Land Language

In this episode of Land Language, we sit down with Emma Kraft Saldivar, President of Kraft Custom Construction, the Salem, Oregon design-build remodeling company her father, Robert Kraft, started in 1982. Emma came to construction from psychology and case management, and she brings that background into every project and client conversation.

Emma describes “longevity planning” as designing homes around how clients live n...

Hosts Brit Sastrawidjaya and Bethany Rydmark close out Season 2, and share what changed how they run their own teams, what's happening underground that most landscapers never measure, and why the same values keep showing up whether you're in the Pacific Northwest or rural Australia. They also discuss the challenge and value of hosting controversial episodes and inviting honest dialogue.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Start

00:33 Season Two Reflectio...

In this episode of Land Language, host Brit Sastrawidjaya sits down with Mark Woolbright, founder of Verdtech (verdtech.com), maker of Varden, a lightweight, plantable retaining wall and vertical garden block system. Mark invented one of the first plantable concrete retaining wall systems in the US after seeing vertical gardens built into small Swiss retaining walls on a backpacking trip, spent decades engineering drainage, soil, a...

Sarah Lebner is the founder and director of Cooee Architecture, a sustainable residential practice based in the alpine region of south-east Australia, where she designs energy-efficient, low-carbon homes for rural and regional communities.

We discuss bushfire-resilient design beyond codes, including defensible sites and landscape strategies, and contrast Australian mandates for rainwater tanks and firefighting reserves with U.S. ap...

Molly Sedlacek is the founder of ORCA, a female-founded landscape design and product studio based in Los Angeles. In this episode, she shares how her upbringing with a landscape-designer mother and forester father shaped her belief that materials are living participants, emphasizing simplicity, permeability, and designing for visible time and patina rather than permanence.

We address fire-smart landscape design, including Class A fi...

In this episode of Land Language, we sit down with Julie Weiss, a designer and gardener based in the Pacific Northwest and board member of the North American Friends of Great Dixter. Julie spent eighteen years at Vanity Fair. She then went on to apprentice for two years at Great Dixter under head gardener Fergus Garrett, and came home calling herself a garden steward instead of simply a designer. Julies shares with us: cover planti...

In this episode of Land Language, hosts Brit Sastrawidjaya and Bethany Rydmark sit down with Andrea Palacio, co-founder of Crewless. Andrea walks through how she used AI to rescue her Florida lawn care company from near-collapse, and what she learned when she stepped too far away.

Andrea went from answering 50+ calls a day with a newborn in her arms to building Crewless: an AI implementation consultancy that helps home service busin...

In this episode of Land Language, we sit down with Brittney Herrera, CEO of Thunder Egg and GeoTune. With 25 years in interior architecture for Fortune 500 tech companies, Brittney has spent her career designing spaces where people want to be. Over time, she found the layer beneath the built environment that most designers never look at: the energetic condition of the land itself. We discuss geopathic stress, how it shows up in dea...

In this episode of Land Language, hosts Brit Sastrawidjaya and Bethany Rydmark sit down with Angelique Robb, founder of SYNKD, a media platform and event series connecting landscape architects, contractors, designers, and horticulturists. They dig into the communication failures that cost design-build-maintain projects their best outcomes, two materials most US practitioners haven't encountered, and why stormwater management belong...

Jonathan Clay built The Kalos Project to close Houston's local food gap using permaculture design. The same principles guide how he leads his team.

In this episode of Land Language, hosts Brit Sastrawidjaya and Bethany Rydmark sit down with Jonathan and explore how permaculture's closed-loop principles translate to team leadership, what it takes to create a safe container for conflict on a job site, and the platform Jonathan is buil...

$14 trillion in small business assets will change hands in the next decade. If you own a trades business, this conversation is for you.

David Hori has spent his career where people and business overlap. From HR to startup operations to building and exiting pro.com (acquired by Opendoor), he now coaches business owners on how to build, prepare, and thoughtfully pass on what they've created. Brit and Bethany talk with David about what...

The landscape industry is still building its catalog of case studies for regenerative work. Every project that gets built is an example. Every conversation that shifts a client's understanding is a seed. We're all relearning methods of cultivation that were once just daily life, and we're doing it together.

In this episode:

• Why the first question in any deck project isn't about materials, it's about purpose
• Extruded aluminum frami...

In this episode of Land Language, Brit Sastrawidjaya and Bethany Rydmark talk with Marc Boucher-Colbert, longtime garden educator and urban farming advocate, about how outdoor spaces can nurture curiosity, resilience, and ecological literacy in children.

Marc shares his decades of experience developing school gardens and edible landscapes—from composting and crop rotations to integrated pest management (IPM) and soil health. T...

Soil health is the backbone of regenerative landscape design. In this episode, hosts Brit Sastrawidjaya and Bethany Rydmark talk with Nick Tomasini, soil consultant, microbiology specialist, and founder of Humankind Oregon, about the real science behind soil structure, compaction, microbial activity, and soil amendments that actually work.

Nick explains soil chemistry vs. biology, how to choose the right soil test, what mineral bala...

Sustainable landscaping and regenerative landscape design aren’t just about plants and products, they’re about how we relate to the creatures that hold our food systems together. In this episode of Land Language, hosts Brit Sastrawidjaya and Bethany Rydmark talk with Onyx Baird, documentary filmmaker, regenerative beekeeper, and wildlife scientist, about rethinking bees, beekeeping, and pollinator habitat from the groun...

Local, sustainable wood is more than a material choice. It’s a connection to land, community, and story.

In this episode, Land Language hosts Brit Sastrawidjaya and Bethany Rydmark sit down with Lynn Morgan, Director of Community Engagement at Sustainable Northwest Wood, to explore how regenerative forestry, ethical material sourcing, and cultural stewardship can transform the landscaping and building industries.

We dive into t...

Sustainable landscape construction isn't just about swapping one product for another, it's about questioning the entire system. In this episode, Land Language hosts Brit Sastrawidjaya and Bethany Rydmark talk with Jenny Jones, founder of Terremoto, a Los Angeles-based design studio challenging conventional construction practices through material reuse, labor visibility, and conservation-minded design.

Together they explore practical...

Regenerative landscape design isn’t just about plants — it’s about teaching people to be in right relationship with land. In this episode of Land Language, hosts Brit Sastrawidjaya (CEO, Blueprint Earth; stormwater expert) and Bethany Rydmark sit down with New Zealand landscape designer and author Xanthe White to talk about process-driven design, soil and water as living systems, and why restraint is one of the mo...

Growing food isn't about producing bushels of vegetables or becoming self-sufficient—it's about cultivating connection, wonder, and daily rituals that nourish both body and soul. In this episode, Brit Sastrawidjaya and Bethany Rydmark talk with garden writer and cookbook author Willi Galloway about integrating edibles into landscapes, discovering overlooked plant parts, and building a breakfast routine centered around garden-...