We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful David Bailey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with David below.

David, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

We diverge in many ways from industry standards.

For Example: Swale drainage plans instead of sheet flow.

No metal edging it doesn’t work well and cuts paws and feet.

Plants and or sheet mulch to control weeds instead of weed fabric.

Whenever planting trees sequestering carbon and building forest soil with hugukultur. These healthy trees grow faster and require far less toxic fossil fuel derived inputs.

Utilizing edible natives creating deep connections with people and the land they live on.

Multi station drip lines throughout our landscapes to providing water for individual plant needs. This conserves water and protects the plants themselves.

Instead of utilizing non local visa workers we hire local people that want to work hands on outside with the land. While we have no problem with migration the landscaping industry takes advantage of the indentured nature of the current work visa system. Agricultural knowledge is local and we enjoy educating local talent while providing earth work jobs.

That’s a start……..

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My wife and I started a small gardening business to get through collage with our young family. As my friends graduated with Environmental Science degrees I saw them march off to work for oil companies and land developers. Something in me said hell no! I decided that I could best carry out the ecological work I was called to by reinventing the industry standards that drive people onto the landscaping tread mill of endless maintenance driving resource degradation and consumption. This mission has had more complex turns than I imagined.
Watching the drought of 02 drive people towards xeriscapes then watching peoples water vigilance slacken almost as quickly as that drought set in.
We have found our way into managing surface drainage to protect from floods while building food forests.
Lots of hard work in neglected forests managing fire danger while sequestering carbon to control erosion and build biodiversity.
Our design process has developed different natural patterns to bring people into a deeper connection with the land they care for.
In 2021 we lost Lina Mother and driving force at Urban Oasis we had to rebuild our lives and the company.
Lina was an herbal medicine mama and to this day so much of my connection with our plant cousins comes from her teachings. A significant part of what this company is comes from the sweat of so many passionate inspiring people.
Our desire for the future is to make landscape sustainability athstetics more widely accepted in the hopes that people will no longer find themselves obligated to carpet the outdoors. We also innovate with an eye to making ecological sensibility in the landscape more attainable.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

We are all taught how important personal independence is…… How important working hard is……

Ive had to question both of these ideas….

I believe thinking I could figure things out myself led to many of the inovations that sets us a part from our industry as a whole. I can also say without a doubt that carrying this belief out to the extreme has handicaped our business through the years. No matter how hard you work if you are consulting yourself or not getting good feedback your work can be a loss.

I’ve found that acknowledging my limitations and putting hard work into finding competent help has been an important turn around for me in business and also in life. I have many stories that embody this issue one I love to tell is early on I showed up in a my CPAs office with a manilla folder full of receipts and a paper ledger . I handed it off proudly ‘Took me two days to get the math correct but I think you will find its in order. My CPA looked on and with a smile said have you ever heard of spreadsheets. Now spreadsheets run so much of our business and I sense it is time for me to seek another guru to take our organizational systems to the next level. I’m certain the time and money we spend will be recouped in short order if we can find good council.
Good leadership is humble and seeks consultation from the best resources possible.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

Some time in the past I was cheating on my business…..

Remodeling a house in Leadville while operations moved forward down on the Front Range. I had young ambitious intelligent designer moving forward with a large job.

Many things went wrong and small problems turned into big ones. By the time I arrived to put out the fire the job was a start over place.

The company was overextended and it took everything we had and a little extra to get through the job.

I learned a lot that year about who had my back and that I either needed to have tighter process in place or watch everything like a hawk.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.urbanoasisdesign.com
• Instagram: urban_oasis_co
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urbanoasisdesign/