STELLAR GARDENS
ABOUT US
ABOUT US
Stellar Gardens is the Nash Family Homestead nestled on the Island of Kaua’i, Hawai'i. Here, you can experience organic permaculture gardens in various stages of functionality, bees, sheep, dogs, cats, lots of invasive guinea grass, newly budding fruit trees, creative opportunities and Artists of all ages. We aim to create a place where our basic needs are always met: Clean Water, Organic Food, Fresh Air, Dry Shelter, Hot Baths, and Clean Fertilizer Creation so we are supported in creating Art in other mediums.
Stellar Gardens is a loving place where Joy is our most precious offering. Our intention is to share this creative abundance with the world, the community of Kaua`i, and you.
OUR VISION
Stellar Gardens is a family exploration of sustainability based on the Quaker principles of non-violence, non-discrimination, and the belief that the spiritual and the practical are One.
Stellar Gardens is a loving place where Joy & Art are our most precious offerings.
We will record and share this exploration using every form of media.
Sharing with the world the creation of this unborn living system is the ultimate goal of this project.
We believe there is only ever one problem and one solution.
Separation is the problem and the recognition of unity is always the solution.
We are of One Mind.
OUR MISSION
Stellar Gardens’ mission is to educate children and their parents about honeybees through in person beekeeping and hands-on experience with the honeybees and all they make.
OUR STORY
Jackson & Melissa Nash are artists who fell in love in 2010 and committed to always having fun. This has often come in the form of teaching and sharing their love of the earth and its creatures with children and their parents. They have hosted three different children's educational groups throughout their time together, the biggest and most educational for them has been growing their own family while homesteading off grid.
Their homestead was recently featured on the Discovery Channel show, Homestead Rescue, Season 8, Episode 6 Tropic Thunder - available for streaming on MAX & Prime.
Jackson + Melissa's love for the bees has always been part of the relationship, but their work directly with honey bees began in 2015. They have always included their own and friends' children, as well as school groups, in their beekeeping adventures and are excited to share their love for the bees with visitors of Kaua'i.
JACKSON
Jackson Nash is an artist, father of 3, and homesteader who has work in child education for many years.
Born in Los Angeles to actress Susan Sennett Nash, and musician Graham Nash, he moved to Kaua’i when he was one and has been there off and on ever since.
After high school he enrolled at the Academy of Art in San Francisco where he studied filmmaking and editing.
This led to a career in film, television & advertising that lasted nearly fifteen years and took him all over the planet, from Kenya to Shanghai, through Europe and across the US. His work includes creating advertisements for companies such as Puma shoes, television programs, and documentaries.
As he grew tired of the waste he witnessed being generated by the film and television industry he started a website devoted to recontextualizing environmentalism, Superforest.org, which grew to include a large group of volunteer artists, writers and contributors all over the world. At its peak, Superforest was viewed more than 200,000 times in a single day.
After ten years of living in Manhattan, NY, Jackson returned home to Kaua’i where he met his future wife Melissa, and together they began building community and studying permaculture.
He and Melissa moved on to the land known as Stellar Gardens in 2012 shortly before the birth of their daughter. Their son was born on the land unassisted in a home he built in 2015, and a second son was born in 2021, in a house they bought elsewhere and reassembled on the land in 2018.
In the past twelve years, he has continued to study community creation, with an emphasis on conflict resolution and interpersonal communication, in addition to the every day learning that comes from homesteading. He is a builder and architect, a cook and a baker, a beekeeper, a botanist, a plumber and electrician, a shepherd, a hunter, a student of Hawaiian history and culture, and an author and musician.
He has designed and built the land’s four working biodigesters, which turn food scraps and human waste products into methane gas and fertilizer.
He is an excellent chess player, with a 1500 avg. FIDE rating, which puts him in the top 10% of the world’s chess players.
He also very much enjoys building things out of cob.
MELISSA
Melissa Nash is an Artist, Wife, Mother of 3, Homesteader, Lover & Queen Bee at Stellar Gardens. She grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania where she explored the outdoors with her family and friends for as long as she can remember. She veered in a challenging direction as a teenager, which ultimately led her to become a counselor's assistant for a program for kids like her - needing guidance and a path towards creativity and self discovery.
After several years counseling, at 21, she moved to California where she earned a BS in Psychology from UCLA with a minor in photography in 2009. After graduation, she pursued concert photography as well as candid style family photography while working at Apple, before moving to Kaua'i to become a nanny.
As all things lead to the next, in 2010, she and Jackson reconnected and fell in love, then embarked on permaculture community creation in collaboration with several friends. Melissa + Jackson created a children's program called The Zero Wonderlanders, where they hosted children and their parents and learned about gardening and free spirited play in nature.
By 2012, they had acquired land to start their homestead and also began their journey to become parents. Stellar Joy was born in September 2012, their son Vervain was born in September 2015, and their most recent addition to the family, Neo, was born in June 2021. Now with three children, a flock of sheep, three dogs, many cats and bees, and hundreds of trees, they have created a new children's program to educate and entertain their own and other children of Kaua'i about homesteading, art, and all the joys (and challenges) that can come from both.
Melissa has spent her time as a parent reprogramming herself and how she parents through studying and practicing the methods of Janet Lansbury, Robin Einzig's Visible Child, and countless other connected parenting experts in the field. She is dedicated and committed to finding kind and compassionate ways to interact with children of all ages, while tending to the bees and the rest of the needs of her family and the homestead.