Concept study. Spiral Gardens is a real nonprofit, not a client, and didn’t commission or endorse this redesign. The photos are AI-generated placeholders. No results are claimed.
Putting Spiral Gardens’ mission at the center, with clear paths for neighbors to take part.
A South Berkeley nursery and farm, redesigned with its spiral motif connecting it all.
the client
Spiral Gardens Community Food Security Project is a South Berkeley nonprofit, founded in 1993. It runs a plant nursery and a community farm on two city lots along the old Santa Fe rail line. The nursery sells food plants, herbs, and plants native to California, and it helps keep everything else going, including a farm that shares its harvest with the neighborhood. This is an unsolicited concept redesign, made with admiration.
the problem
Spiral Gardens runs four programs, and its site gave them all equal weight. The nursery, which keeps the others going, was one of eight menu items, and two of those led to a program that had ended. Nothing showed how the programs connect, or where a new visitor should start. The home page didn’t give the nursery’s hours, even though it’s open only three days a week, and the menu was made of images without text, so screen readers announced eight unnamed links. Donations came by mailed check or a PayPal link, and the email signup didn’t say what subscribers would get.
the one job
Bring more neighbors to the nursery Friday through Sunday, and give regulars easy ways to stay involved.
design decisions
A home page built as a spiral
Spiral Gardens’ name and logo are a spiral, and I used that shape to guide the design of the whole site. On the home page, the mission statement sits at the center, and the three ways to take part sit around it on a ring of seeds: “Shop the Nursery,” “Dig in on Farm Sunday,” and “Keep it growing.” Visitors can see right away that buying a plant, volunteering, and giving all support the same work.
A hand-made look, in their own voice
Spiral Gardens writes with real enthusiasm: its site calls the stock “useful plants!!” Through a few iterations, I arrived at a look to match. Headings sit on painted signs, pictures are one-color block prints, and the page elements are shaped like things you’d find on a garden gate, such as a postcard, a signpost, or a tear-off flyer.
The nursery comes first
Most neighbors first meet Spiral Gardens at the nursery, and it keeps the farm and the free classes going. In the redesign, it comes first in the menu and on the first screen, with the hours and two ways to visit. Its own page covers what they grow, when they’re open, and how to get there.
What’s on the tables, from Instagram
The nursery’s stock changes every week, too often for a list to stay current, and they already post photos of the tables on Instagram. The redesign would pull in the latest posts automatically and show them as polaroids under “On the tables this week,” on the home page and the Nursery page. Staff have no list to update, and regulars have a reason to check back.
“Are they open?” answered everywhere
The hours appear on the first screen and on every page that needs them, always in the plain text font rather than the painted lettering, so they’re easy to read. Farm Sunday only happens in clear weather, and their site didn’t say whether this Sunday was on. The redesign adds one status line across the site, “Farm Sunday is ON this week,” which staff would switch from a phone. The Visit page shows both entrances on a map that sets no cookies.
Easy ways to stay involved
The Weekend List is an email with a clear promise: every Thursday, what’s on the tables, whether Farm Sunday is on, and one growing tip. For people who want to do more, the Outer Ring offers monthly giving through a simple online form, with monthly selected by default and mailing a check still an option.
the build
The hours, the address, and the Farm Sunday switch each live in one place in Webflow, so staff change them once and every page shows the update. Events, questions, testimonials, and press are CMS collections they can edit themselves. The Instagram feed and a donation platform with monthly giving connect through embeds. The block prints are single-color vector art, so they stay sharp at any size, and the site was built to be accessible from the start, following the WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines.
what I’d measure
Nursery sales happen at the register, so I’d look for the site’s effect in other places. If staff still get calls asking about the hours, the hours need to be easier to find. The Weekend List’s signups, and which part of Thursday’s email people click, would show what to lead with. The giving form, tracked step by step, would show where people stop, so that step can be simplified. Visits to the Visit page on Fridays and weekends show whether the site is sending people to the nursery.
what this means for your business
If you run a nonprofit, a community garden, or a neighborhood group, I can make a website that helps visitors understand your mission right away, and want to get involved.