~Nancy Deirup was born in 1962 and raised in the cultural mecca of Berkeley, CA. A piece of land the family bought when she was a baby became their home when Nancy was in high school. Helping her family every vacation and throughout high school, they cleared trails and view sheds for the home her mother designed and drafted. Nancy discovered that anything you put your mind to is possible. As she and her dad built their home she learned framing, roofing, cement work and electrical wiring. Nancy never missed an opportunity to learn hands-on and worked her way through college cleaning stalls, exercising horses and maintaining landscapes. Nancy’s college classes in biology inadvertently gave her a deep and useful background in all segments of landscaping. Animal science courses, feeds and pasture management, classes in seed technology, genetics and animal breeding often overlapped into the plant kingdom in surprising ways. When she returned home from college, gardening was her ‘day job’. “Anyone can pull weeds and mow lawns,” she told herself, but the designer in her drove her to reshape those lawns, cut new edges for the flower beds, and play with plant combinations.

Word-of-mouth recommendations kept her in steady work as her talent and expertise grew. More than twenty years later, after working under, over, and alongside many talented people in the landscape trade, Nancy Deirup formed the partnership with Gerardo Flores that is now flourishing as Tierra Buena Landscape. Nancy lives with her husband and their two daughters in the majestic Ten Mile Valley, where they raise organic sheep and Arabian horses.

~Gerardo Flores-Hurtado was born and raised on a ranch in Guerrero in central Mexico. A country boy with five sisters and six brothers, he learned early in life the value of family and hard work. Together they raised crops for the table and corn for their livestock. Always wanting to improve situations, he came to California with a dream for a family of his own. He returned to Mexico to marry his sweetheart and bring her home to the California coast. He earned a living here building fences, working in the woods and doing handyman work for fine home builders, while taking classes like Japanese garden design and refining his landscaping skills all the while. When Gerardo sees genius expressed in those he works with – from clients to experts in associated fields – he observes and learns. He finds a special wisdom in the self-taught old-school type of tradesman, masters of lost arts.

Gerardo was always happiest when his work involved landscaping. He met Nancy Deirup in a garden they had both had their hands in at different times and enjoyed talking shop with her every time they ran into each other. Gerardo was already earning respect from his clients as a designer when he and Nancy finally had the chance to work on a landscape project together and the idea of partnering on future projects took wing.

Gerardo lives with his wife and children in Fort Bragg, close to three of his brothers and not far from his folks and extended family. He loves barbequeing, hunting and fishing with them. He is happy living his ‘American Dream’ and working with Nancy in bringing clients’ landscape dreams to life.