LINDA CHURCHILL
Linda, a Midwest farmer’s granddaughter, had her hands in the dirt from an early age. Her family had one of the only “landscaped” front yards in the town where she grew up, and a back yard devoted to edible gardening. Planting, weeding, hoeing, and harvesting were an accepted part of life from April through October. Family outings always seemed to involve visits to nature centers or public gardens, and vacations were spent working on relatives’ farms.
Linda moved to Santa Fe in 1988. She spent her first several years here as gallery manager at Shidoni Sculpture Gardens, working with artists, staff, and art patrons from all walks of life. Linda’s love of gardening and the beautiful setting of Shidoni led her to make a career change into landscaping. She worked for respected local landscaping firms for 14 years before striking out with Tracy and Jimmy to start Green Forward in 2009.
Linda has gardened enthusiastically in Santa Fe for over 20 years, learning how to grow food and to work with native plants in the demanding environment of her own hillside garden in Santa Fe’s foothills. She has also volunteered with the Santa Fe Botanical Gardens for many years, where she studies and shares knowledge about native plants and wetlands in the Santa Fe area. Early in the 2000′s, Linda helped form the Santa Fe Water Coalition, a grass-roots organization that studied and helped change public allocations of, and attitudes toward, water use during the drought at that time (the City’s successful “toilet retrofit program” was one outcome of the Coalition’s work). Linda is currently an active member of the Board of the Railyard Stewards, providing community stewardship and advocacy for the care and programming of the new Santa Fe Railyard Park in the heart of the city. She is also a member of the Semi-arid Guild, a local group devoted to using water harvesting and water reuse strategies and technologies in landscaping.
Linda has collaborated on many garden and art projects with her husband Frank Morbillo, contemporary sculptor and foundry professional.
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