About Wes & Diantha Duren

Meet Diantha Duren, Wes' wife

 

Many of you are familiar with Diantha as the welcoming voice that greets you when calling Marvin’s Organic Gardens, MOG.  She is happy to serve you in a wide variety of ways from the basics of scheduling an appointment, to giving pointers for organic gardening, to being your personal natural lifestyle coach. Diantha has worked closely with MOG since 2007, before assuming co-ownership with her husband, Wes Duren, in August 2014.

 

Diantha was made for working with the Earth, after-all her name means Divine flower and is the beloved carnation found in prairies and perennial gardens. She draws from a diversity of personal and professional experiences that aids people in connecting with their own well-being and natural surroundings.

 

Diantha was an early bloomer in gardening. By age 5, her father and next door neighbor, who was an award winning gardener, supported her self-initiated gardening endeavors. Her love of gardening continued throughout high school and into college, where she began to see gardening as a vehicle for social change.

 

She pursued an Associates degree in Environmental Engineering at Cincinnati State, where she gained first hand nursery production experience in their greenhouse. Outside of the classroom, Diantha became deeply connected with the Cincinnati Civic Garden Center and completed their Master Composting and Community Gardening programs. Diantha earned the prestigious Bonner and Americorps Vista Scholarships for excellence in community service and attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs.

 

Antioch's renowned curriculum of experiential and cooperative learning woven with community engagement was a fertile ground for Diantha's passion of permaculture, growing food and making herbal medicines. She not only focused on her academic studies of the Environment Science, but also managed the 30-year-old Organic Gardens on Antioch's campus.

 

She developed a farm to fork program for the college's cafeteria, created an Ecological Agriculture Program and worked with local Yellow Springs Residents to produce a community supported garden. Upon completing her Thesis on Managing Invasive Plant Species Through Localized Enterprise, Diantha graduated from Antioch in 2007 with a Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Science with a focus in Ecological Agriculture.

 

Eager to get back to family in Cincinnati, Diantha quickly connected into the environmental and local food scene serving as a Board of Trustees Member at the Northside Village Green Community Gardens, facilitating organic gardening and herbal medicine workshops.  Her greatest accomplishment here was reclaiming the historic greenhouse for propagation, rental space for gardeners, and a place where locals could buy organic veggie starts.

 

Once Diantha was settled back in Cincinnati, she joined the team at the local non-profit, Mill Creek Watershed Council (MCWC) where she was hired to design and install collaborative rain garden projects for municipalities, schools, and other non-profit organizations.  

 

After meeting Marvin and Wes Duren at the Paw Paw festival in 2007, a valuable alliance was made with Marvin's Organic Gardens which led to dozens of water conservation projects within the Mill Creek, Great and Little Miami, and Ohio watersheds. Diantha eventually became the Watershed Manager and was instrumental in the collaborative creation of the 30-acres stream and wetland restoration project, Twin Creek Preserve with the City of Sharonville and Ohio EPA.

 

In 2012, left MCWC and moved to Lebanon to build her family with Wes and deepen her studies in Herbal Medicine and Nutrition with her mentor and business partner Barb Fischer. Barb and Diantha continue to assist hundreds of families through wellness and lifestyle coaching and public seminars using a holistic approach.

 

Diantha has always loved traveling to visit farms and botanical gardens. She went abroad for a semester to the Philippines, her mother's homeland, to study sustainable agriculture techniques and herbal medicine in the tropical mountain regions. Post college, Diantha gained additional experiences in organic farming and living “off the grid” while serving the indigenous Dineh elders on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and while living and working on an solar powered organic farm outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 

 

Diantha and Wes now live at their homestead, working together to produce fresh organic vegetables, fruits, herbal medicine, chicken and duck eggs, maple syrup, edible mushrooms and many other exciting homegrown products, while raising their son, Zoriah. You can also catch Diantha teaching Yoga every Wednesday nights in Lebanon at Elemental Om Yoga and Friday morning at the new Liberty Center Mall.  

 

Diantha brings a wealth of experience and light to Marvin’s Organic Gardens fresh vision of ‘people over profits’, concentrating on customer service above all. Diantha is at the heart of our operation, and helps to keep everyone connected and all systems running like a well oiled machine.

 

We are grateful to have her in the MOG family, as she is not only the warm and welcoming contact for all our customers, but also instrumental in the overall success of our business.