Why I Built Knode: 10 Years in Biophilic Design and Green Infrastructure Led Me Here
Since 2016 I’ve worked as a designer, specifier, installer, project manager, consultant, marketer, and business developer in biophilic design and green infrastructure. I’ve seen these projects from every angle.
After a decade working across every corner of these industries, one thing became impossible to ignore: the right people, the right vendors, and the right projects were out there. They just had no reliable way to find each other.
I’ve sat on both sides of that gap. I’ve been the person sourcing vendors in unfamiliar cities, managing client expectations on complex projects, and watching timelines stretch because trust takes time to build from scratch. I’ve also worked alongside the vendors who had the skills and the capacity but struggled to reach the project owners who needed them most.
The expertise exists, the projects exist, and the budgets exist. What’s missing is the infrastructure to connect them. The potential to bring these two sides together faster, and give the teams behind these projects the confidence to take on more of them, is exactly why I built Knode.
Building responsibly to support healthy environments isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the only way forward. It deserves a platform built around that belief.
My First Office Was a Hospital Ward
Before I ever touched a living wall or specced a green roof, I worked part-time as a unit clerk in the mental health ward of a hospital. I was in college studying advertising and marketing at the time, and the job was practical, but it turned out to be formative in a way I didn’t expect.
Those spaces were sad. Drab, clinical, stripped of anything living or warm. And I couldn’t stop thinking about what it must feel like to be a patient there, or an employee spending 40+ hours a week under those lights, within those walls. I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but I was being introduced to something I’d spend the next decade working on: the undeniable relationship between our built environments with our mental and physical wellbeing, and how plants can support those spaces.
When I graduated and landed at an agency in Toronto, the feeling came back. Fluorescent lights. Cubicles. No natural light, no greenery, no life. A space designed for efficiency that felt like it was quietly draining everyone in it.
I knew plants had real, measurable benefits for air quality, stress, focus, and mood. I’d always known it, almost instinctively. The question I started turning over was: how do I make this my work?
The Greenteriors Story
Here’s how the last decade, and discovering my passion, actually unfolded.
2016 — Launch After completing studies in business management and entrepreneurship, I built my business plan and pitched for grants to launch Greenteriors in Hamilton, Ontario. I received grant funding through the Small Business Enterprise Centre (SBEC) in Hamilton and got to work.
My first projects were hands-on and immediate: installing mid-size preserved moss walls, bringing dying living plant walls back to life, and designing, specifying, and installing small to mid-size living walls across the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area.
It was scrappy and energizing. I was learning fast, and running into the realities of this industry just as fast.
2017–2018 — The First Pivot Sourcing was a challenge from the start. Plants, typically 4″ potted at the time, were hard to get in volume. Nurseries rarely had enough stock, and as projects grew in scope, my own capacity became the ceiling.
The solution was subcontracting. I learned I could bring in trusted companies for supply, installation, and maintenance, and my role could evolve into something broader. I took a project management course to build the professional skills to properly manage, procure, and execute at a higher level. Smaller projects I still completed myself, partly to keep my creative instincts sharp, partly to move faster for clients with tight budgets, and partly because I genuinely love getting my hands dirty. My background in advertising and marketing started showing up in these projects too, as branding and environmental design became a natural part of what I was offering.
2018–2019 — Going National I began expanding professional services across Canada, which meant sourcing vendors in cities I had no established network in. The biophilic design and green infrastructure industries were, and in many ways still are, young and emerging. Finding trustworthy, capable companies in new regions meant relying on portfolios, word of mouth, and gut instinct.
When I found companies doing genuinely good work, I wanted to support them beyond just hiring them. That led me into business development and marketing work on their behalf, finding them projects, building their visibility, and helping them grow. I was operating across the full spectrum of this industry: designer, specifier, project manager, subcontractor coordinator, marketing strategist, and business development consultant.
October 2019 — Vancouver I moved to Vancouver, a city I’d loved since living here as a kid. My connection to the outdoors, sailing, rock climbing, hiking, camping, has always been part of who I am, and it’s deeply tied to why I care about this work. Connecting people with nature, whether in a boardroom or on a green roof or through a biophilic office redesign, isn’t just a professional interest. It’s personal.
2020 — The Pause The pandemic stopped everything. Active projects went on hold. And honestly, I was burnt out. Years of operating across too many roles, in too many cities, had caught up with me, and the forced stop gave me something I hadn’t had in a while: space to think.
2020–2024 — Back to Consulting Once life picked up again after the pandemic, I returned to what I knew, taking on select projects of higher scale as a consultant. And almost immediately, I was hitting the same roadblocks. New regions, limited vendor options, trust gaps, scheduling uncertainty, clients needing their expectations managed before a single plant was ever ordered. The problems hadn’t gone away. If anything, they’d become more familiar and more frustrating precisely because I’d seen them so many times before.
It was clear the industry still didn’t have what it needed.
This 360° view, seeing the industry from both the vendor side and the project owner side, would turn out to be the most important education I could have gotten.
Present — Knode The idea for Knode came together over the last year or so. The question I kept coming back to was: how do I continue supporting the vendors and project owners doing this important work, but at a scale that makes a real difference?
One thing led to another. And I designed Knode.
(More on that below.)
What a Decade in This Industry Actually Taught Me
Working across every role, designer, specifier, installer, project manager, subcontractor, marketing strategist, business developer, and consultant, gave me a perspective that’s hard to get any other way.
I saw the same friction points from both sides of the table, over and over again.
For project owners, the challenges were consistent: budgets and site requirements varied wildly, and early conversations were almost always about setting and managing expectations. What’s realistic for this budget? What does this site actually support? Who are the right vendors for a project of this complexity? Many clients came in with a vision that needed to be grounded in reality, and part of my value was having worked on enough different projects, at enough different scales, to help them navigate that honestly.
For vendors, the challenge was visibility and trust. Especially outside major markets, great companies were hard to find and even harder to evaluate. When you’re sourcing a vendor in a new region, you might find two or three options. Their websites tell you some of what they do. Their portfolios show you their best work. But can they handle a complex installation? Do they have the crew for your timeline? Will they still be available in six months when your project actually breaks ground, or will they have taken on too much and be unavailable when you need them most?
These weren’t occasional problems. They were structural ones. The industry didn’t have a dedicated home, a place where vendors could build real, verifiable profiles; where project owners could post briefs and receive competitive quotes; where the whole ecosystem could find each other, assess each other, and move projects forward.
I wished for that platform for years. It didn’t exist.
So I Built It
I’ll be honest: I don’t come from a tech background. Typically I would take programs and courses to develop new skills, but the features and functions I wanted the platform to offer were well beyond my capabilities. Knode was built by bringing the right skills and people together around a shared vision, finding ways to create something genuinely useful without pricing out the small and mid-size companies this industry runs on. And this is just the beginning.
The vision was always clear, because it came directly from my lived experience.
Knode exists to do what I spent 10 years trying to do manually: connect the right vendors with the right projects, build trust through transparency, and get more of these projects, projects that genuinely matter for people and for the planet, brought to fruition.
It’s about giving teams the confidence to design with intention knowing they won’t have a problem sourcing a vendor to pull off their client’s dream projects.
The platform brings together:
- A vendor directory where companies can build real profiles that show their full scope of work, regional reach, and project experience
- A private project board where project owners can post briefs and receive a variety of competitive quotes
- A media outlet where professionals across biophilic design and green infrastructure can showcase their expertise, learn from each other, share knowledge, and grow the industry together
Everything I wished had existed when I was doing this work is in there.
Why This Industry, and Why Now
Biophilic design and green infrastructure aren’t niche interests anymore. The evidence connecting our built environments to human health, productivity, and wellbeing is overwhelming. Living walls, green roofs, naturalistic landscapes, and biophilic interiors are increasingly part of how forward-thinking developers, architects, and organizations think about the spaces they create.
But the industry supporting those projects is still finding its footing. The professionals doing this work deserve a platform that reflects how important it is. That’s where Knode comes in.
Want to Be Part of It?
There are limited seats for vendors, so apply now to snag one. If you’re a project owner we will let you know as soon as the project board opens so you can post your requests there (free!)
FAQ can be answered in this article, or shoot our team a message hello@knodeconnects.com
Amanda Matfin is the founder of Knode and spent 10 years building Greenteriors, a biophilic design and green infrastructure consultancy operating across Canada and the USA. In 2026 she is launching Knode, the modern version of Greenteriors. Amanda is based in British Columbia, Canada.
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