At first glance, Heather Evans (MBA 1983) might not seem the likeliest candidate for a career in ecological landscaping. A former chief marketing officer and “true urbanist” (“to the extent I used to hate visiting people in the country!”), Evans spent most of her life in New York City, sans lawn. Today, the master gardener sees all those years missing out on American yard culture as an advantage: Traditional horticulture can devastate biodiversity, she’ll tell you, and contributes mightily to climate change. Her passion and expertise lie in eco-friendly, native garden design—and that’s the focus of Dear Avant Gardener, her popular free newsletter about transforming outdoor spaces into beautiful, sustainable sanctuaries.

Every two weeks, Evans dives into some native-gardening question—why it’s better to cut rather than pull weeds, for instance, or which plants attract the most butterflies. In her sprightly, engaging style, she offers readers—upward of 7,000 now—the science behind her answer (the why), practical advice and ideas (the how), and a glimpse at what success might look like (the “wow”).

Evans came to native gardening gradually. After earning her MBA, she held a series of C-suite roles, including as the global head of client analytics for Merrill Lynch and CMO for JPMorgan, ITG, and the state of Rhode Island. But she also always had an eye for design. Her early career included launching a dress line for professional women that landed a spot in the windows of Bergdorf Goodman (and inspired an HBS case); later, she took a break from her marketing gigs to open a boutique hotel in the Grenadines. Even her own place in Park Slope, Brooklyn, caught the eye of the tastemakers at House Beautiful, who featured her home in their pages.

It was at another Brooklyn house, in her first-ever backyard, that she was struck by a desire to create an all-white, French-style garden, inspired by the English estate of Sissinghurst. Only, Evans wanted to do it using all native plants. “I can’t even remember now why I had that idea,” she says. Evans had a vision and, failing to find a landscaper who could achieve it, simply created the garden herself. “And it was actually pretty fantastic!”

Evans sold the house shortly thereafter and moved in 2018 to Rhode Island, where she got more into gardening, eventually enrolling in the University of Rhode Island’s ecologically focused Master Gardener Program in 2022. She went to work applying that knowledge on her two properties—the Rhode Island house and a second home on Florida’s coastal marshland. Two such different landscapes, she adds, allowed for two entirely different gardening personalities—or “yardenalities” in Avant Gardener terms: In Rhode Island, she cultivated a “Blooming Romantic” style, an English-inspired look with lots of flower beds and garden paths; in Florida, she was “On the Wild Side,” highlighting the natural wildness of the coast with tropical-looking understory shrubs and meadow perennials like the pink-flowered mimosa and seaside goldenrod. By 2021, she had stepped away from the marketing world, taking time off to assess her next step and—obviously—to garden. Out of that time came the idea for her newsletter, which she launched in 2022, as a way to research and share inspirational “yardening” advice with others.

Now, with Dear Avant Gardener surpassing her initial goal of 5,000 readers, Evans has partnered with her daughter to turn the enterprise into a business, offering a new course designed to help people transform their yards. The pair also offers consulting for “those not into DIY.”

The hope, Evans says, is to help clients and readers understand how landscaping that’s less work and more ecological is within their grasp—and deeply rewarding. “It’s hard to express, until someone has done it, the amount of joy that comes from seeing butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds in your garden,” she says.

How to: Rewild Your Yard (Without Upsetting The Neighbors)

First, do no harm.
Stop using pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and gas mowers.

Find a native-only nursery in your area and buy yourself some shrubs and trees.
Most people think about pollinator gardens when they think native planting, Evans says, but trees and shrubs are more important. An oak tree, for example, can host some 600 species of moth and butterfly caterpillars.

Create a no-mow, no-rake area under existing trees.
Why? Butterfly larvae make their home in leaves under the trees all winter. If you’re worried about aesthetics in the midst of manicured lawns, then plant native woodland shade plants, grasses, or wildflowers, and then mow around them. “Well-defined paths and openings among planting beds are signs of care that reassure neighbors,” Evans advises.

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