Our gardeners—experienced and ready to help you

Becky Elder

As a Colorado State University Master Gardener (1995), Becky has presented many classes to the general public in El Paso County, in the Gardening in the Pikes Peak Region series and for private groups, and has taught within the Master Gardener program itself. She covers many subjects from basic plant care and pruning to rainwater harvesting and non-turf landscapes. She speaks from experience on backyard habitats, and the ethics of wild gardens. In the early ’90s she was a Licensed Wildlife Rehabilitator, holding both Colorado State and Federal permits. Her home gardens, Annamaranna Gardens, are Certified Wildlife Habitat through the National Wildlife Federation. Becky was the only gardener in El Paso County to be featured in the Audubon Society’s book, Colorado Wildscapes.

Certified in permaculture design by the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute (2002,) Becky has taken the path toward sustainable design and sustainable living for the future. She returns to the Permaculture Institute each year to teach. Becky also earned the Earth Activist Training permaculture certificate (2005,) at Black Mountain Preserve in Sonoma County, California. Since then, she has obtained an Advanced Permaculture certificates and the Permaculture Teacher’s Certificate. She is working to earn her Permaculture Diploma, the highest level of permaculture study to be awarded. She along other permaculturalists in the area launched Pikes Peak Permaculture, a non-profit permaculture hub for the Pikes Peak region.

Gardening on the Front Range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains is not easy, requiring persistence and patience beyond standard gardening methodology. Permaculture, organic gardening, protection of the soil, the fauna, as well as the flora, and discovering sustainable living techniques is clearly Becky’s passion and her path. She has integrated permaculture into her home gardens and her landscaping business. Passion for nature, building sustainable landscapes and creating urban permaculture are the fundamental tenets of her life.

Connie Karpowicz

Connie Karpowicz has gardened professionally since moving to Colorado Springs in 2007. She earned a Permaculture Design Certificate from Pikes Peak Permaculture in 2013.

Connie practices permaculture because it enables the gardener to get the maximum benefit from limited garden space and teaches about more efficient methods of reducing maintenance labor.

Since childhood, Connie has pursued her interest in plants and nature’s beauty. Much of what she knows about gardening and wildcrafting (foraging food from the wild), was learned from her mother and grandmother. She spent hours in the garden studying the insects and plants and observing how plants grow. She gathered wild strawberries, blackberries, sumac, poke salad and mushrooms.

Connie has planted a garden everywhere she’s ever lived, even when she traveled and lived out of a 32-foot R.V. Her biggest garden was about 100-feet by 200-feet, plus several flower and herb beds. She learned propagation and transplanting out of necessity, and collected every new plant that caught her eye.

When she’s not gardening, Connie devotes her time to sculpting.