Catching Carbon with a Goddess

from Ojai Magazine Summer 2021

Soil Cyclers

Catching Carbon

with a Goddess

By KAREN LINDELL - Ojai Magazine 2021

The garden goddesses of world mythology — Pomona (Roman), Demeter (Greek), Jacheongbi (Korean) and Pachamama (Aztec), to name just a few — are complex female figures associated with more than harvests, plants, and vegetation. They are also powerful yet gentle mother figures: strong, loving, nurturing, and connected to everyone’s Mother Earth — kind of like Jessica Thompson

Jessica Thompson the owner of Green Goddess Gardens in Ojai — a holistic landscaping design and garden maintenance company — Thompson talks tenderly but with authority about the “energy” of the garden: “We’re all connected, and you need to love your garden for it to thrive, and for yourself to thrive,” she said.

But Thompson, who has a degree in horticulture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, is also an expert on the ground-level basics, like soil and water.

In Southern California, drought is real and dirt can be less than ideal, so she is a proponent of permaculture — using the natural qualities of plants, animals, and the environment to create an integrated, sustainable ecosystem. She also practices regenerative agriculture, another holistic technique that uses photosynthesis to keep carbon in soil, which makes it healthier and more capable of retaining water and nutrients.

Thompson is especially concerned about water, and keeping it in the ground instead of gushing into gutters.

“The old designs for landscapes captured water and put it into the sewer,” she said. “Now, we want water to sink into soil before it runs off.”

So she and her gardening team create natural landscapes that preserve water and nurture the soil organically, and create beauty using color, texture, and fragrance.

**Jessica Thompson, owner of Green Goddess Gardens**

“The simplest systems I create are berms and swales — formations of soil that go across the contour of the land, enough to stop the water from flowing downhill and to keep it in an area you want it to be,” she said.

Adding such landscaping features isn’t di cult, and doesn’t require a professional water whisperer. “Anyone can create it themselves,” Thompson said. Rainstorms in SoCal are so infrequent, she added, that investing in tanks and cisterns as a way to hold on to water isn’t cost-effective for most people. In the backyard, water accumulated against the Colomes’ home, so Thompson built a swale, a broad shallow ditch that keeps rainwater from collecting along the house.

Along with creating water-wise landscaping, Thompson believes gardeners can keep everything green, quenched, and well-fed by tending to soil health, which means mulching and composting. Layered on top of soil — no digging required — compost and mulch create and protect micronutrients that soil eagerly gobbles up. Gardeners can make their own tea, but would have to purchase a brewer, so Thompson recommends buying the tea instead. One made in Ojai by David White, Ph.D., of Regenerative Designs Ojai, is a good option, she said.

By purchasing the tea, “the microbiologist checks the batches, and can make it bacterial dominant or fungal dominant,” she said. Leafy greens, vegetables, and annuals like a bacterial tea; woody perennials prefer a fungal concoction.

Ojai residents Steve and Cathryn Colome had Green Goddess Gardens design all the landscaping around their home. They have a giant 200- to 300-year-old valley oak tree in front that was originally planted on a lawn with flagstone around the tree’s roots. The yard slopes down, so when it rained, all the watershed onto the sidewalk and down the curb.

Thompson replaced the lawn with native plants, and installed a hügelkultur (a German word meaning “hill culture”) bed, a mound of woody materials and compost that keeps water from draining onto the sidewalk. Now, water goes to the roots of the tree and a field of grasses, manzanita, sage, and other native plants. “Microbes are the only things that create good soil structure,” Thompson said. In addition to regular compost, she recommends a compost tea — for thirsty plants, not humans.

Compost is a combination of brown organic matter, such as leaves, twigs, and landscape debris, and a wet, green material, such as fresh vegetable discards, animal manure, or a combination of the two.

Compost tea, she said, “is a brewed batch of compost and other microbial food like kelp.” After an overnight brewing, the “tea bag” of compost turns into “a highly concentrated tea of diverse microbes” that can be applied to trees, shrubs, grasses, and lawns. White, a cell biologist and executive director of Ojai’s Center for Regenerative Agriculture, said Green Goddess Gardens is “cutting edge” in its use of regenerative landscaping techniques.” Composting, including the use of actively aerated compost tea, “is a nature-based climate solution,” he said.

With the compost tea, he said, we had “a full-grown native garden” at the end of the first year. “The compost is a biological, active material — it’s alive,” Thompson said. “When you bring that life into the garden, the energy and vitality of the garden goes up.”

Thompson doesn’t believe people need to do away with grass and lawns entirely to conserve water, and often combines a low-water meadow landscape with a manicured lawn.

“Reducing the lawn is a better solution,” she said. Smaller lawns can serve as ground cover, keeping dust down and cooling the environment, especially combined with the shade of a tree.

Thompson also wants people to plant more trees to create shade and combat global warming.

“If you have to stop watering something, stop watering lawns, but don’t forget about trees,” she said. “Forest your property, because once the trees go, we are in trouble.”

Another climate-saving choice that can also save time: Leave your grass clippings and leaves alone. Ditch the gas blowers (and air pollution), because the grass and leaves serve as natural fertilizers.

“The cleanliness people are freaked out about germs,” Thompson said. “They think that if a sidewalk has debris on it, it’s dirty. Relax.” A regenerative landscape, she added, generates more than the soil: “These gardens generate serenity, and you just don’t want to leave.”

For more information about Green Goddess Gardens, call 640-1827 or visit