Saving Your Own Backyard is a book about the emergence of a place called Serenbe, a two-thousand-acre neighborhood community located in the city of Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia—and a pioneering model of biophilic living. But it’s also a book about empowerment, optimism, hope, and finding solutions rooted in simple common sense.
It’s a book about changing your life by starting in your own back yard, or your sphere of influence.
That’s what happened to me, and that’s what I want for you.
It’s a paradox that light is often born out of darkness. As you’ll soon learn, the idea that eventually took root and grew into Serenbe was sparked by a moment of fear, anger, dismay, and that deeply embedded human trait (that gets an undeserved bad rap): self-interest. Yet what came of it was something amazing—a place that honors the Earth and brings so many people rewarding, healthy, joyful lives.
The key word in that last paragraph is self-interest. It’s not a bad thing. In fact, more often than we realize, it’s a powerful impetus for innovation. If I had to choose a single takeaway from this book it would be: If you want to change the world, start by tending to your own backyard.
My “backyard” journey started in the early ’90s, when it slowly dawned on me that I needed a change. I was living in Atlanta at the time, fully invested in (and trapped by) what I call “the treadmill of life”—long hours at work, deep civic engagement, and (when I could fit them in) family. I kept my head down and powered through, trying to continuously grasp the next rung up on the ladder that society labels “success.”
I ran hard on that treadmill until one weekend when my family and I somewhat spontaneously bought a farm in the Chattahoochee Hill Country in south Fulton County, thirty miles from our home. I kept working in the city, and, while I liked my daily life, I realized I was really living for those weekends on the farm. Breathing fresh air and doing honest physical labor, I felt alive and energetic, connected to nature and to my body’s rhythms.
I soon realized I was experiencing a values shift. Those weekends gave me space to slow down, catch my breath, grow my own food, and truly connect with people—especially my family, but also friends and neighbors. These, I realized, were the things that fed my soul. And that’s when, with my family’s blessing, I decided to step off the treadmill, sell my businesses, and move to the farm full time. It was a frightening decision—yet once made, it opened the door to paradise.
People use words like “bucolic” or “idyllic” or “pastoral” to describe country living, but such words can’t capture the profound transformation I experienced. My life, perhaps for the first time, worked. My family and I slowed down, dug in the dirt, climbed trees, read books, talked. There was a real sense that this is how life was always meant to be.
One day, after six years of blissful living on the farm, I heard the harsh grind of a motor as I was out running on one of the trails in the woods. To my horror, it was a bulldozer taking down trees. Although it turned out not to be the start of a tract housing development as I instantly assumed, this shocking event sparked a fear deep in my soul: Was suburban sprawl coming for our country paradise? If so, what could I do to preserve the land I lived on and limit how much others disrupted it?
This was my entry point into becoming an accidental developer. It all stemmed from the sudden urge to protect my own backyard. As you’ll INTRODUCTION 3 see in the following chapter, there was a steep learning curve. No wise expert came in and figured it out for me—I had to do it myself. I hope my “bulldozer moment” will help inspire your own. If something about your way of life isn’t working, you can change it. At the very least, you can try. And that change usually begins in our own backyards.
When I started down the path that led to Serenbe, I wasn’t setting out on a journey to change the world. I was simply tending to my own backyard. Had I understood the magnitude of the undertaking, I’m pretty sure I never would have begun. But, as environmental activist Erin Brockovich said, “Superman is not coming.” So over the last twenty-plus years, with the help of many talented individuals, we built a community based on thoughtful principles that, when viewed decades down the road, will likely not make us regret the development decisions.
We each have our own “spheres of influence”—backyards of many, many different shapes, scopes, and sizes. Do you run a household? If so, how does it operate? Do you check labels for chemicals? Is your refrigerator stocked with fruits and vegetable or canned soda? Is your pantry shelf brimming with preservative-filled foods or fresh and dried items? Do you put chemical fertilizer and weed killer on your lawn, spraying the air you breathe with poisons to kill irritating bugs? Do you volunteer, run for office, or directly address any of the problems you complain about?
No matter how bad things might seem right now, you (and the world) are better served by taking positive action locally instead of handwringing. It’s natural and depressingly easy to fall into a negative mindset, but if we really want things to change, we must resist that urge. As executive coach Bruce Kasanoff writes, “Being relentlessly positive means that you are a powerful, nearly unstoppable force for what is good and right. Even when it’s hard. No, strike that. ESPECIALLY when it’s hard.” In other words, we must get intentional—and relentless—about saving our respective backyards.
As you read this book, think about where you might start. Your diet? Your family’s diet? Removing the lawn and planting edible landscaping? Buying an electric car? Accepting a position in your homeowners association or your building’s oversight committee? Running for the school board or city council? What are your talents? Are you willing to step into an uncomfortable role to change the things you feel are destructive to your life, to our society? If we all step forward into our sphere of influence, take charge of our literal or metaphorical backyard, together we can change the world for ourselves and the generations that follow.
The first step is to change the conversation. This book is a good starting point. It’s a blueprint of sorts that unpacks what biophilic design is and how to implement it in your own backyard, no matter its size.
The first chapter of this book will unpack how—collectively and individually—we’ve made decades’ worth of choices that were meant to drive progress, but instead have had unintended consequences that harm our health, local economies, the natural world, and our sense of community. After all, to improve our backyards, we need to understand why our current way of life isn’t working, and where we may have gotten it wrong.
Chapter 2 will focus on my personal story of leaving a corporate career, choosing a full-time life on the farm despite the complicated emotions that brought up based on my childhood, and ultimately starting Serenbe, which was framed around the philosophy of biophilic design—and which was the inspiration for this book.
In chapter 3, we’ll look more closely at the various principles of biophilic design.
From there, each chapter will focus on exploring one or two of those principles by looking at how they can improve our health and well-being, how we implemented them at Serenbe, and how they can be applied in your backyard. Each chapter delves into practical aspects of creating a more connected, natural, and supportive environment.
More than anything, I hope that this book (and our story at Serenbe) is a source of inspiration for you and your community. It shows us that we can do life differently and that the status quo is changeable if enough people reject apathy, stop outsourcing what matters, begin critically thinking about whether development practices of the past are right for the present and future, and fully engage in life. Engagement is what makes community, after all.
This book focuses on “community” in a literal sense. Yet “community” isn’t only where you live. It’s also where you work, where you socialize, where you gather with others to worship or meditate, or otherwise serve humanity and the Earth. It is my hope that you will start living by your heart and take action to impact any aspect of your life that needs it. It can be easy to default to thinking that all of the big societal and environmental issues are global, and only addressable by governments and corporations. It’s not true! We all want a healthier Earth, healthier minds and bodies, and healthier lives for ourselves and our loved ones. When we start taking steps toward creating these things right in our own backyards, our neighbors see what we’re doing and want to join in. One small win leads to another. Momentum grows. Before you know it, we’re making real progress.
In short, start in your own backyard and do what you can. If your journey is anything like mine, you’ll find it’s a lot more than you ever could have imagined.
