Katydid Roots

Some things grow slowly.
A seed planted in the back of your mind. A wish whispered while walking through a forest. You don’t even realize it’s taken root until, suddenly, you’re standing inside a life that looks like the one you dreamed of.

Katydid began as one of those seeds.

I was working as a corporate trainer, living in Arizona—deeply proud to be a desert rat—but something inside me had started to shift. In 2013, a business trip took me to Shanghai. Looking at the map one night, I realized Bali was just a short flight away. It had always been on my bucket list. $150 USD for a round trip? Done. I booked it without a second thought.

What happened on that trip changed everything.

My soul exhaled. For the first time in a long time, I felt home. The air was different. The colors richer. I spent a day in Ubud’s Sacred Monkey Forest, sitting under a canopy of green. The world smelled better—greener, more alive. I watched, I breathed, and I listened to something that had been quiet for too long. I knew, sitting there, that life was going to change. That I had to bring this feeling home.

I loved my desert life, but I craved something lush. And so, slowly, things shifted. Over the years, I studied design—interior, exterior, color theory, feng shui, horticulture, design trends, xeriscaping—pieces of a puzzle I didn’t fully understand yet. There were high highs and low lows. Some of them broke me open. All of them shaped me.

In March of 2020, when the world stopped, I realized it was time to start. Katydid bloomed in the middle of the mess. I built it with the skills I’d sharpened during my corporate career: streamlining processes, training teams, business consulting. But this time, it was built on kindness, creativity, and the wild belief that we are meant to create spaces where people feel seen. Spaces that celebrate life and connect us back to nature.

By 2022, Katydid had its first big event. I stood there, watching something I had dreamed about for a decade finally come to life. Pinch me, right?

And now? We create lush environments and transformative spaces for events of all sizes. We design with plants, florals, and creativity as our medium, and no two events are ever the same.

Meet Katy

I’m Katy, founder of Katydid and a lifelong believer in the magic of green spaces.

I’m the kind of person who, quite literally, hugs trees and thinks that freshly rained-on dirt smells better than just about anything.

My life philosophy? Let’s just try it.

That’s how Katydid was built, and it’s how I show up in every project we take on. I believe in the messy, the in-between moments, and the magic that happens when you trust the process.

Katydid is still a one-woman show on the backend, but we have an incredible traveling event team who make it all possible. Together, we build experiences. We take big ideas, get our hands dirty, and make them real.