Our Values

Wholly Rooted uses permaculture principles to create our own systems. Systems of inclusion, safe spaces, and acknowledgement of the amazing diversity of humans in this world. We are all working to create sustainable and regenerative systems that not only benefit ourselves and our families, but our community and the planet. You are welcome here, and we want to be more than online modules, but a community, connecting, caring, and united. 

Who We Are

Wholly Rooted Farm is a BIPOC and LBBTQIA2+ friendly space. Black Lives Matter. Trans Lives Matter. Indigenous Lives Matter. Trans Women are Women. Trans Men are Men. Any disrespect, harassment, or hate towards anyone due to their race, gender, sexual orientation, or ability/disability will not be tolerated in our spaces. This is our family, our friends, our loved ones, our community, and they are not debatable. 

Our home is a neurodiverse home with physical disabilities, and it is important to us to recognize and include accessibility where we can, and this is a work in progress. As we work to make our programs and website inclusive and accessible, please let us know if there are any areas we can improve. Please reach out to denise@whollyrooted.com. 

Due to the threat of Climate Change, we know that we all must work to find ways to preserve our wild plants, adapt and transition as our growing zones change and temperatures rise, and find ways to build community so that we are more resilient. Sustainability in the retail space is nice and necessary in the big picture, but true regenerative processes and sustainability happens in our own spaces, homes, and communities by growing our own, ethical foraging, responsible use, and using what is local to us as much as possible, reducing the shipment of herbs and supplies around the globe. 

​To us, the principles of permaculture go beyond food forests and soil building and are principles that can be used to create more equitable, restorative, and cooperative communities. We always have more work to do, but we are moving forward with intention and awareness of this. 

All of our courses will work to also be inclusive and make suggestions for accessibility of folks with different levels of ability. As a person with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and sjogrens as well as a 30 year old wonky back, I work to make our gardens manageable without doing a lot of bending, lifting, weeding, or hauling, and making management and maintenance plans based on ability. We live the accessibility part of gardening and permaculture, and know we all can make changes to allow us to enjoy growing some food and medicine no matter our needs.

What does this mean for you? That you are welcome in our space and in our classroom, and we are so happy you are here. 

Land and Tradition Acknowledgement

As a white person using the principles of permaculture, I acknowledge that permaculture comes from practices created by Indigenous cultures and peoples around the world for thousands of years, and was appropriated by white men in a position of power. I acknowledge I am privileged to own land, and that I am using processes created by Indigenous people.

Herbalism and the use of medicinal and aromatic plants has long histories and traditions in Indigenous, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern cultures, and I am so grateful to those who have come before me, tending and caring for the plants as medicine, food, and relations, and sharing their knowledge with others. 

Wholly Rooted is on the unceded ancestral lands of the Ho-Chunk forcefully taken after the Black Hawk War in 1833. The Ho-Chunk had villages along the lakes and waterways throughout our area, and we are in an area rich in sacred effigy mounds built by the ancestors of the Ho-Chunk. 
​Read here.
Read More Here.
Read More Here. 
Ho-Chunk, People of the Sacred Voice. ​