Meet Our Team

Kara started her life as a lover of the outdoors and wild spaces. All through her childhood she felt a responsibility to be a good steward to the earth. This generally meant picking up trash and encouraging her family to recycle. During her time in the US Navy, Kara’s shipmates would tease her about the amount of recycling she would constantly be shuttling from the ship to the local recycling facility in her great-grandparents old station wagon! After college she found a love of gardening. It was around this time when Kara started thinking about sustainable gardening practices and found the book The Landscaping Revolution: Garden With Mother Nature, Not Against Her by Andy and Sally Wasowski at the local library. This set her on the course to start gardening with native plants and creating habitat in her own backyard. For over 12 years she has been utilizing native plants in her gardenscapes, bringing nature home, and sharing her passion for native plants with everyone she meets.

Tim is Kara’s husband and the resident IT guy, both in his day job and with DRL. He can be found eradicating honeysuckle during his lunch breaks.

DRL is family owned and we all work together to be great small business owners and good land stewards. (Team Remove-All-The-Honeysuckle)

Darren is our Lead Technician and Safety Coordinator. He started working at DRL in the spring of 2021.

When not at work, Darren spends time gardening, hiking, cooking, vinyl records, and hanging out with his family.

His favorite native plant is Blue False Indigo (Baptisia Australis).

Brooke is a Garden Designer and Consultant. She's also one of our Team Leads when on-site prepping or installing a native garden. She started working at DRL in December 2021.

In her free time, Brooke enjoys makes jewelry, hiking, gardening, and learning more about plants and the natural world. Brooke is a big animal lover and often bonds with client pets on site. She also keeps chickens!

One of her many favorite native plants is Illinois Climbing Rose (Rosa setigera).

Aubrey is one of our Garden Technicians at DRL. She started working with us in April 2022.

When not at work, Aubrey spends her time Exploring the outdoors with her family, practicing yoga and traveling.

One of her favorite native plants is Spotted Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium maculatum). Aubrey says, "it stands out in any garden, it attracts SO many cute bumblebees, butterflies, and birds, and the fragrance of the blooms reminds me of my childhood summers."

Cameron, aka Ron, is one of our Garden Technicians. He started working with at DRL in the spring of 2022.

When not at work, he spends his time baking, reading, and, of course, gardening! He also enjoys puns and is not afraid to tell us when we bomb, so he has helped us elevate our punny-sense of humor here at DRL.

One of his favorite native plants is Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). Cameron says, "It's got a cool form, beautiful big pink flowers, great wildlife magnet, and just a quintessential part of the summer landscape."

Courtney is one of our Garden Designers and Consultants, as well as our Webmaster, IT Administrator, and Social Media Coordinator. She started working at DRL in June 2022 and has been busy getting our online store up and running and creating content for our social media accounts. In 2023, she started taking on consultation and design clients after doing native garden design for several years before her work with DRL.

In her free time, she works on her native landscaping at home or spends time with her cats while making designing new garden beds. She and her husband enjoy hiking and traveling.

One of her favorite native plants is Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata). It's an annual prairie plant beloved by bumblebees and other insects. She uses Partridge Pea as a green mulch to keep weeds down while allowing slower-growing trees and shrubs to mature.