After a decade of starting community agriculture projects like community gardens and school gardens—Gina Schley founded SHEGROWS to grow and design flowers professionally for weddings, CSA’s, and wholesalers across the Frontrange. She is the founder of Rose Roots Community Garden in Arvada, the largest community garden in the State of Colorado. Gina is an alumni of Floret’s Flower Farming Workshop and was highlighted in their Farmer-Florist E-Book on the top up-and-coming farmers in the nation. She can be seen on multiple news stations sharing her gardening knowledge, has numerous online courses, and her and her husband can be seen hosting the award winning PBS and Create TV docuseries called Urban Conversion.
Meet Gina
“My mother died when I was two years old but before she left she planted a garden. This is my story.”
My life started with a tragic loss, when my mother Barbara was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the young age of thirty one and died when I was only two years old. Cancer took her life, and rocked my family's to the core. But before she died she planned accordingly—-she planted a garden. Collectively with several neighbors, she tilled up a half acre of land and started a garden. That neighborhood garden silently spoke to me throughout my childhood, and into my adult years. My mother was the type of person who made food for her own wake. My brother remembers making pigs-in-the-blanket with her and she told him when he ate them she’d be in heaven. I was too young to remember any goodbyes she had with me, but I have a feeling she would have told me she’d be with me in the garden.
Her garden, and many others in my life, have called to me throughout the seasons. They have taught me valuable lessons about life, death, and everything in between. They called to me as a child, they call to me in my sleep, when I'm driving down the road, or when I'm building a compost pile on a really rainy day. They force me to contemplate my own individuality--my beauty, my strengths, as well as my own mortality.
Now as an adult, my love for gardening has called me to explore the world of farming. Please join me as I take this leap of faith. May my trials be shared with courage and my successes with humility, helping you cultivate the garden, and life, of your dreams.
Walking in the World,
GINA’S BLOG
Transform a garden, and your life, one season at a time.
our principles and how we got here
At SHEGROWS, we follow the PRINCIPLES OF BIODYNAMIC AGRICULTURE TO grow unique varieties of cut flowers, lavender, and herbs on Colorado's front range. BUT EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY, we STRIVE TO HELP PEOPLE GROW AS MUCH AS our gardens GROW.
Like most couples, Rodman and Gina have different interests but have taken their marriage on a journey to figure out how to both live authentically, and to honor each others dreams while not sacrificing their own. While Gina’s drive is steeped in agriculture and raising their children among the simple pleasures of life— Rodman’s entrepreneurial spirit is a never ending hustle that keeps them moving forward and breaking barriers. This struggle of opposites birthed a television series on PBS and Create TV called Urban Conversion. It is now in its 3rd season, which launched in 2019 and is now airing across the country.
Over the years of filming, Rodman and Gina learned sustainable practices in urban agriculture, green building renovation, and the many facets of video production. In 2018, they purchased a 3 acre farm in Arvada and started building a farm and growing a business, together. Along with their farm crew, apprentices, children, and a gaggle of friends, they can be found on the farm each season building barns, growing gardens, raising chickens and keeping bees—all in the name of living a simpler life, which in the end they discovered isn’t really that simple, but instead they found it to be a more beautiful life.
