We recently connected with Abbie Ince-Hendrickson and have shared our conversation below.
Abbie , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, I graduated with my Masters’s Degree in Biology, completing my thesis work on American Alligators. But with lockdowns beginning and uncertainty about the future, not many organizations or government entities were in the market for wildlife biologists. I was struggling with PTSD surrounding a fire I experienced during my undergraduate junior year and felt the need to work outside, in the sun and fresh air… I had a favorite nursery where I bought all my native plants for our 10 acres east of Conroe, and decided to start there. What could be more stress-reducing than working with plants? I found my home away from home, with people who I now consider my family, at Nature’s Way Resources. While working with Native Plants, I began to use my education at my new job to think on an ecological scale. Customers would come in looking for native plants for hummingbirds or butterflies, but unfortunately not know how to care for the plants, nor for what species they really were looking.
I thought to myself, there is an enormous need for an ecologically minded landscape design and implementation service.
I had previously been trained in habitat restoration and wildlife management, so why not roll these concepts together with gardening and landscaping, both on small and large scales?
I started out drawing hummingbird patches and butterfly gardens for our homestead, testing and trying all the natives I saw in the nursery trade. Eventually, with the help of my husband, we had birding habitats, snake sanctuaries, Hummingbird patches, and butterfly patches dotting the property. We saw an enormous increase in wildlife utilizing the habitat that we purposefully built for them.
My husband had been encouraging me to start a business drawing and designing landscapes for wildlife, but I was unsure of the amount of interest the public would have in Gardening for Wildlife and turning their yards into native wild sanctuaries. Butterfly patches, sure! But snake sanctuaries…. That would be a harder sell.
Leave it up to the people of Texas to love their wildlife! Within a few days of offering my services to regular clientele at the Nursery, I had my first client! She wanted a butterfly garden, a hummingbird patch, and an organic vegetable garden. I had one of my very best friends give me a crash course in the designing program Autocad so that I could transpose my drawings into a format that was organized and legible, beautiful actually! Hence, the birth of the garden blueprint. I had a fresh business license but no employees, so the project was completed by myself. What a sense of accomplishment! Before long, word had spread, business cards were ordered, and clients began trickling in.
It was so important to me to feel like I was making a difference for the environment, the outdoors that love and treasure deeply. Living Wild allowed me the freedom to let my passion run wild!
Abbie , 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?
I have loved animals since I was young, especially those of the scaled variety. I knew I wanted to work with wildlife, specifically reptiles; snakes were my first love. I grew up entranced with Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin. My mother, who is not a fan of animals, put her interests aside and signed me up for every bug class, snake encounter, and volunteer opportunity. I credit her with fanning the flame, so to speak.
After graduating high school, I went to Texas A&M to study Wildlife Biology and Microbiology and ended up with a degree in each. I got my first job as a research assistant studying Concho Watersnakes, an endangered species of watersnake found in central west Texas. I loved every second of the hot and muddy work. That job springboarded me into working in Nevada as a Desert Tortoise Research assistant. We lived in the desert in tents and went ‘herping’ in the evenings for months. After that, I wanted to come home to Texas and landed a job looking at bat and bird mortality under large wind turbines. During that time I met my husband, Ryan, who encouraged me to get my master’s shortly after my wind turbine job ended.
Back in dusty Lubbock, my hometown, I went to Texas Tech for my M.S. under Dr. Lou Densmore, a leading crocodilian expert. During my undergraduate years at A&M, I worked in the parasitology lab. Parasites and their ecology were extremely interesting to me, so I decided to center my thesis around the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) and their intestinal gut fauna. Fieldwork consisted of traveling to Louisiana and catching over 100 alligators to pump their stomachs and study their diet and parasites. Its an interesting process, if you are interested, ‘google: gastric lavage”.
But none of this has anything to do with Native Plants… or so I thought.
All the years leading up to the creation of my company, I had been studying ecosystems.
The soil and subsequently, native plants are the foundations of all terrestrial ecosystems.
In an intact, healthy ecosystem, there are no pests.
All individuals are checked and balanced by predator/prey interactions and resource availability.
When the ecosystem is broken, it causes a cascading failure.
Take traditional lawns for example.
Biodiversity is low, pesticides abound, and it seems the only way to have a healthy lawn is to dump inorganic chemicals across the landscape, which run off into the creeks, streams, rivers, lakes, and groundwater.
One of Living Wild’s mottos is, Healthy Ecosystems cause Healthy People.
We are an all-organic, Native landscaping and Habitat Restoration and design service, serving the greater Houston area.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
Educational Talks!
I love engaging the public, who may or may not be wildlife friendly, and convincing them that environmental health is essential to our health. We need the predators, prey, the safety, and shelter of native plants, and the resources they provide for wildlife. Native plants clean our air and water. Their roots run deep, halting erosion and runoff.
I usually get a rush of clients after I give a talk. I love teaching and try my best to make my ‘lectures’ engaging and interesting… having a live snake present does not hurt either.
I teach a variety of classes for all ages, ranging from kids who want to learn about butterflies and bugs to adults wanting to go native, start a vegetable garden, or garden specifically for wildlife.
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
Business edicate did not come naturally to me, as I have never taken a business course or anything remotely close. Excellent communication with clients, especially during the busy season, can be hard to maintain. I have bridged this gap by responding to emails 2x per day, while also utilizing phone calls, text messages, and most recently a newsletter!
The newsletter helps my clients who like to garden themselves know what to do at certain times of the year, ie. cutting back dead flower heads in the early spring to encourage solitary bees to nest in the cuttings.
I like to do a wildlife spotlight, a native plant spotlight, and even a “guess that poo” section.
It allows me and my brand to continue the connection with clients, even after projects have been completed.
The more you are in your client’s thoughts, the more likely they are to recommend you to friends and family.
Contact Info:
- Website: welivewild.com
- Instagram: aih_livinwild
- Facebook: Living Wild Landscaping
Image Credits
Abbie-Ince Hendrickson Ryan Hendrickson