Why I built Hengarth

The idea for Hengarth started one rainy evening in my one-bedroom East Village walk-up in NYC. At the time I was working as a VP of Marketing for a startup in New York. It was interesting work and I loved it — fast-paced building, challenging in the way most startup jobs tend to be.

But like many working in that environment, most of my days were spent moving between screens, meetings, and the constant rhythm of modern work. And somewhere in the background, another idea kept resurfacing.

The idea of land. Of space. Of building something tangible — physical even — rather than spending all of my time inside digital environments.

That evening I opened my laptop and started sketching out what that might look like. At the time it was nothing more than a thought experiment. A slightly crazy one that involved sheep farming and camping to boot. But once the idea came, it didn’t really go away.

A note on the importance of place

The turning point came when I first discovered the Catskills. The first time I visited, something about the landscape felt strangely familiar. The mountains sit around 3,000 feet high, rivers cut through wide valleys, and in spring and summer everything turns relentlessly green.

For someone from Wales, it triggered a feeling we have a word for: Hiraeth. It doesn’t translate directly into English, but something along the lines of a longing for the place where your spirit lives.

Standing in the Catskills, I felt something close to that.The landscape had the same quiet natural beauty I grew up with in Wales. It felt like the right place to build something.

Taking the leap

Then Covid happened — and like many , we spent much of that period outside the city - here in the Catskills. In late 2020 we had an offer accepted on a piece of land in Prattsville: 101 acres, an old barn, and not much else.

What followed was a fairly dramatic shift in life. We left New York City, I returned briefly to Wales while navigating the visa process for the new venture, and spent months learning everything I could about managing land, farming sheep, and building something from the ground up.

In reality, I took the leap to launch Hengarth to re-find some balance. I wanted to combine and share my start-up, growth marketing and go-to-market experience with a new perspective on sustainability, my passion for nature, and a real connection to place. 

By the time I returned that Christmas, the idea had started to become a reality: a property in the Catskills, a small flock, a barn renovation underway, and a very long list of plans ahead.

Building Hengarth

Today Hengarth sits on just over 100 acres of meadow, woodland and mountain views in the Great Northern Catskills.

Over the past few years we’ve slowly been shaping the land into something intentional — a place where the land is used and farmed, where people can gather, spend time outdoors, and reconnect with each other away from the usual pace of daily life.

Of course, getting to this required a lot of work that was unpoetic and uncompromising at times — putting in electricity, services, building roads, fences and infrastructure across a sprawling property, all while trying to ensure the work had minimal impact on the land itself.

Glamping tents were added so guests could stay comfortably while still being immersed in the landscape. Shared spaces across the property encourage conversation to happen naturally — around a table, by a fire, or walking across the land.

It’s still evolving, and probably always will be. Land tends to shape itself slowly.

Why this place exists

For more than two decades I’ve worked with founders and leadership teams helping companies think about growth, strategy, and direction.

The irony is that many of the most important conversations in business happen in environments that make good thinking difficult — conference rooms, rushed meetings, or endless video calls.

Hengarth grew out of the belief that environment matters. And that this environment is really special. I wanted other people to step away from their everyday - into open space, fresh air, and a different rhythm — like I did, and change the conversation.

When designing Hengarth’s offsite services and building out my consultancy work, I wanted to apply what I’d learned from 20+ years in the industry a little differently — to create the space and motivation businesses need for fresh thinking and lasting change.

With the launch of corporate offsets, it’s all coming together. Are we finished? No. Is Hengarth already a great place to inspire — and be inspired? Absolutely.

Today Hengarth is a gathering space as much as it is a place to stay or work. We’ve opened up to focus on groups and  gatherings. Friends arrive for long weekends together, families reconnect around shared meals under the stars, teams come here to  build intentionally.

What they all have in common is a desire to step away — even briefly — from the day-today. It aims to be a place where land, space, and time combine to make room for better conversations.