You could call Casey and Jason Lawrence Pied Pipers of gardening. Their biggest followers are daughters Lana and Sayla. But they attract many more online via The Lawrence Garden Farm website, YouTube and Instagram, spreading the joy and peace they find cultivating a plant-based lifestyle in southeast Wisconsin.
Bob Stefko
“You feel the earth under your feet, hear the breeze rustle through the tall flowers and grass, watch the insects jump and fly all around you, smell the sweet scent of flowers, and hear the buzzing and chirping of everything wild,” Casey says.
“You are completely surrounded and immersed in nothing other than nature. It’s a connection that I can’t describe other than a strong feeling of love in my stomach.”
Love of the soil is in Casey’s blood—she inherited it from her father, Wayne, who farmed land that’s been in the family since 1839. Casey grew up working in the fields with her three sisters.
Casey Lawrence, Homeowner
It is very important to us to pass down the love and knowledge of gardening.
—Casey Lawrence, Homeowner
Now he grows flowers, but she still helps out her parents and sisters at the family greenhouse business. And they’re all neighbors: Each daughter built a home on the farm. Casey and Jason designed theirs for gardening, ensuring views of—and easy access to—raised beds that stand in neatly spaced rows.
On one side of the house, window boxes overflow with color and texture. Structures are the realm of Jason, who’s from a home-building family and was a botanical newbie in his previous life. “I didn’t have any gardening background or experience until I met Casey,” he says.
The garden’s wide-open layout includes front-yard plantings, fruit trees, wildflowers for pollinators, landscaped privacy berms, a greenhouse, a composting area, and beds by Lana and Sayla’s play set.
Casey and Jason have nurtured their girls with the green thumb spirit, hoping they’ll carry it with them for the rest of their lives. “They don’t have to be gardeners, but as long as they know how, they will always have a special connection to something bigger,” Casey says. She calls gardening her form of meditation, an escape from worldly distractions.
“There is nothing else but the moment you are in,” Casey says. “There’s no email, there’s no social media, there’s no drama. There is love, laughter, calm, peace, and connection with the earth and those you love.”