At Cape Ann Gardens, we’ve always believed that landcare starts with the soil—but changing conditions and deeper questions from our clients made it clear we needed a new tool. The Living Soil Lab is our response: a membership-based soil monitoring program that combines chemical and biological analysis with tailored recommendations and custom inoculants. It’s designed for gardeners and growers who want to understand their soil more deeply and grow in partnership with their land. In this post, we share why we created the program, who it’s for, and why now is the time to make this work more accessible.

At Cape Ann Gardens, we don’t just see seeds as commodities—we see them as living blueprints of biodiversity, waiting to be expressed through soil and sunlight. With that in mind, we are introducing the Northeast Regional Seed Club, a project that aims to distribute regionally grown, open-pollinated seeds.

Our advice for managing meadows.

Once an appealing and welcome plant in our gardens, Butterfly Bush is now known to be incredibly invasive. This season, let’s focus on removing them from our gardens.