Start In Your Own Backyard

Start In Your Own Backyard is a mini-series about how the choices we make, both big and small, can transform the world around us. For host Steve Nygren, this is personal. Two decades ago, while running through the woods on his beloved family farm, he spotted bulldozers toppling trees for what he feared was another soulless suburban development. That sobering moment sparked a question that changed the course of his life: Isn’t there a better way to build community? One that works with nature, not against it?

The answer became Serenbe, a community built on biophilic principles, sustainable living, and the idea that well-being starts in the everyday spaces where we live, work, and connect with others.

Through stories, guest experts, and personal reflections, Start In Your Own Backyard invites listeners to find their own sense of agency. Whether it’s rethinking your diet, running for school board, planting edible landscapes, or advocating for change in your city, the podcast explores what it means to take action right where you are.

With a strong belief in the power of optimism, even when things feel tough, this series shows how each of us can create ripples of positive change.

The question is simple: What gifts do you bring? And are you ready to use them?

Want to dive deeper? Steve’s book, Start In Your Own Backyard: Transforming Where You Live with Radical Common Sense, is out now. An instant USA Today Bestseller, this book is part memoir, part guidebook. It offers a blueprint for building sustainable, connected communities, places where wonder exists in the everyday and people of all ages can truly thrive.

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Start In Your Own Backyard

Introducing Season 2 of Start In Your Own Backyard

August 14, 2026 • Serenbe Media Network • Season 2

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Season 2 of Start In Your Own Backyard premieres Monday, August 17.

What if the places we build could help solve the problems they’ve helped create? That question sits at the heart of Season 2 of Start In Your Own Backyard, as visionary placemaker Steve Nygren looks beyond Serenbe to meet people who are rethinking the way we live, work, connect, and care for the places we call home.

The built environment, as it exists today, is at the root of many of our biggest challenges. But it can also be a powerful part of the solution.

And there’s a bigger lesson running through these conversations: we all have the power to take agency where we are, using whatever skills, resources, and opportunities we have. With a belief in the power of optimism, even when things feel difficult, this season explores how each of us can create ripples of positive change by starting right where we are.

Are You Ready For Radical Common Sense? Visionary placemaker Steve Nygren chronicles the rise of Serenbe, a pioneering model of biophilic living outside Atlanta, and charts a path for others wishing to challenge the status quo, embrace optimism, and reinvent their communities…and themselves.

Order the book today.

Subscribe on Substack and receive a free essay from Steve every week.

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Start in your own backyard. Premieres Monday, August 17th. In season one, I traced the story of CRMB and the decisions I made as an accidental developer that put nature and human connection back at the heart of community life. In season two, I'm looking outward, sitting down with people who have shaped the way I think about the built environment, and others who have learned from CRMB and are now putting these ideas into action through ambitious overthinking projects of their own. I'll talk with people like Price Bell, who is drawing on his experience as a real estate developer to reimagine his family's farm and surrounding community in Lexington, Kentucky. Ellen Dunan Jones, professor emeritus at the School of Architecture at Georgia Tech and an expert in sustainable suburban redevelopment. And Matthew Rayford, a renowned chef and farmer who is exploring what it means to bring agriculture back into our daily lives and communities. And there's a bigger lesson in these stories too: the power of taking agency wherever you are. Using whatever skills and resources you have, with a strong belief in the power of optimism, even when things feel tough, this season explores how each of us can create ripples of positive change, starting right where we are.