Steve Nygren charts Serenbe’s evolution in ‘Start in Your Own Backyard’
On a sunny spring afternoon about a decade ago, in the General Store at Serenbe, the experimental community tucked into the woods of Chattahoochee Hills, a group of children burst in to buy treats. After they left, the shopkeeper leaned out the door and called one of the boys by name. “Your mother will be upset if she sees you running around with no shoes on!” she scolded. That small, ordinary moment captured the essence of Serenbe: children free to roam, neighbors who know each other, life unfolding close to the land.
In the two decades since Steve Nygren, still vibrant and active at age 80, first carved Serenbe out of farmland, it has become more than a neighborhood. It is his legacy project and a laboratory for what he calls “biophilic design” — a philosophy he lays out in his new book, “Start in Your Own Backyard” (Matt Holt Books, $30). Part memoir, part manifesto, the book places him alongside other thought leaders who’ve used their careers to argue for a different way of living.
Nygren outlines 12 principles of biophilic communities, among them: Preserve nature and disturb it as little as possible; design walkable streets; ensure access to fresh food; embrace diverse, aesthetic architecture; and prioritize clean energy. They are ideas that seem like common sense, yet have been ignored for decades by real estate developments designed to optimize profit. The result of ignoring biophilia, he argues, is a society that is sicker, unhappier and more disconnected than ever. Biophilic design, he believes, is the antidote. In the book, Nygren illustrates how these principles can be applied anywhere — from city neighborhoods to small towns to individual backyards.
From farming to fine dining
Nygren was born in Colorado, where his Swedish ancestors settled in the 1800s. He grew up on a working farm in the Rocky Mountains, helping raise cattle, wheat, sugar beets and corn. “I could hardly wait to get away,” he recalls. Farming was hard, unrelenting work, and as a boy he longed for something different.
At the University of Colorado, he studied architecture, but a summer job in hospitality would change his path. What he thought would be part-time work led to a seven-year stint with Stouffer’s Food Corp. In 1969, the company sent him to Atlanta to open a hotel on West Peachtree. By then, he was hooked on the energy of the industry.
Just a few years later, Nygren struck out on his own. In 1973 he opened The Pleasant Peasant, a casual but refined restaurant that introduced Atlantans to a new style of dining.
“It became the chic place,” he recalls. Over the next two decades, the concept grew into a company with dozens of restaurants across several states, making Nygren a national trendsetter in casual fine dining.
But Nygren was more than a restaurateur. He had an instinct for city-building. His restaurants were often anchors for urban redevelopment in blighted areas, and in the 1980s he helped lead Midtown Alliance during a period of transformation. He pushed for walkable streets, better zoning and a master vision for Midtown long before such ideas were fashionable.
“It just takes a master plan,” he says, pointing to how today’s vibrant Midtown grew from those early ideas.
That mix of hospitality, architecture and civic leadership would later come together in unexpected ways. But at the time, Nygren was simply running hard on the treadmill of success, until a weekend drive south of Atlanta changed everything.
The visionary farmer
The story of Serenbe begins, improbably, with a Shetland pony.
In the early 1990s, Steve and Marie Nygren were living what he calls “a perfect life” in Atlanta’s Ansley Park. “We could walk one way to Symphony Hall and the High Museum, the other to the Botanical Gardens and Piedmont Park,” Nygren recalls. “We had a pool and a Barbie room for the girls. We had everything you could want.”
Then Marie noticed a small ad for a 900-acre farm south of the airport. They weren’t looking to buy — but curiosity won.
“I called and said, ‘We’re not interested in buying anything, but we’ve got three daughters — 3, 5 and 7 — and if you have farm animals, we’d love to show the kids,’” Steve says.
When they arrived, the pony was saddled and waiting. Within days, they owned the place. “It was a purely spontaneous decision — from the heart versus anything logical.”
What began as a weekend refuge slowly became something larger. The family escaped to the farm every weekend to assemble jigsaw puzzles and explore the woods. But Nygren began thinking about the creeping suburban sprawl that threatened to erase the rural landscape around them.
“In 1975 I could drive through 4 miles of country to get to my restaurant in Roswell. Now you can’t tell when you’ve left one town and entered another,” he says.
He began to wonder: “How do we take charge of our own destiny?”
In 2002, Nygren rallied more than 500 landowners to support a zoning overlay protecting 60 square miles of what would become Chattahoochee Hills. Two years later, Serenbe broke ground on the old farm Nygren had purchased: 70% of the land would remain forest and fields; homes would cluster into walkable hamlets; and resources devoted to the arts, food and wellness would anchor the community’s soul.
Friends thought he’d lost it. “Some offered therapy,” he laughs. “Others asked where the marijuana patch was in the woods.”
Nygren’s defiance paid off. When the first 40 home lots were released in 2004, they sold out in six weeks. Serenbe offered what Nygren called “biophilic design” — a philosophy that integrates human life with nature rather than fighting against it. There are no lawns, only native landscapes. Porches replace driveways as the social heart of each block. There are trails, suspended bridges, hidden forest paths and shortcuts that make wandering an act of discovery.
Richard Louv’s 2005 book “Last Child in the Woods” deeply shaped Nygren’s thinking. Louv warned of a “nature deficit disorder” among modern children — an epidemic Serenbe sought to cure by creating a place where “free range kids” could play in creeks and climb trees. For adults, he envisions “uncaged elders” — seniors who stay active, social and engaged through community life.
That philosophy is taking form in Serenbe’s next chapter: a 97-unit aging-in-place campus and expanded medical facility, designed to allow residents to grow older without leaving the community they helped build.
Like all radical new ventures, Serenbe has experienced some challenges.
Today, owning a home in Serenbe requires considerable resources. Single-family homes sell for well over $1 million, and the lowest-priced freestanding structure is an 888-square-foot cottage priced at about $639,000.
“People talk about affordable housing, but when executive housing disappears, so does the tax base,” Nygren says. “We need both to sustain services like police and fire.”
And Serenbe Playhouse, which opened in 2009 and gained national attention for its spectacular outdoor productions, closed in 2019 following “allegations of racial insensitivity, unsafe work environments, and abusive behavior,” according to American Theatre magazine.
Yet the arts remain central to Serenbe’s identity. Every home sale — including future resales — contributes 1% of the purchase price (and 3% of a land-only sale) to the Art Farm at Serenbe, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that presents programming. The Art Farm now hosts more than 75 outdoor performances each year, partnering with groups such as Dad’s Garage Theatre and Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre to connect art, community and nature across its wooded campus.
Legacy and lessons
While much of “Start in Your Own Backyard” traces Serenbe’s evolution, it also works as a guidebook — an invitation for readers to translate its principles into everyday life. Suggestions range from simple daily habits to ideas that would require rethinking how our cities — and our economies — function.
Some of Nygren’s lessons are simple, even nostalgic reminders of how to live well: plant a garden and compost, walk or bike instead of drive, let children have unstructured outdoor play, host neighborhood cookouts, talk with your elders and practice everyday civility. Others are aimed at developers, planners and homeowners’ associations: design walkable, human-scale streets; encourage architectural variety without visual chaos; and embrace mixed-use zoning that supports self-sustaining communities where daily life doesn’t depend on a car.
Nygren also advocates for bigger systemic shifts — geothermal heating and cooling, renewable energy and Serenbe’s well-known “anti-lawn” philosophy — arguing that these choices would create healthier, more sustainable communities. Yet implementing them on a broad scale would require nothing short of a societal overhaul.
The barriers aren’t just cultural but economic: Power companies depend on millions of Georgians tied to a centralized grid, and the turf grass industry alone generates $7.8 billion annually for Georgia’s economy, according to a University of Georgia survey. And both power companies and turf grass support tens of thousands of jobs tied to traditional suburban development.
Moving away from lawns and fossil-fueled infrastructure isn’t just a design decision ― it’s a challenge to powerful business models built on maintaining the status quo.
Ultimately, “Start in Your Own Backyard” is both hopeful and pragmatic. It asks readers to begin with what’s close at hand rather than waiting on sweeping policy.
“We need to stop focusing on what we can’t control and start where we are by creating change in our own sphere of influence, one yard and one community, one backyard at a time,” said Nygren.
AUTHOR EVENT
Steve Nygren. In conversation with Jim Durrett, president and CEO of the Buckhead Coalition. 7 p.m. Dec. 15. McElreath Hall, Atlanta History Center, 130 W. Paces Ferry Road, Atlanta. $12. 404-814-4000, atlantahistorycenter.com.
