Our story

Who We Are
At Greensaus, we’re on a mission to level up landscape design in YOUR city.
Have an outdoor space in need of a refresh?
We’ve got stylish design tips that fit your needs and budget.
The kicker?
We’ve built our landscape design guides with sustainability on the brain.
Why?
Because sustainable landscape design looks amazing, saves you money, and helps preserve the planet.
Dig into the blog, or keep reading for more about us.

The Full Story
Beginnings

Hi! This is Rayna.
If you made it here, I’m guessing you want to know more about Jamie and I and the story behind Greensaus. So here it is – the full scoop.
Greensaus is a sustainable landscape design blog. It’s also a love story.
To kick it off, let me take you wayyy back.
I was a suburban tomboy growing up. I loved Mickey Mouse and smiley faces. I did well in school (although my report cards always noted ‘excessive socialization’ during class time). I wanted to be a professional artist… or a pastry chef… or a fashion designer.
Jamie was a city kid living the life of a wildman. He grew up roaming Toronto’s parks and ravines. He caused several minor incidents in grade school by bringing wild snakes he’d caught to class for show and tell. He wanted to be a conservationist… or an explorer… or a historian.
Asking yourself how I ended up married to AND business partners with the urban wildman?
To answer that, we need to fast forward to 2017.
With two degrees and an array of working experience under my belt, I was finally living out a version of my childhood dreams in a totally unexpected way – by becoming a landscape architect.
At this point, Jamie and I were almost a year into the landscape architecture grad program at the University of Toronto. We became friends almost immediately, but it took until the end of our second term to hang out one-on-one… as partners on the last group project of term.
Brainstorming project ideas outside in the evening sun was way more appealing than slogging away at our desks, so we snuck out of studio and strolled down to the El Rey bar in Toronto’s Kensington market.
As we sat down on the patio, the first words out of Jamie’s mouth were, “Soooo, we’re not actually working, right?”
Round one was ordered.
Conversation was the easiest thing in the world. It wasn’t a date – we were just two burned out grad students enjoying each other’s company.
Round two.
I discovered that Jamie was secretly a nerd. Jamie discovered that I had the best laugh in the world (his words).
Round three.
This casual hang was quickly taking on life changing significance. Who is this amazing person? Where did he come from?
Bill paid.
We sat down as friends. We said goodnight as soulmates.
Foundations

Three years on, we were living together in Parkdale (Toronto’s coolest hood IMO). We had a beautiful house, a small yard, and jobs that were driving us crazy.
After earning degrees in fashion and environmental design, I thought I’d found my calling in landscape architecture. An opportunity to work as a creative designer while saving the world with plants – what could be better?
It turns out, the day-to-day grind of a landscape architect in Toronto was far less glamorous.
Toronto is one of the fastest growing cities in North America. Before I knew it, it was up to my eyeballs in condo projects. I’ve got nothing against condos – they’re an effective way to increase urban density.
That said, working on traditional condo designs as a landscape architect can be a drag. Most condo development projects don’t prioritize landscape design. More often than not, my chic amenity terrace concepts and stunning streetscape designs would get value engineered right out of a project.
Needless to say, I was feeling uninspired.
So I found motivation elsewhere, volunteering my landscape design chops to my neighborhood community.
I applied for several community engagement grants, and ended up winning several of them. Community-focused landscape design was quickly becoming my thing.
Jamie was a year behind me at grad school, so before he’d even graduated, he had a front row seat to my mixed experience with landscape design in Toronto. Despite a scholarship, an academic research grant, several publications, and a degree, Jamie decided landscape architecture wasn’t for him.
Instead, he built a shed.
The damn thing was built like a Roman fort and looked nice enough to live in. It had DIY Shou Sugi Ban (a Japanese wood charring technique) cedar siding, a green roof, and a herb garden above the garbage bin storage area.
His shed building sabbatical behind him (finally), Jamie jumped into job searching mode. Determined as he was to land a gig outside the landscape architecture hustle, he landed a gig in the emerging drone industry on a hunch that drones would become popular tools for aerial mapping and surveying.
Lockdown Hustle

Cue spring 2020 and the global pandemic.
With repeated lockdowns and work-from-home mandates across Canada, Jamie and I were spending what felt like every waking minute at home. Like many people, we spent COVID cooking, baking and binge watching Netflix (Homeland, the West Wing, and Friends were our go-to’s).
When spring finally rolled in and the snow started to melt, we kick-started phase two of our garden makeover.
By the end of the summer, we had raised beds, a vegetable garden, a patio, and a pond with goldfish “rescued” from a local park. The neighborhood raccoons were our nightly nemeses, putting in work trying to snack on the goldfish. To their credit and to our surprise, the fish survived.
Meanwhile, our careers were finally taking off.
Following my early wins with community-focused landscape design, I co-founded Common Space Coalition (CSC) with a former classmate. CSC was an equity-based landscape design non-profit. Two more grant awards funded an extensive local community design research project through a series of impactful community engagements.
Our work at CSC led to us landing an invitation to host an educational webinar for the CSLA (Canadian Society of Landscape Architects). I also started to find my voice, publishing a piece in the magazine Landscape|Paysages advocating for equity-focused design in city building.
After eighteen months of hustle, Jamie had worked his way into an executive role at his company. Always on the lookout for the next opportunity, Jamie made the call to start his own drone business offering aerial mapping and 3D modelling services.
We were working our asses off, but it felt good.
Maybe because of our unconventional career paths, Jamie and I were both invited to join a number of design studio review panels by the University of Toronto landscape architecture faculty. Jamie also took on a part-time adjunct instructor gig, teaching landscape architecture grads about drone mapping.
Packing Up Our Lives

After two lifetimes in Toronto and two years of pandemic lockdown, Jamie and I were going stir crazy. We were both keen on the US, so we started gaming out a move.
What followed was six months of Google searches comparing everything from the supposedly ‘hip’ vibe in Austin to the steamy weather in Miami. After several promising interviews with companies throughout the South and the Midwest, I landed a position at a boutique landscape design firm in Portland, OR.
With two years of hardcore hustling behind us, West Coast chill held some serious appeal. During the few days before I had to accept the offer, Jamie frantically researched Portland (we’d never been).
Great food scene? Check.
Stunning scenery? 100%.
New home? Why not!
We packed up our lives and headed west.
Greensaus
Starting a business together was a goal Jamie and I shared since the first night we hung out in grad school.
After moving into our new Portland pad and furnishing it with a jungle of houseplants, starting a side hustle together felt like the next thing to check off our list.
I’d always wanted to start a blog, and the more we looked into it, a blog seemed like the perfect place to start.
We founded Flow State Creative LLC in 2022. After a few false starts, we found our ‘thing’ and launched Greensaus a year later.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. We’re grateful you’re here.
Dig into the blog or drop us a line. We’d love to hear from you.
Peace!
Rayna and Jamie