The garden that grows your groceries.
Kaya Gardens designs, installs, and maintains no-till food gardens for Central Texas homes using a deep wood-chip mulch method, popularized by arborist Paul Gautschi and the Back to Eden documentary, that builds living soil, suppresses weeds, and dramatically reduces how often you water. In our climate of hot summers, clay and caliche soils, and recurring drought restrictions, that last part is not a nice-to-have. It is the difference between a garden you keep and a garden you abandon in July.
We handle the design, the materials, and the install; you harvest. Kaya Gardens is owned and operated by Kaya Wellness, run by Kyle Renfrew and Shankar Bellam, and serves the Austin metro, Round Rock, Georgetown, and College Station.
Book a garden consultThe method
Built for Central Texas conditions.
Water.
A thick wood-chip layer holds moisture in the soil and shields it from the Texas sun, so beds need less frequent watering and survive restrictions better than exposed soil ever will.
Soil.
Most yards here sit on heavy clay or caliche. Instead of fighting it with tilling, the chip layer feeds the soil from the top down, the way a forest floor does, building dark, living topsoil year over year.
Weeds and work.
The mulch suppresses weeds and eliminates tilling. The garden gets easier each season, not harder.
Food.
Vegetables, herbs, and fruit trees at your back door. The freshest possible ingredients, grown in soil you can trust.
Our approach builds on the wood-chip, no-till method popularized by arborist Paul Gautschi and the 2011 Back to Eden documentary, and on Indian natural-farming traditions that treat soil as something you feed rather than fight. We have adapted both for Central Texas soils, seasons, and water rules. (Kaya Gardens is independent and not affiliated with the film.)
Kaya Gardens · Rule 1
Grow naturally: the rules of thumb.
Whether we build it or you do, the same principles hold. This is how living soil works.
- 01 Build up, do not dig down. We lay living soil on top of clay and caliche instead of fighting it, so you skip the worst of both.
- 02 Compost in the seed bed, wood chips on the paths. Fine compost grows seedlings; deep chips belong around paths and fruit trees, never where you sow.
- 03 Keep mulch thin on vegetables, deep everywhere else. Thin mulch lets seeds up; deep mulch holds water where roots are already established.
- 04 Water less, deeper, and under the mulch. Drip beneath the cover loses far less to the Texas sun than spraying the top.
- 05 Slow the water down before it leaves. Simple swales and basins catch our flash rains so the soil drinks instead of the storm drain.
- 06 Respect the inputs and the pH. We never bring in hay or manure that could carry persistent herbicides, and we work with our alkaline soil rather than against it. (No, wood chips will not make it acidic.)
Services
From bare yard to first harvest.
- 01
Garden consult.
We walk your yard, look at sun, drainage, and soil, and talk through what you want to grow and eat.
- 02
Design and install.
No-till beds, orchard plantings, and chip coverage, built in days, not seasons. We source quality arborist chips and compost.
- 03
Seasonal care.
Optional maintenance visits: planting rotations, chip top-ups, pruning, and seasonal resets, so the garden keeps producing without owning your weekends.
- 04
Learn as you grow.
Every install comes with a simple care guide, and we run hands-on workshops for homeowners who want to go deeper.
Every yard is different. Consults are $100, and we quote installs flat, in writing, before any work begins.
Why Kaya grows gardens
Nutrition starts closer to home than you think.
The rest of Kaya is about guiding you to better care and better food. A food garden is the most direct version of that idea: produce with no supply chain, time outside, and a habit that compounds like the soil it grows in. Pair a garden with our nutrition guides, or fold one into a guided journey as the longest-lasting upgrade to your food environment.
Who runs it
Two founders, one yard at a time.
Kyle Renfrew · Co-founder, Gardens
Kyle is a plant biochemist by training. At Texas A&M he studied how plants protect their genetic material, with peer-reviewed work published in journals including The Plant Cell and PLoS Genetics. That training ground, Texas A&M in College Station, sits in the same Central Texas footprint Kaya Gardens serves today. A lifelong Central Texan, he is also a real estate professional and licensed appraiser who reads local land the way few do: soil, drainage, sun, and the way water moves across a lot. Kaya Gardens is where the two meet, the science of living systems applied to building living soil and food gardens that fit the yard they are in.
Shankar Bellam · Co-founder
Founder and publisher of Kaya Wellness, and co-founder of Kaya Gardens. A Central Texas entrepreneur who started Kaya to make honest wellness guidance and good food easier to find close to home.
Good questions
What gardening method does Kaya Gardens use?
A no-till hybrid. We build raised beds of compost and quality topsoil directly on your native clay or caliche, no tilling, and plant into them right away, the way Charles Dowding's No Dig method does. Around them we use the deep wood-chip mulch popularized by Paul Gautschi and the 2011 Back to Eden documentary, on paths and around fruit trees. You get the immediate plantability of compost beds and the water savings of wood chips, tuned for Central Texas.
Will wood chips make my soil acidic?
No. This is a common worry and it does not hold up: wood-chip mulch sits on the surface and has a negligible effect on soil pH as it breaks down. Our soils here run alkaline, and we design plant choices around that rather than trying to fight it.
Does it really work in the Texas heat?
The method's core strengths, moisture retention and soil protection, matter most in hot, dry climates. Mulched beds hold water longer and keep soil cooler than bare ground. We adapt plant choices and timing to Central Texas seasons.
How much watering will I actually do?
Meaningfully less than with exposed beds, especially once the garden is established. Exact needs depend on your plants, sun, and season; we set expectations honestly at the consult and design for current water restrictions.
Is this landscaping?
It is food-first landscaping. We design for harvest: vegetables, herbs, and fruit trees, and we make it look like it belongs in your yard.
What does an install cost?
It depends on size and scope, from a few beds to a full edible yard. We quote flat and in writing after the consult, with no surprises.
Which areas do you serve?
The Austin metro, Round Rock, Georgetown, and College Station, the same Central Texas footprint as the rest of Kaya Wellness.
Start here
Start with a garden consult.
Tell us about your yard and what you want to grow. We will come walk it with you.