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| Chris Sanford Checks my Design-in-Progess |
Before I started working at HNH, I took the Sustainable Landscape Design Course with Chris and Rosmarie. It was a great introduction to the educational component of the company. Their second spring session is now full, but keep your eye out for other workshops.
Over the years, I’ve fallen into a spring ritual. First, I drool over seed catalogues and gardening magazines. Then I spend all my free time dreamily wandering the garden. By the time the first warm day arrives, I am so fired up about gardening that I must look frantic— digging, moving shrubbery around, installing new veggie beds, erecting bird houses… you get the idea. I get a lot accomplished but by the beginning of the next gardening season I’m wondering who was that crazy woman who renovated the garden last year? I’m never quite sure what she was up to and some of her decisions seem, well, half-baked. But, like clockwork, I start the process over again because I love gardening. Being outside on my one acre lot with a shovel and a mug of coffee is my bliss. I’m just not very good at making and sticking to a plan.
So last month, I jumped at the chance to take Helping Nature Heal’s Sustainable Landscape Design Course. I’d squirreled away some money for summer garden projects, and instead of spending money on shrubs that would rather not be nomadic, I decided to invest in a plan. $120 for 15 hours with 2 professional landscapers? Count me in.
So, what is sustainable landscape design? At HNH, Rosmarie and Chris present sustainable landscape design as a way of thinking, rather than a rigid set of do’s and don’ts. The course syllabus offers this guiding definition:
In our view, sustainability is a balance between three factors: social, environmental, and economic. An evaluation of inputs and outputs informs decisions, but all three factors are given equal importance. When it comes to human-shaped landscapes, sustainability means striving to support nourishment, health, and happiness (socially sustainable); to be non-polluting, low impact, not dependent on non-renewable resources, and support local biodiversity/wildlife habitat (environmentally sustainable); and to benefit local economies, whether by generating food/income or through being low maintenance/low input (economically sustainable). Designing for sustainable landscapes involves focusing greatly on observations of a particular site to make sure that a plan “fits” what the site can support, and understanding that sustainability is a dynamic process rather than end result.
When I think of sustainable landscapes, my first reaction is to think of the environmental piece, with humans on the sidelines, cheering on the wildlife. But as you can gather, for HNH, sustainable design is about designing a space that will satisfy your human needs as well as the needs of other critters. What’s cool about this is that even if everyone in the class had an identical property, a sustainable design would be different for each of us because we each bring different needs and resources to our landscape.
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| Hands on soil analysis |
The first step in the course was to create a site analysis. As it turns out, all that time I spend mooning around in the garden is valuable. According to Rosmarie, “being present” in your space is a vital first step to forming a sustainable design. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the direction of winds, how the sun tracks, where shadows fall, where the birds go, how the slope of your land affects drainage. Put these on a map, along with permanent structures, mature trees and shrubs, power lines, traffic paths, and you’ve got a map that helps you to identify the microclimates of your yard. Well, almost. The first map I came up with was far from enlightening; it was crowded and confusing. Chris showed us how to represent information more effectively with nifty landscaping symbols and layers of tracing paper.
I made a pretty basic map out of paper and coloured pencils, but some of my classmates used fancier tools:
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| Nice plan! |
I found the second step, making conceptual plans, more grounded than my usual garden dreaming with a site map in front of me. I can still drool over the glossy garden magazines (in fact, we had fun ripping and gluing up some landscape collages) but my site map holds me accountable to my landscape. Part of this step was to use the HNH library to research the plants that we would like to have, look at our analyses to see where they might grow best, and find out what we would need to do to give them a good home. While Rosmarie and Chris reminded us that caring for our landscape is a year-to-year process that entails a lot of waiting and observing (i.e. not everything goes according to plan), I know that I am approaching this season with fewer plans I’ll have to reinvent next season.
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| Plan #1: Done! |
Here are my top three plans for this season and beyond:
- With sustainability in mind, I spent my first burst of gardening energy on building a compost bin from locally sourced, untreated lumber, that will help me create more homemade inputs for my garden.
- As well, I think I’ve finally figured out where to put my tomato plants, which usually die prematurely in my very sandy, wind-exposed vegetable plot. I’m making a no-dig raised bed in the sheltered hot spot of my property. Since my map reminds me that this bed is on a slight slope, I’m making the bed from rotting firewood which will trap moisture and feed the soil as it breaks down.
- Last, but certainly not least, I’m creating a five year plan to reduce our lawn mowing and encourage a bit more of the wild back into our lot. In years past, my partner and I have thrown up our hands and said it can’t be done—this is the lawn we inherited. But it will be done, making thoughtful, creative adjustments to the way we manage our property.
Perhaps it’s that can-do attitude that is the most valuable aspect of taking this course rather than trying to learn it all from books. We made several field visits to properties that HNH has worked on and it was inspiring to hear Rosmarie and Chris talk about the process of implementing a sustainable design, especially when we were looking at a site that even seasoned gardeners would find defeating. One evening, someone pointed out an area that had been excavated for gravel and I blurted What do you DO with THAT? Just as quickly, Rosmarie and Chris responded Anything you want! It’s been demolished. You get to start from zero! Which is why I decided to take the course in the first place– I’ve had fleeting exchanges with Rosmarie over the years that make me feel like I’ve just met creative optimism personified. This is the general attitude she cultivates at HNH and it’s a pleasure to bring that home to my landscape.