About

Cascara Gardens offers garden design, consultation and organic fine gardening services such as pruning, weeding, building soil health and ecologically minded clean-up. Our mission is to help our clients support biodiversity through the development of native habitat gardens that utilize ecological conscious gardening practices. We aim to transform and revolutionize residential garden design and maintenance. Our practice is to leave the leaves to protect insects and promote soil health. We mostly use hand tools and when we need extra support we use electric tools because they are quieter and there is no risk of gasoline leakage. We never use any pesticides, herbicides or fungicides.

Cascara Gardens was founded in 2022 by Kendall Core (they/them) who has over a decade of experience working with native plants. Their first native garden was designed and installed in 2012 in SE Portland and in 2013 another garden installation soon followed in NW Portland which they continue to maintain today. Their native plant obsession began in 2011, they devoted all of their free time to research, studying, maintaining and caring for native plants and learning gardening methods to promote biodiversity. Trained as a volunteer for Audubon Society’s Backyard Habitat Program, they used their training to help teach neighbors, family and friends about the benefits of planting native plants. Soon after, they had opportunities to design other gardens and it was by observing the development of these gardens and maintaining them over the span of years that Kendall gained knowledge about plant health and development. They also worked with other professional gardeners to gain further experience as a land steward. In 2020, Kendall began working seasonally at Sauvie Island Native Nursery where they continue to expand their education with the propagation of native plants and design demo gardens on the property.

In 2013 Kendall received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pacific Northwest College of Art where they focused on sculpture, photography and ecological art practices. In 2022, they began the Landscape Technology Program at Portland Community College to prepare for the Landscape Contractor’s License. This license will allow Cascara Gardens to add large scale garden installations to their services in the future.