We recently connected with Silke Henstebeck and have shared our conversation below.

Silke, appreciate you joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

Kitchen Door Landscaping is setting out to be an industry disruptor. We are working on not only offering accessible quality design, but also managing the project all the way through completion of install. Those two differentiators build off of our larger goal to make a vast ecological impact on the residential scale, and correcting course from the traditional view of residential landscapes. We’re seeking to accomplish this mission by residential landscaping at scale, and growing into other spaces in the industry to grow our impact.

Silke, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Personally, I explored the landscape architecture profession from a young age, after originally being interested in building zoo habitats. While the details of what I wanted to do changed as I grew up, my care for creating ecologically harmonious environments stayed the same. After working in the field out of college, I quickly realized that my interests were in small scale sites with people who deeply cared about their impact on the land. There is a lot that you cannot control on larger commercial and public projects (mostly developer priorities), but people willing to invest in their personal properties will often go above and beyond for an authentic, healthy environment. That’s when I stumbled into working with Kitchen Door.

I was introduced to this small startup through a friend, and decided to take the leap into a new chapter of my career and life. Since being able to work with Kitchen Door from it’s early days, I had the honor of creating an exceptional design team that is equally as passionate as I, and the clients we get to work with.

Kitchen Door aims to work with exactly those people -the environmentally passionate homeowner who is looking to transform their yard into a beautiful retreat. We aim to reconnect people with nature, whether that means growing your own food, or creating a luxurious outdoor living space. We believe that great outdoor environments are ones that regenerate and heal our environments, and look stunning while doing it! Our mission is not only to work with people already share this passion, but to educate and ignite others to this goal, and redefine what a beautiful healthy residential yard looks like.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

One thing that has been super important to our business, especially as we’ve grown from a very small team, and tripled in size within the year, has been having stellar employees. To do this we’ve recognized that we need to keep people super engaged with our mission, and excited about making it happen, rather than people who are collecting a paycheck. To be clear, we are not disillusioned that most people only work to live, but we are trying to make harmony between those who feel called to make change, and provide for themselves. We start this commitment with a high minimum salary, that pays above a living wage to all. Then we search for people who are really bought into our mission of making regenerative landscaping a reality for homeowners.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I have had to unlearn the idea that in order for things to go right, I have to be hands on with everything. As a type a personality, I often feel like I have to micromanage and be involved with minute details in order for projects to be a success. In a company with such rapid growth, it is simply not possible to be involved in everything without losing sleep or sacrificing ones mental health.

With having such great employees, we’ve built up a culture of extreme trust, and it has been beautiful company norm to grow into. By trusting people to operate at a high level within their roles, we try to highlight individual interests so that team members are more invested in the outcomes. This has lead to amazing outcomes as a company such as a really high business rating, and client referrals, but more than anything has kept teammates engaged in our greater mission.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kitchendoor.co/home?gclid=CjwKCAjwx7GYBhB7EiwA0d8oe6nyJC62mhxKDLdVnfxP-AzcNpBJsq76Z8lPBcB__hvkevC_aQIphxoCo-cQAvD_BwE
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kitchendoorlandscaping/?hl=en

Image Credits
Kitchen Door Landscaping