Charlotte Torgovitsky

Being a lifelong student of nature, as well as a dedicated gardener for most of my life, has enabled me to “bridge the worlds of gardening and ecology” in order to promote a “new paradigm in landscaping.”

In 2018 I officially founded Home Ground Habitats, but the concept has been a passion project of mine for more than 20 years. Home Ground Habitats is a non-profit, community-minded organization that maintains a native plant nursery and demonstration gardens on Indian Valley Road in Novato, California.

With the help of a robust group of volunteers, we grow about 150 different species of both California natives and other compatible, drought-tolerant plants. Our demonstration gardens help gardeners choose the “right plant for the right place.” Home Ground donates more plants than we sell to support school and community gardens and habitat restoration projects. We invite groups to come on field trips, offer hands-on classes, and, this last summer, offered the first children’s garden camps program.

I am also an educator; I was the Garden Education Manager at Marin Art and Garden Center in Ross; I taught hands-on home composting for the Zero Waste Marin initiative and Plant Propagation classes for the Marin Resource Conservation District. Marin Water hired me to consult on a booklet The Watershed Approach to Landscaping, which is now the textbook for a series of classes I teach at the College of Marin for adult community education.