IN CONVERSATION WITH: GABINO CAMBA
October 2025
This month, I talked with gardener extraordinaire Gabino Camba. It’s incredibly rare to find someone who, all at once, has an incredible amount of the technical knowledge, an almost poetic and spiritual connection to the Earth, and can weave back and forth between the two skill sets to share his knowledge with clients who have varying degrees of exposure to the plant world, and Camba can do all of that and more. In this month’s newsletter I talk with Camba about listening to the land, planting with good energy, and teaching the next generation of gardeners.
5 minute read
Camba in the garden, May 2025
In my 8 years in the plant industry, Camba might be one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve come across. He is a gardener with an unbelievably deep well of plant knowledge, a profound understanding of materiality, and a very strong design eye. I was introduced to him through my mentor, Martha Burke, a fantastic and prolific gardener & garden designer in the East Bay. My first time meeting Camba, he said something that struck me so deeply and gave me great insight into the vast world of garden design I was stepping into. He was teaching me about irrigation systems and was relentlessly patient with me as I asked him question after question, trying to soak up as much knowledge as I could. I thanked him for sharing his expertise with me and he said “It’s so important to teach the next generation how to do it, and how to do it right.” Camba made me feel, for the first time, like I was part of a legacy of people with their hands in the soil, tending to the land.
How did you get into this work? Who taught you about gardening?
“When I was 19, I started working with my uncle doing maintenance on houses and from there, we started doing bigger and bigger projects. The person that really guided me more into gardening was a Dutch landscape designer named Katrine Benninger. She told me that I was a smart young guy and that I should really learn more about plants: what plants grow in sun, in shade. She told me to learn by reading plant labels and start getting to know the plants little by little until I got familiar with all of them” (A tool Camba taught me to rely on in my early days of designing). “It’s so important to really, really get to know the plants.”
What is your approach to gardening and design?
“The way I feel is that when you’re designing or adding plants, you really have to feel the garden. You have to feel the space, what the person you’re working for wants. You have to dream about it a little. Your client tells you an idea about what they want and you go home and you dream about it, you think about it, that way when you’re actually making it, it just comes naturally.”
Camba & crew, May 2025
Something I love is that you and your crew are always laughing and seem to take so much joy in what you do. Can you talk about how important that lightness is to you and how you create that environment for your team?
“As I said when I first met you, it’s very important to teach young people landscaping and how to work with the Earth, because if my generation doesn’t show you how to do it, nobody will be tending to the land. At the same time, the guys are young and really like to have fun and joke around. So it’s about being patient with them- sometimes super patient- because they do need guidance but what I hope is that even one or two of them will just keep going and teach the next generation. It doesn’t matter what age you are when you learn something new, but when you decide you want to do something, it’s important that you have someone to guide you a little.”
How do you keep learning after all these years?
“Well, when you get to know different people that do the same thing that you do, it’s important to see how they relate to the land and what you can learn from that. Martha (Burke) actually talks to trees she’s pruning and says ‘I’m sorry but we’re gonna remove this branch from you to create new life and a great new garden around you.’ She actually talks to the plants and that’s something I took away from working with her. People have all different kinds of feelings about gardening and plants and it’s important to respect those feelings.”
Something I love about you is how considered you are with the energy you put into plants as you plant them. Can you talk a little more about that?
“Plants are living things and they interact with each other and with us. They all need their own space too, they need their own area to grow and to relate to each other. My uncle taught me that it’s really important to dig big holes with enough nutrients, and mix the new nutrients with the Earth they are going to be living in, to give them the best chance to grow.
It’s very, very important to do it with love. To plant with love. I believe that plants can feel when you put in the work to make them happy. Do it because you want to do it. Do it with passion.”