Ep 231: From Farm Boy to Founder: How Matthieu Mehuys Built a Purpose-Driven Gardening Business with Global Reach

“If you look deep into nature, you’ll find the blueprint for a thriving business.”

That’s the philosophy Matthieu Mehuys has cultivated—literally—from the soil up. From his beginnings on a Belgian family farm to founding a globally scalable regenerative design business, Matthieu shares how he turned a health crisis and a backpacking breakdown into a sustainable business that not only heals the planet, but educates and empowers others to do the same.

Matthieu is an award-winning landscape architect and founder of Polonia Landscape Architect. Through his masterclasses, AI-supported tools, and best-selling book The 12 Universal Laws of Nature, he’s revolutionizing how people think about land, food, and freedom—bringing sustainable garden design out of elite hands and into everyday backyards.

We Also Talked About:

• Why 95% of beginner gardeners give up—and how he solves it
• What business owners can learn from a weed-infested garden
• How a single client request led to a scalable, global model
• The reason most landscape services are designed to keep you dependent
• Why native vs. invasive plants is more complex than you think
• The three-step framework for starting a regenerative garden anywhere
• How regenerative farming could reverse climate change in 7 years
• Turning crisis into clarity: what dengue fever taught him about entrepreneurship
• The surprising business power of understanding ecosystems
• How to build a profitable business that doesn’t compromise your values

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RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Book:  The 12 Universal Laws of Nature by Matthieu Mehuys
• Matthieu’s Regenerative Design Podcast
  • Apple
  • Spotify

• Project Kamp (YouTube channel) – https://www.youtube.com/@ProjectKamp

   

My newsletter is for people who need a way to make money from home so they can build a better life for themselves and their families:
👉 https://onlinebusinessliftoff.com/newsletter

_____________

Trudy Rankin is the host of the Online Business Launchpad Podcast, Director of West Island Digital and the founder of the Online Business Lift-Off program.

Affiliate Disclaimer: If you click on links on this page and then make a purchase, I may earn a commission (at no extra cost to you).  I am a proud affiliate of these resources because I use them in my own life and business.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 231: From Farm Boy to Founder: How Matthieu Mehuys Built a Purpose-Driven Gardening Business with Global Reach

In this episode, I talk with Matthieu Mehuys, landscape architect, regenerative forming, regenerative farming advocate and author of 12 Universal Laws of Nature. We explore how he turned a childhood obsession with plants into a thriving global business, teaching others to create low maintenance, self-sustaining gardens and farms using nature’s own rules.

From hitting rock bottom in the Amazon to launching a high impact online course, Matthieu shares practical lessons about resilience, niching [00:01:00] down, and building a mission driven brand. And Matthieu is the perfect guest for anyone looking to align their business with purpose and impact. His journey from burnout to breakthrough is full of valuable insights for solopreneurs and change makers who are ready to stop spinning their wheels and start creating lasting, scalable value, one garden at a time.

Trudy Rankin: Welcome to the Online Business Launchpad podcast. I’m Trudy Rankin, and this podcast is for business owners who want to hear stories, tips, and advice from online entrepreneurs and experts who have overcome problems and challenges to get to success, because if they’ve done it, so can you. My mission is simple. I want to help you solve the challenges you face as an online business [00:02:00] owner so that you can have more time and money for yourself and your family.

And feel like you’ve gotten your sanity back in your life.

Welcome to the Online Business Launchpad podcast. Today I have got a guest with me who’s into something that I’m actually really, really fascinated with.

Because the type of business that he has is not your typical business that you might be considering or thinking about. I think the closest thing to it is I had a client once who I helped get started building up a lawn mowing business.

This is an architectural landscaping business and we will get into the details of what that means in a minute. But Matthieu thank you so much for being on the podcast. 

Matthieu Mehuys: Yeah. Trudy. Thank you for having me. We already said at the beginning of the interview, I’m very excited to be with you because I appreciate your podcast and, and the work you’re doing for helping people like myself, let’s say a couple years ago.

And I’ve worked with a, a [00:03:00] number of coaches myself, and it’s, it’s really a game changer. So I’m excited to dive into that. 

Trudy Rankin: I’m really interested in digging into to what you do. How about if we start by, if you could just explain a little bit about your background and what brought you to what you do today?

Matthieu Mehuys: Yeah, that’s a good question. So actually for me, it all started on a farm. I grew up on a family farm. My father and my brother are farmers. Still today. It’s an active farm in Belgium, and by the time I was three years old, I got extremely fascinated about plants like. How insane it is that if you have a tiny little seed and you put it in the soil, it grows into a plant.

Like I remember I was still in winter, I was growing corn inside the house and it was a huge plant. And I was like, huh, how is that even possible? And then time went on and by the time I was five years old, I decided, and I told my parents, I’m going to start my own garden. Because I was like, wow, you can even grow seeds and then you can eat that food.

And then that was like my goal [00:04:00] to grow my own food. After some asking, and my parents are super busy, they’re just starting out a farm as a young couple. My mother had her own business, so they were like, no, we don’t have time for that. And the farm is like quite industrial. It’s, cattle and cash crops at that time.

Now it’s changed. We’re getting more into regenerative farming today, and I’ve helped make that transition. We can talk more about that later. But yeah, so I was five years old and I made the decision. After some asking eventually they say, yeah, there’s a little corner in the back of the garden.

It’s neglected. Go and do your thing. And I started out, and for some reason, I started out with growing radishes and it was only in retrospect that I knew it’s like the easiest vegetable to grow. So I put my seeds in the soil and I had my first harvest of radishes, and I was so happy and excited and proud of myself.

I still remember in summer with my mother and my parents like having a salad. With the radishes that I have grown, that was like, that was pure fascination. And I [00:05:00] think still today, for your listeners, it’s one of the most rewarding things to do is to grow your own food and to eat it. Maybe not for everyone, that’s fine.

But yeah, from that early fascination, I said, okay, now I’m going to grow everything. How hard can it be? So I got a bunch of other seeds. I prepared my soil and I started putting, seeds everywhere, randomly thinking, oh, everything’s going to grow.

And then I left it as it is and I came back a couple weeks later but then my garden was completely overgrown by weeds. Weeds that were taller than myself. And why am I telling you the story is that from that moment on and always in my life, I wanted to understand how things worked. I was like, why did it happen to me? Why? So life went on. I studied. I did a bachelor’s in landscape, or in garden design.

I did a master degree in landscape architecture in Germany and Munich. I got a nine to five job. I was in like a bit of the golden cage, like we talked about, but then I was, yeah, I was happy I had my job, but then I found myself becoming [00:06:00] depressed because I said, I studied this because I want to create things.

I want to be be outside. I want to be make impact today. Not like in, in Germany. It’s very bureaucratic and I’m happy I did it because it’s really a high standard. And I learned a lot of, like, engineering, like the good way of doing things, but it wasn’t for me. So I quit my job. I packed my backpack and I hit the road, to discover projects that are having a positive impact on the planet.

Because, my generation, we went through Al Gore, the inconvenient truth. We were like, oh shit. What, what’s happening with climate change? And I said, I want to do something about it. Or at least I want to be discover projects where people are actually doing something good. Because if you open the news, it’s only bad.

So I went to a bunch of farms, regenerative farms. I worked in gardens. I volunteered. I did a permaculture training. I really dig deep into into the steam and I started to understand how nature works. And this is pretty much the basis of my work, is that if you want to create a beautiful garden that is also low [00:07:00] in maintenance, because oftentimes people think it’s either or, but you can actually bring it together and the only way to do it is, is to do it nature based.

From that experience, I traveled the world and then actually my life went really south, because Mother Nature had a different plan for me because I went to the Amazon Rainforest, which is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen my, in my life in the Ecuador, rainforest.

Really deep. We traveled for like 20 hours to get into the depth of it. It was it left such a deep impression on me, like so many beautiful things. We have to protect it. And then, you know what happened? I got dengue, which is like malaria, for I think maybe in Australia are more familiar with dengue.

It’s not a fun disease. So from that moment, my life actually went south. Like I. I became really sick. I had no more money left because I was traveling so much. Actually, my girlfriend dumped me at that time as well. So everything was down, down, down, down, down. And in retrospect, this is like Steve Jobs says, you can only connect the dots [00:08:00] looking backwards.

This was actually the greatest gift of my life that this happened because I’m rock bottom, right? And I’m like, okay, I can’t lose more. Like I’ve lost pretty much everything. Let’s now make something that really has an impact in the world. And I figured, okay, entrepreneurship and starting my own business, this is going to be the way that I can have a direct impact on the environment by inspiring people to do the right thing.

I’ve had a lot of knowledge from I was a kid at, at three years old till traveling the world, finding all this knowledge that is out there talking to people. I actually made a documentary or I also built my thesis on food security around the world. So I had all this knowledge and I think mother nature was like, Hey, you, you have enough knowledge now.

Now go and do something with it. So then from that experience I said, okay, I’m going to dedicate my life to helping people to, become self-sufficient in their own garden, to become experts at gardening, but doing it in a way that is in harmony with nature. So we [00:09:00] started out, my business, Paulownia Landscape architects started working with people, one-on-one, like we design everything, and we set everything up with the contractors. But then something funny happened, Trudy, I had a client, we completely finished, like it is a big estate, right? And we, we redid like one third of the property and we finished the job and the client was like, wow, it’s really beautiful.

I love what you did, but you know what? I’m sick and tired of having a landscape architect. I want to be experience what it is to do it myself. It might sound weird, right? She probably didn’t say it in that way, but it was like, oh, I’m done with people coming and doing stuff for me. I want to be experience what it is myself to make my hands dirty, to plant the plants.

And I said, wait a minute. I had some idea, like something was boiling in my head. Like, I have so much knowledge. Can’t I also teach it to people rather than coming in and selling it at a very high price point because it’s expensive if I need to do all the work or our team. It’s kind of like, do you have time or do you have money?

[00:10:00] And then I said to that client, you know what? I’m going to teach you everything that I know and I’m going to do it in a masterclass. I found a few other people to join the course and I taught everything that I know and I also incorporated, an AI system and now people from all over the world can actually follow that course because with the AI system, and because it’s based on how nature works on a global level, and it’s actually also the title of my award-winning book, 12 Universal Laws of Nature, How to Get the Most Potential Out of Your Land, it’s like it doesn’t really matter where you are on the planet. When you follow these rules and you follow these guidelines, you’re going to become successful and you’ll get what you want in your garden without the frustration, the overwhelm, all the weeds and all those things.

That’s in a nutshell what I’ve been up to in the last couple of years. 

Trudy Rankin: I find that really fascinating. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a little while, you may or may not know that my husband and I do a lot of traveling around, and we’re currently at the time of recording this podcast.

[00:11:00] We’re in a place called Katherine, up in the Northern Territory of Australia, which is about three and a half hours south of Darwin. It’s tropical, it’s hot, it’s humid. And I am a gardener at heart with a black thumb and I can grow a few things and get them right, but I love growing plants. And on my balcony, we’re living in this two lots of places here are on like stilts and so the living areas are up on the second story.

And I have got a very few small plants that are growing on my balcony and it’s fascinating to me how it is possible in the smallest places and the most cramped and what you would think impossible places to actually grow your own food and do that successfully. And I’m really interested in the fact that you’re talking about sustainable methods for growing food and becoming [00:12:00] self-sufficient, because another thing that’s all… you know here in Australia

for some people they have issues with homelessness. The food prices are going up and things like that. And so the more that people can know how to grow their own food, the better off that people are. As you’ve worked with the people who come in and do your course or they might be interested in, in your book, what would be the biggest challenge that they tend to have when they’re trying to either be self-sustainable or be ecologically sensible about what they grow?

Matthieu Mehuys: Oh yeah, that’s a good question again. So mostly that people don’t have the knowledge. And they don’t know where to start, and then that gives them a lot of overwhelm and frustrations because it’s like. in the tropics, it’s less because you don’t have that much different seasons. But down south where you are, you have seasons, right?

So what tends to happen is people, it’s like winter, we’re not thinking about gardening, and then all of a sudden spring starts and people go [00:13:00] outside and they start seeing some flowers in the neighbors and they’re, oh. Maybe it’s time for me to start doing gardening, which by the way, it’s like .The worst time of the year to start gardening is, is when everything starts to grow.

’cause plants are growing, so they’re like, oh what could I do? Oh, I’m just going to drive to a garden center. Buy some plants and then they drive to the garden center. Plants are often, in garden centers, they’re made to look good and they’re pushed hard with a lot of chemicals so that people buy them.

So they’re actually growing too much. They’re flowering. So the plants are actually quite weak. They look really beautiful because they’ve been put in greenhouses and, it’s like putting a lot of chemicals on them to make them look good, and then they buy all the things that look fancy and good and like, wow, this is going to be amazing.

They return home and they’re like, okay, yeah, I’ll just stick some plans there and some there. Maybe look at some of the labels, like sun shade, I guess that’s, and then they put them in the ground. They pray to God like, this is going to be the year that it’s going to [00:14:00] work because I’ve been trying this for five years or 10 years, but this year it is going to work.

I’m pretty sure. And then by the time it’s summer, most of the plans are dead and they’re just devastated. Like, oh, I spent again, a couple of hundreds. Some people spent in the thousands to do that. And they think that’s just the way it’s it is. And it doesn’t because if you really nail it and you study and you understand nature and you get expert guidance, you buy the plants once and you don’t have to buy them at expensive garden centers, you can find a way around them. Then you plant them once and then it tries for several years, if not for a lifetime, if you’ve really done it really well. So yeah, I think people are stuck in that system. And then a funny thing, even, Trudy, is that and this is a little bit against my own industry, but the gardening and landscape industry has no interest in you becoming successful at gardening. And it might sound a little bit like, oh, it’s conspiracy or whatever, but they don’t even know because [00:15:00] it’s just how things are done. They need you to come back every year to keep buying stuff.

So they actually sell stuff that doesn’t work. They also sell a lot of chemicals and tools that are, I could say 95% of those things don’t work. So I figured what are the tools that actually work? What are the, the systems that do work? So yeah, it’s the same with the landscaping, maintenance companies.

And again, I’m not against them. They’re doing the best they can. It’s mostly the lack of knowledge. But I was with a friend in Canada, a few weeks ago ’cause we were doing some business there as well. And, I was having a coffee on his terrace and I saw the landscape maintenance team doing some stuff.

They were pretty much just blowing away all the leaves in the garden. And I was joking with my friend. I say, Hey, look they’re doing maintenance to increase the maintenance, and that’s what most landscape companies do. They come in, they do something that makes the garden somewhat look good, but then before, it’s full of weeds because we’re not thinking, and, or a lot of people are not thinking [00:16:00] like nature.

Because if you look into nature, there is no maintenance. Tell me where do you find maintenance in a abundant natural landscape? So why are we struggling so much as a gardener? So I find that’s my niche where I really want to help people. And then also we’re moving from that to also farming.

But that’s going to take some more time because yeah, we’ve had some amazing results on our own farm. We’re now, also bringing that to other farms. Because farming is obviously a passion of mine as well. 

Trudy Rankin: That makes me feel a little bit better because it gives me a reason or something to blame for my black thumb for the, some of the stuff that I’ve tried and can’t, and actually haven’t been able to grow, on a, admittedly, on a balcony which has a very unique microclimate.

And so that’s, that’s fascinating, but to say that it’s partly because the plants have been artificially grown, or challenged to grow faster than you would normally from the plant centers. It’s nice. Nice to think that that could be part of the problem. I [00:17:00] suspect it’s mostly because I haven’t done my research. 

Matthieu Mehuys: I want to be jump in quickly because I hear that a lot.

This like, I have black thumbs, I don’t have green thumbs. And, and I think it’s also a big scam or a big light because everybody can have green thumbs. Like it’s in our nature, we come from nature. We just have to tap back into it and yeah, get rid of all the things that a lot of people are claiming and, and get to the things that have, like, we have approval so that the things we do work. Like I redid a, a garden for a client.

It’s 300 square meters and it only took 12 hours of maintenance in one year after completing it. And it has berries, it has fruit trees, it has flowers, lots of, butterflies, birds. Everything is there. Like, because my client came to me, said I want the most abundant garden ever. I want everything, but I don’t want any maintenance ’cause I have a busy job.

And she had an injury on her foot. So I was like, okay, you know what, I’ll do it. And [00:18:00] we applied all the knowledge I gathered and then it was only 12 hours of maintenance in in a year. That’s one hour a month, which is like 15 minutes a week. 

That’s another thing that I keep hearing. Ah, I don’t have time for it. But it’s not true if you know how to do it. It’s super simple. Yeah. 

Trudy Rankin: I have a family member who, what you’ve just said would be music to their ears. ’cause they hate mowing the lawns. They hate weeding and they’ve been thinking about turning the front yard into a meadow.

And I, I want to talk about that in a minute, but I want to be also touch base around something that you, you briefly mentioned and then we started talking about black thumbs. Which I hear what you’re saying about the black thumbs. It really is an excuse, but my husband and I are, have been interested in sustainability for a while and we watch this one YouTube channel called Project Kamp, and it is a group of people who have gotten together and bought a chunk of land in Portugal and their goal is to try to learn [00:19:00] how to live on the land more sustainably. 

Every year they bring in people to help them rescue the land, start to rebuild the land, rebuild some of the stone buildings that are there, and it is very interesting. It’s a very interesting thing to me. Do you, in the work that you do with farms, let’s say, where you’re looking at helping farmers create a more sustainable way of farming, what kinds of problems and challenges do you tend to strike with farmers who are trying to do that?

Matthieu Mehuys: Oh yeah, that’s another very, very important question, and I want to even phrase it a little bit before answering it. Because if we want to be be sustainable, if we want to be sustain this planet, or even if we want to drive this planet, what it was made for, then we have to make a change in farming, because it’s the biggest land use in the planet.

You can find like satellite images of how farmers are using the soil, and then every time it’s springtime they’re plowing the land. [00:20:00] That evaporates a lot of, greenhouse gases and it’s like, oh, now it’s easy, right? You can say, oh, the farmers are bad. They’ve been like, it’s their fault, but you can’t do that because they’ve been pushed in that direction.

I grew up on a farm. My father, became quite industrial, and if he wouldn’t have done it, I wouldn’t have been able to study and do all the things I’m doing now. He would’ve gone bankrupt, especially with the European Union making policies of, we need to do mass production. If you don’t do mass production, you’re out of business.

So there was no other way. But now we are in a different time where we are aware of all the problems that we are facing, which is soil depletion, erosion, like a lot of the soils are being washed into the ocean. And if you lose the top soil, then that’s your growing medium. That’s where all the nutrients are.

Pollution, because of all the chemicals that have been used. So there’s, there’s a bunch of challenges that have a really deep impact on the land, but most importantly also on our personal [00:21:00] health. Like all the cancers, all the modern diseases are skyrocketing. Cancer, diabetes, all of these things.

And they’re all linked to, gut health. And you might be wondering why are we talking about gut health? I thought we were talking about farming. I’ll get to the point really soon, but in our stomach we have microorganisms that help us digest our food. And it’s like the most important thing. They say like, I think more than 30% of our body weight is actually microorganisms that are helping us.

So now if you eat chemical food and processed food that destroys your microbiome. When your microbiome is destroyed, you can’t digest food properly, and then you get all the diseases. Now why I’m telling you this, it’s exactly the same in the soil, like our stomach, when you turn our stomach inside out, that’s actually the root system of plants.

They’re doing the same thing. So similar [00:22:00] that it’s destroying our personal gut health and our health. It’s doing the same thing in the soil, so all the chemicals are destroying the microorganisms and they’re like essential for plants to be able to absorb or to take the nutrients into the soil because we are using all the chemicals again.

So how can we now produce food also on a mass scale because the population is growing without destroying the soils. Let’s also look into nature and how it’s done in nature. There’s no chemicals. We don’t use that. So let’s first get rid of most of that. Obviously farming, it’s a very, low margin business, so there’s very little room for errors, so we have to calculate it very well.

Then how you can do it is when you make your farm more regenerative. So regenerative farming is what I really believe is the solution into, making farms more profitable, making environments more healthy, and making food that is healthy for us [00:23:00] to consume. And then if you want to get into the nitty gritty of it, there’s a few principles in regenerative farming that I also use actually in regenerative gardening.

What I teach to people on a home scale is that keep your soil covered as much as possible, because this is the quote I like to refer to from Einstein. He said, look deep into nature, and then you’ll understand everything better. Now look deep into nature. You don’t see bare soil. It hardly ever happens.

Only when there’s landslides or wildfires. Or actually some, wild boars might, might do that as well. And you want to be jump in there? There, you, you have a comment? 

Trudy Rankin: I have to because if you go into the middle of Australia, 

Matthieu Mehuys: yes. 

Trudy Rankin: It’s pretty bare. 

Matthieu Mehuys: Yes, because it’s become desert. Desert.

Trudy Rankin: It’s because it’s become desert, because the climate’s changed and because there’s just not enough rain. Yeah. And so I hear what you’re saying and I think the point is, is [00:24:00] that when you do find bare patches of Earth, there’s a reason for it. 

Matthieu Mehuys: Yes. It’s a negative feedback loop that’s been happening since the industrial revolution.

Maybe even before. They say they claim that it started when, actually when farming started, when they started to cut down forests. But it makes it sound like farming is the problem. And in a way it is, but it’s also the biggest solution of all the modern problems we have today.

Also gardening, I believe. But then even in those deserted areas, what they figured out as well is that it’s because of the lack of, grazing animals that this has become desertified because it’s such a harsh environment. And it actually, in those environments, it, it rains very little, but it does rain sometimes.

It used to now, because it’s so dry, it doesn’t rain anymore. But how can we bring back the rain is to, we have to grow plants because when you grow plants at night, they will evaporate the humidity and at nighttime the [00:25:00] dew will come or that the humidity attracts other humidity, so it’ll attract rain.

So there’s a whole new system where you can do, holistic grazing, which is a system that is mimicking how the animals probably how it used to be in, in the middle of Australia. But in Africa, on the big savannas, you have massive herds of animals grazing the land and they graze the whole area and they obviously leave their, their shit, I don’t know if I can say that. Yeah. The bullshit. And that fertilizes the soil just like in your garden. And then, it can regenerate over time. And that’s actually putting a lot of carbon dioxide in into the soil. So I think farming is, is really the solution to reversing climate change.

’cause the science is also saying if only one third of the farmers get into regenerative farming. and they do it properly, within seven [00:26:00] years, we can go back to pre-industrial revolutions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which equals solving climate change or solving the climate crisis we are in. So yeah there’s a lot of things like, yeah, I said don’t make your soil bare.

And that’s why plowing is probably one of the worst things that you can do in farming. There’s even a book that’s been written in 1800 that’s called the Plowman’s Folly, and that was already pointing out like plowing is actually destroying the soil because you’re like, again, you’re doing something that’s unnatural in nature.

It doesn’t have to put the soil upside down, and then the sun is on it, and then it evaporates, it destroys all the, the microorganisms. So yeah that’s in a nutshell. Again I think we could have several episodes on, regenerative farming, but I’m sure, I believe that is the solution.

Trudy Rankin: And there is a lot there that we could unpack. Just for our listeners, could you maybe just share who [00:27:00] listeners who are interested in gardening in their own area in a sustainable way, whether that’s growing their own food or whether they’re looking to try and improve the nature around where they live, what would be three key things that they should think about or do to be able to get started on that journey? 

Matthieu Mehuys: Yes, so the most important thing, first of all, is you have to start understanding how nature works, and that’s, you have to observe, you have to study, you have to learn, because that’s like the basis of everything.

Then second of all, it’s the soil. You have to fix your soil. You have to do efforts to make your soil healthy again, because even if you haven’t used chemicals in the past or there’s pollution in the atmosphere, and that will affect your soil. So you have to do some active things of regenerating the soil.

And the most effective way of doing that is, is using high quality compost and not the kind of compost you find [00:28:00] again, in the Garden Center because they’re not built to make quality compost. There’s no interest for them to make really good compost because then you wouldn’t have to buy it again.

Like in the projects that we built for our clients, we collaborate with a regenerative farmer who knows like how to make the best quality compost, which is packed with those microorganisms that we want in our garden. Then we actually only have to do like a couple of centimeters.

People think you have to do a lot of compost to improve it with that system you don’t have to do as much. So it’s generally more expensive because the production process is different. It’s not as industrial. So fixing your soil is, is the key. And then I would say when you fixed your soil, there’s a bit of both, but something in the lines of figuring out the right plans for your location. What soil do you have already? Where are you in the world? Is it a shaded place? Is there a lot of [00:29:00] wind? That’s where I teach my clients in my masterclass. Like you have to think like Sherlock Holmes, investigate, find out what are the shady spots, what soil do I have?

I get really, really curious because when you understand that, you can use that knowledge to, to make some bigger decisions on what is actually going to work in your specific, garden. 

Trudy Rankin: Okay. That’s useful. I want to be ask a question that may end up being slightly controversial. Let me just give you a little bit of background first though.

I’ve lived in New Zealand for a number of years, and New Zealand has a very strong… ’cause. It’s an island nation and to a, a large degree, has been able to avoid a lot of pests and things, not totally, but has been able to avoid a lot of pests, but the country as a whole and the governmental position has been, let’s try and keep it as native as possible.

Let’s try and try and protect the native species. Let’s try and keep them functioning and growing. And so they encourage people to plant and [00:30:00] focus on natives as opposed to things that have been brought in. And I know there are people, certainly I know people who are really keen on making sure that here in Australia that you focus on planting natives.

 What is your position on the trade-off between native species and species that can help feed you and your family? 

Matthieu Mehuys: Yes, it’s a really good question and obviously a very controversial one, and I think it has to be answered with some nuance. But because I do believe doing the efforts of, of keeping out plants that might destroy certain ecosystems is, especially in the natural, let’s say the national parks and all those things, that makes a lot of sense.

But at the same time, I also believe that every plant comes for a reason into a certain environment. Like a plant always comes to fix something in the soil or when there’s a pollution, for example, you have a certain time of plant. So [00:31:00] I think invasive species can actually be used to our advantage when we can produce them in a controlled environment.

Because there’s even a book, written about it. It says, how invasive species are going to save the world, because what’s in, in some like harsh environments, what’s the point? Trying to grow indigenous, native plants, especially when the climate is changing. And what does it even mean native?

Like, okay, a native plant is something that was there for a longer period, but a hundred thousand years ago, there were different plants. So it’s constantly changing. And now we’ve had something with climate change and okay, it’s, we can say it’s manmade, or not. Some people believe it’s not. I believe it is to a certain degree.

So why can’t we use invasive species to regenerate the soil even faster? Because even here in Belgium, we have a plant that is extremely invasive, but it pops up in environments that’s completely polluted. And now they’re figuring out the [00:32:00] research that that plant is actually breaking down the chemi, they call it the forever chemicals.

These are chemicals that ought to, takes thousands of years to, to decompose. Now this plant is helping them to decompose them way faster. So why should we, like the soil is, and nothing is going to grow ’cause it’s completely polluted. So why don’t we use invasive species in a controlled environment to restore and regenerate the soil.

And then quite frankly, when that invasive species has fulfilled its promise to, to break down the chemicals, it’ll actually disappear. So there’s some nuances to be considered. And I have to be honest I’m not a hundred percent clear on what the right thing is to do. It has to be like. We have to look at the scientists.

We have to, before making such decisions, we have to, look deeper into it. But even here in Belgium, we’re getting a lot of invasive species. It’s uncontrollable, but I believe [00:33:00] they’re actually doing a good job at, breaking down those forever chemicals. Yeah. It’s not as, as we think it is.

Trudy Rankin: Yeah, no, I think it’s fascinating. We, my husband and I, have had a property in New Zealand and we have an invasive species from Scotland called gorse, and it’s prickly and spiky and has yellow flowers, and it’s very pretty, but it’s horrible stuff and we fought for years to try and get rid of it, only to discover that if you leave it alone and let it grow, it protects all of the little native seedlings that are coming through and it eventually dies out because they end up overshading it and stuff.

I take your point, I take your point about that. Matthieu, it’s been really, really fascinating talking with you. Can you just go ahead and remind our listeners about the name of your book and give me a two second overview about your podcast. 

Matthieu Mehuys: Yes, thank you. So my book’s called 12 Universal Laws of Nature, How to Get the Most Potential Out of Your Land.

And it’s a synthesis of my personal life, my [00:34:00] personal journey. But then I also figured out there’s certain universal laws by which nature is governed and they’re universal. So they also apply to our personal life view. Like just a quick example is, for example, the law of attraction. You might have heard that for, even in some spiritual teachings.

But plants do the same thing, like they vibrate at a certain frequency, which that’s also another law is the law of frequency. They vibrate at a certain frequency, which gives signals to insects. To either be like, please don’t try and eat me if, because if you do, I’m going to send a lot of toxins in my leaves, that will kill you.

Or it sends signals… when they’re flowering that it sends out signals. Like, Hey, I need your help to pollinate my flowers. So that’s just one of the laws. And then I continue after explaining the laws, I bring all the practical knowledge into like, how do you apply it? How does it help you to become more successful at gardening, at farming?

Anything out outdoors, I [00:35:00] would say, because the laws apply to everything. 

Trudy Rankin: I’ll make sure I put the link to that in the show notes. And just tell people the name of your podcast if they’re interested. 

Matthieu Mehuys: Yeah. That’s, thank you for asking that as well.

That’s the Regenerative Design Podcast. So in that podcast, I interview world leaders that are actually doing good at helping to restore the health of our planet. But not only that, they’re doing great in business because I believe true re regeneration and true sustainability, it has to work both ways.

It has to have a good impact on the environment, but for it to work on a long term. There has to be some monetization or a financial aspect. That’s interesting. And that’s where I interviewed people that are actually doing that. I’m a strong believer of when we can do good for the environment, it’s actually going to be really good for our wallet as well.

And we don’t have to be ashamed about it. Because if you look at the past, there’s a lot of work that has been done around [00:36:00] policymaking. Around NGOs and they all have their place. I deeply respect that. I think they should keep doing it, but if we face it, the results are not there. It’s like since the sixties we know all these things and that hasn’t done much.

Still today we’re running out of time, so we need entrepreneurs and businesses to step in because that’s where the real change happens. 

Trudy Rankin: And to recognize that human nature is human nature and people to make money. 

Matthieu, that’s been really fascinating. I’ll put links to the things you’ve talked about into the show notes, but thank you again so much for being on the podcast.

Matthieu Mehuys: Yeah, it’s my pleasure and Trudy because I, I feel like I want to just add one more thing. It’s to the people that are listening I’d like to help other people to step into their dream and the way I do that is, okay, you have to look into it like your past. It helps to look back to your youth.

What were you doing? What were you fascinated about as a child? And I believe that’s where the gold is because if you’re going to pick something that either your parents tell you to do it [00:37:00] or you think that’s where the big money is, you’re not going to be doing it for a very long time. You’ll burn out. So you have to find something that you’re passionate about, and then you’ll find a way to make it profitable, because that’s what the world needs.

Yeah, I just want to be end on that note. 

Trudy Rankin: Yeah, no, thank you for that.

So if people were interested in reaching out to you or finding out more about what you do, where would they go? 

Matthieu Mehuys: Yeah. Thank you Trudy. So you can find me on most social media platforms. So I have a Instagram and TikTok channel, which is mostly about gardening tips, like easy things that you can apply immediately in your garden.

And then I post a bunch of stuff on LinkedIn, which is more about business development, like we’re getting into development and bigger landscaping projects. So if you’re curious about that, you can follow me on LinkedIn as well. Then if you want to find out more about the masterclass that I mentioned in our interview, you can go to [00:38:00] www.gardenofyourdreams.com/freetraining.

And there you can find a 30 minute free training that’s actually like a tester. You get to learn about how I teach and what you’re going to learn. And then you can, book a meeting with me on Calendly and we can dive deep into your specific garden and see if I can help you to create the garden of your dreams.

Trudy Rankin: Excellent. Thank you so much.

Matthew’s story is a powerful reminder that your business doesn’t need to fit a mold to be successful. Whether you are working from a laptop in the tropics or experimenting with balcony gardens between client calls, the key is really aligning your work with what truly energizes you.

So if this episode planted a few ideas or even challenge some old ones, be sure to hit subscribe so that you don’t miss what’s coming next. And I’d really love it if you would leave a review and if you shared this episode with someone who’s searching for a business model that blends purpose with profit.

[00:39:00] Thanks for joining me, and until next time, keep exploring, keep growing, and keep turning your passion into something that works for you and the world.