Category: Ecology
Ecotone Urbanism: Design at the Intersection of Nature and City
The Power of Overlap Edmonton, my home city, sits in Aspen Parkland—a transitional ecosystem between the great plains to the south and the boreal forest to the north. Not quite prairie, not quite forest, it is a classic ecotone: an area of overlap that is richer and more diverse than either ecosystem alone. Ecologists describe…
Snow Farming—The Winter Gardening Hack You’re Not Using
Using Snow to Water Gardens, Insulate Plants, and Change Your Growing Zone As a gardener, winter presents an ideal opportunity to harvest, move, pile, and store water for the upcoming gardening season. It’s time to talk about snow farming. Snow farming goes beyond storing water. Strategically placed snow can reduce winter damage, increase the survival…
Self-Sufficiency is a Fantasy—Try Radical Interdependence Instead
Self-Sufficiency is Incompatible with Nature Self-sufficient naturalist is an oxymoron, but you wouldn’t know it from the thousands of off-grid influencers and YouTube creators promoting the self-sufficiency lifestyle. As a tree-loving, beard-sporting, plaid-wearing, soil-building white dude, I know I’m squarely in their target audience. But here’s the thing: self-sufficiency is a myth At best, self-sufficiency…
Community Supported Forestry (CSF)
Growing Climate-Resilient Neighbourhoods One Tree at a Time If you’ve ever signed up for a vegetable CSA, you already understand the idea behind Community Supported Forestry. You invest in something local, share in the harvest, and become part of something bigger than a transaction. Now imagine doing that with trees. From Vegetables to Forests Community…
The Succession of Cities: Organic Patterns Shaping Urban Growth
Do Cities Grow Like Ecosystems? Until millennia, city building was an organic, bottom-up, incremental process beginning with a handful of people looking for opportunities at the confluence of waterways, trade roots, and resources. Speculating newcomers establish temporary structures, replaced over time with permanent buildings. Enterprising citizens set up shops to supply growing demands, and streets…
The 5 School Garden Pace Layers
Designing Better School Gardens Using Pace Layer Thinking School boards live for centuries, school buildings last decades, teaching careers come and go in thirty to forty years, the curriculum changes every decade or so, students come and go every three years, semesters turn over twice a year, units last weeks, and lessons are over in…
Garden Design Course
Online ecological garden design course covers five techniques for creating a garden that reduces work, increases yields and works with nature
Gardening in the Zombie Apocalypse
How Gardeners Will Survive the End of the World The zombie apocalypse is upon us, and it’s up to the gardeners to save us. Armed with shovels and a handful of ecological design principles, it’s time to turn this zombie threat into a horticultural opportunity. This isn’t your grandparent’s rose garden. This is gardening in…
Creating Garden Microclimates
What a Poop Pit Can Teach Us About Garden Microclimates I stumbled upon pineapple pits while researching old botanic gardens. The Heligan Garden in Cornwall, England, was created in the 18th century by the Tremayne family. The garden fell into disrepair after the First World War but was restored in the nineties. During reconstruction, a strange…
Cold Hardy Food Forest Plant List
A Growing Inventory of Cold Hardy Perennial Plants Since 2015, I’ve been propagating and growing tonnes of USDA hardiness zone 1 to 5 perennial plants in my Edmonton backyard and urban farm plot. The list has grown to over 285 species across 152 plant genera. Tagging each species by edible component (fruit, nut, leaf, bark,…
Is McCauley Edmonton’s Gardening Community?
Green In The Inner-City In the Fall of 2014, I found myself looking at a house off Church Street in the inner-city neighbourhood of Edmonton McCauley. I was familiar with the community due to frequent visits to the Italian Centre Shop and Coffee Shop Cafe, Zocalo. I was also familiar with the area’s reputation for…
When to Plant Your Edmonton Garden
Stop Waiting Until May Frost Day to Plant Your Garden Are you wondering when to plant your garden? Historically, you would plant your Edmonton Garden the third weekend in May, but is that the best time to plant? I’d argue that you can plant your garden much earlier. Waiting Until After the Last Frost Date…