Around the Garden
Edible Landscape Design
Around the Garden can help you transform your yard into a resilient, edible ecosystem that nurtures you with healthy food and spaces.
I offer edible landscape designs and consultations for urban spaces in and around Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Every outdoor space I create contributes to protecting and regenerating biodiversity; growing food and pollinator habitats; building soil, and restoring the water cycle. Your garden, no matter the size, can have a positive impact.
I facilitate a design process that balances the opportunities and constraints of your site with your vision, goals and needs. I help you explore the conditions of the landscape to create edible landscape systems that thrive in our northern conditions, using a Permaculture approach to guide my design processes.
Who is this for? Landowners, businesses, schools, community spaces, and any others seeking to redefine their space in an edible landscape. Currently focusing on serving urban or smaller rural spaces. Larger homesteads or larger rural properties to be added in the near future.
Here’s how I can help you meet your goals:
YARD DESIGN
A Yard Design is a process that entails significant client participation in order to evolve the vision and goals of a project. The final product is a scaled design plan and guide to give you ownership over the process and confidence to move into implementation. The scaled design is accompanied by a list of plants, recommendations, and implementation chronologies - kind of like a plant-by-number design!
A ‘walk and talk’ yard consultation will include a site visit designed to empower you with the tools and resources to move your project forward. This is excellent for already in progress projects or to provide inspiration to start new projects. It is a chance to brainstorm, receive a second opinion and look at specific site problems.
Around the Garden
Edible Landscape Design
YARD CONSULTATION
The consultation process will typically include:
1
Each Yard Consultation begins with a phone or zoom conversation to get to know you and to hear about your vision, goals and wish list, as well as answer your initial questions. I will then provide you with an estimate.
2
We will schedule a 2 hour ‘walk and talk’ site visit to your yard, which typically includes a review of your property along with an assessment of flora and fauna, water sources and design opportunities, followed by a ‘kitchen table' discussion and rough property sketch mapping out all the elements of your Wish List for your property, and advice on your yard’s potential for food growing, rainwater harvesting, composting, soil building, etc...
3
Site visits are followed up with an email providing additional details, opportunities, references and resources.
4
The end result will be a quick high-level drawing on paper (if appropriate) with some notes produced during the site visit and additional information sent by email.
If you are looking for a detailed design drawing, check out Yard Design.
For inquiries, fees, or to book your yard consultation, please follow the link to my Contact page.
Around the Garden
Edible Landscape Design
YARD DESIGN
The design process will typically include:
1
Each Yard Design begins with a phone or zoom conversation to get to know you and to hear about your vision, goals and wish list, as well as answer your initial questions. I will then provide you with an estimate.
2
You will be asked to fill out a detailed questionnaire in your own time. This will help you refine your vision and goals; it will give me more details about your wishes and property; and will help us build a scope that suits your site, goals and budget. During this time I will conduct research on climate, precipitation rates, land form, and other data that will help build the base map that will be used for your Yard Design.
3
Upon completion of the questionnaire, I will stop by for a site visit to walk your property with you and chat in more details about your ideas and issues you may wish to address. I will undertake careful observations and take notes of your existing structures, gardens, and other pertinent existing features, and I will take measurements that will help in creating a Yard Design.
4
I will develop a unique scaled design plan of your Yard Design of your property providing design elements and opportunities inspired by your wish list and vision, questionnaire, site visit and my suggestions and recommendations. Your Design will include a list of plants and their characteristics, plant placement, and additional information that will support your projects.
5
You will receive a portfolio containing colour copies of the scaled plan, list of plants, print-outs of action steps, additional details, opportunities, references and resources. A digital version of all information will also be provided.
Please note: I do not offer installation.
Check out the Resource page for assistance.
See Featured Projects for past projects.
For inquiries, fees, or to book your yard consultation, please follow the link to my Contact page.
Around the Garden
Edible Landscape Design
FEATURED PROJECTS
Visit again soon! I will post examples soon.
Around the Garden
Edible Landscape Design
ABOUT
Welcome! My name is Vera. I'm a mother, wife, gardener, nature lover, observer, student, and teacher. My education includes an Honours Bachelor of Geography and Environmental Studies, Masters in Environmental Studies and a Permaculture Design Certificate 2020. I am an avid learner and like to challenge myself with new projects.
I have worked as a land use planner in the public and private sector. I still take on occasional projects as a consultant (I also am the owner of Vera McDonald Planning Consultant, a land use and development consultant).Project managing severances and creating zoning by-law and official plan policies are exciting…
But my other passion is gardening; observing, finding inspiration and learning from nature, habitats and ecosystems around me. I have been an avid gardener for over 12 years. My desire to learn from and mimic ecosystems in my own garden and life has led me to Permaculture in 2012. I have applied my love of nature, Permaculture, mapping, and edible landscaping to our urban lot in Edmonton and now to our homestead, located south of Thunder Bay in the beautiful boreal forest.
My own homestead is an evolving, dynamic landscape with edible and medicinal annuals and perennials, native plants, fruit trees and shrubs and vegetable beds, beautiful mounds of compost, swales, chickens and cats. My homestead is my pantry, retreat, living library, resource and laboratory.
For examples of my past work, please visit my Featured Projects page.
For inquiries, fees, or to book your yard consultation or yard design, please follow the link to my Contact page.
Thank you for stopping in!
Vera
Around the Garden
Edible Landscape Design
MY INSPIRATION
Around the Garden respectfully acknowledges that the lands on which we live, grow, gather, work and learn are the traditional lands of the Anishinabek Nation and the traditional territory of Fort William First Nation, signatory to the Robinson-Superior Treaty of 1850.
I offer my gratitude to the First Nations communities, Métis People, Inuit, and all Indigenous peoples around the world for their care for, and teachings about the earth and our relations, and I strive to steward the land and work with people in a way that is in cooperation and solidarity with Indigenous peoples and communities.
Why edible landscapes?
Most of us are familiar with the concept that food grown in our own yard nourishes body and soul, is great exercise, has educational opportunities and is a productive hobby. It increases food security and resiliency, and reduces the reliance on expensive, mass-produced, commercially farmed goods that often require excessive water, pesticides, and transportation.
There also has been an ever increasing and encouraging movement toward sustainable landscaping and replacing lawns with wildlife-attracting native plants to create habitats and support a productive and vibrant ecosystem and biodiversity. Nurturing wildlife and preserving native species are great goals, but how can we, humans, fit into these natural landscapes?
What if we could combine growing food, biodiversity and habitat creation with aesthetics and function? You get an edible, ecologically sound and productive edible landscape rooted in Permaculture!
Why Permaculture?
One of my favourite definitions of Permaculture is ‘meeting human needs while improving ecosystem health” (Rafter Ferguson, Permaculture Teacher)
Permaculture is often thought of as a collection of gardening practices and elements, like having a veggie garden, a greenhouse, a spiral garden and a food forest. Like traditional landscape designs, permaculture designs attend to aesthetics and beauty. However, a permaculture approach differs from traditional landscape design and garden practices in that it is a systems method that focuses to maximize functional relationships between gardening practices and design, between aesthetics and functionality, living and non-living elements of the design, including the human inhabitants. It is not about the elements and practices themselves, but it is about how all these elements and practices are tied together to create a functional interconnectedness that work like a natural ecosystem.
A food forest is a good example of such interconnectedness: it provides food, beauty, exercise, educational opportunities and entertainment for humans, food and safety for pollinators and other wildlife, it regenerates the soil, and improves the water cycle. Or a living fence (a hedge) would not only be a fence, but can also provide food and shelter for wildlife and humans, protect from wind or sun, create a privacy screen or hide a feature, and be beautiful all at the same time.
Permaculture Definition | 3 Ethics of Permaculture | 12 Permaculture Principles | Permaculture projects around the world
Around the Garden
Edible Landscape Design
RESOURCES
Consider trading seeds and plants with family, friends, and neighbours.
Watch out for disease and invasive seeds/plants that may hitchhike with the plants you dig out or receive from someone else's yard.
Look out for locally organized grassroot seed swaps, Seedy Saturdays, and plant sales that pop up in spring.
Around the Garden
Edible Landscape Design
CONTACT