economy from the University of Puget Sound where she wrote her thesis on the political economy of environmental policy in developed countries. She has been a fellow with environmental non-profits Earth Economics and Rocky Mountain Institute and worked for the cities of Aspen Colorado and San Francisco California creating their climate action and adaptation plans, internal sustainability reporting structures and training and community green business and green grant programs. Calla Rose is now the Coordinator for the Carbon Project at People, Food & Land Foundation and works as a private advisor on climate change science, policy and funding through her business Phoenix Rising Resources, LLC.

Owner and Founder of Home Grown Gardens LA
Matthew Van Diepen
I first started growing food professionally on an 3-acre hydroponic organic tomato farm in the Sierra Nevadas called Cedar Mills Eco Farm. After that, I founded Home Grown Gardens in 2011 with the idea of helping people grow their own food in order to help improve people’s health and the health of the natural environment. We currently teach garden classes and set up edible landscapes and farms around homes, schools, and nonprofits.

Stewardship Program Advisor, Kiss the Ground
Don Smith
Don is a speaker, teacher, and student of regenerative agriculture and regenerative lifestyles. His talks are engaging, inspiring, and filled with viable solutions to the world’s largest problems. In addition to speaking, Don helps Kiss the Ground with editing, technical details, and infographics promoting soil as a solution to climate change.
Testimonials




Connect and Learn with Communtity
Our journey to regeneration began first and foremost with community. The idea for Kiss the Ground was born in our cofounder’s living room, where various people with different skills – all united in their passion for this movement – met every Monday to try to problem solve. We understand the power of coming together.
Kiss the Ground’s Online Community on Mighty Networks will connect you with other students and activists in the Regenerative Movement, and keep you informed about the latest courses, projects, news and events at Kiss the Ground! Once you graduate, you will automatically be added to the Introduction to Regenerative Gardening space where you will get new perspectives and feedback on your projects from your peers and course instructor.

— Rumi