Tyler Adams in his garden outside of his Bethel home. Adams has new community-focused app, Growers Guild, which helps residents connect with one another and explore nature. Wednesday, May 6, 2026, Bethel, Conn.
H John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media
A budding Plum tree in Tyler Adams garden. Adams has new community-focused app, Growers Guild, which helps residents connect with one another and explore nature. Wednesday, May 6, 2026, Bethel, Conn.
H John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media
Tyler Adams has marked the trees in his garden with blue flags. Adams has new community-focused app, Growers Guild, which helps residents connect with one another and explore nature. Wednesday, May 6, 2026, Bethel, Conn.
H John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media
Tyler Adams in his garden outside of his Bethel home. Adams has new community-focused app, Growers Guild, which helps residents connect with one another and explore nature. Wednesday, May 6, 2026, Bethel, Conn.
H John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media
Evening primrose in Tyler Adams garden, the birds like the seeds. Adams has new community-focused app, Growers Guild, which helps residents connect with one another and explore nature. Wednesday, May 6, 2026, Bethel, Conn.
H John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media
Tyler Adams in his garden outside of his Bethel home. Adams has new community-focused app, Growers Guild, which helps residents connect with one another and explore nature. Wednesday, May 6, 2026, Bethel, Conn.
H John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media
Tyler Adams in his garden outside of his Bethel home. Adams has new community-focused app, Growers Guild, which helps residents connect with one another and explore nature. Wednesday, May 6, 2026, Bethel, Conn.
H John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media
Tyler Adams in his garden outside of his Bethel home. Adams has new community-focused app, Growers Guild, which helps residents connect with one another and explore nature. Wednesday, May 6, 2026, Bethel, Conn.
H John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media
BETHEL – Tyler Adams admitted he never knew how many nature-based organizations and activities were within reach until he joined Connecticut’s grower community a few years ago and became “involved in the space.”
“They’re passionate about their environment and the local ecosystem,” said Adams, a Bethel resident. “They’re willing to learn in regards to making sure their landscapes are constantly benefiting wildlife and educating others to do the same. I really admire their diligence in terms of creating a better environment for their community.”
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Using his expertise as a software developer, Adams created an online community platform, Grower’s Guild, to help Connecticut residents, nonprofit organizations and other groups connect and explore their love of nature. He said the vision for his platform is to offer a free service that will notify people about different nature-based activities in their communities while allowing people to create activities, volunteer and support the local economy.
The platform aims to connect people interested in farming, gardening, hiking, foraging and research.
It acts as an online community board and is free for people to join and post activities, Adams said. Any activities added to Grower’s Guild must be community-focused and nature-based, Adams said.
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Users can also add a setting when posting on Grower’s Guild that allows people to donate or support an activity in their community, Adams said. There are also opportunities for nonprofit organizations to recruit volunteers for local activities, he said. If users don’t find an activity they want in their search, he said they can sign up for notifications in case that activity becomes available in the future.
While Grower’s Guild is currently based in Connecticut, Adams said he would like to expand his platform to include organizations and activities from other states.
After launching Grower’s Guild in late March, Adams said his platform has been “very well-received” and he hopes to see “more interactions in the community through nature” over time. Additionally, he said he’d like to have Grower’s Guild become the go-to platform for local nature-based activities and see “a greater appreciation and awareness for these organizations in the community.”
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Adams said he became interested in the growing community during COVID after realizing “that the systems that had provided us food couldn’t completely be depended on.”
“I guess it came to me that I understood how fragile the system was and it would be useful to have some redundancies in place in terms of being able to understand how to grow my own food and do it in a way that didn’t require too many outside inputs,” Adams said. “I wanted to change my place in the community, so my land is used productively rather than passively manage it.”
In his research, Adams said he explored herbology, native plants and permaculture design, which he described as “working with the natural systems we have in place to increase production while minimizing input and labor.”
For the past three years, he has been transforming his lawn into “an ecological, sustainable production space for food and animals.” Adams said the goal is to “make something that’s food productive, ecologically sustainable and aesthetically pleasing.”
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However, as he researched how to best reach his gardening goals, Adams said he understood the best way to learn was by connecting with the experts and started attending nature-focused events in his area, including an Arborist 101 class at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven.
Today, Adam’s lawn is an “experimental” landscape of different plants ranging from plum trees and evening primrose to chokeberry bushes, nodding onions and American cranberrybush viburnum. He said he is working to grow gooseberries and pawpaws and hopes to add a wildlife pond.
While he previously worked in software development for over a decade, Adams said he left his full-time job in software development to focus on Grower’s Guild.
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