Écomestible, Edible Landscaping And Urban Permaculture

Écomestible is a permaculture business. We design and implement forest gardens edible landscaping, and this year we started our first agroecology project. What we do is we join forestry agroecology and landscaping all together. We design the land to get a yield like agriculture we include trees like forestry and we do landscaping so it can also be very pleasing aesthetically. Lawn is not a monoculture because your often have dandelions but it's a one layer system that you maintain with gasoline with a lawnmower. In our designs, we have nature working for us we plant trees, we get a yield we improve soil fertility, we create habitat So we're able to work with nature and get a yield which goes against the standard approach. Often we're rather fighting against weeds or trying to fix fertility problems fix problems caused by disease. Because of the diversity in our designs say you have 5 fruit trees, lots of species even if you have two species that aren't doing well this year it doesn't matter, you don't even take care of them It's a diversity that creates resilience. What's lawn for? It's for playing soccer, badminton, or having a picnic We realized that the lawn in front our house was useless so we got rid of it. What we end up with is a setup that gives us herbs, vegetables, fruits and medicinal plants but is also easy to maintain. Mowing the lawn once a week takes time but here I'm weeding once a month. The other thing I do is harvesting to pick my herbs, my veggies, my fruits, etc. We were lucky to work with Cafe Utopia. We really wanted to work with commercial clients. The main goal here is to have a maximum of vegetation a maximum of fertility. To create a dense barrier from the street to create a green enclave for the restaurant and the terrace. Here we have scarlet beebalm which is native of Canada it has a very aromatic foliage with a scent that ressembles thyme and the flower petals are edible it's very sweet, it's like candy I'm sure if you told kids they'd be eating beebalm petals instead of candy. In the understory we have clover which will be a ground cover and prevent the return of things we don't want like lawn for instance. We have blue wild indigo that has nice flowers and attracts pollinators and amorpha, with a very fast growth it'll get much bigger, up to 9 feet tall. Here we have yarrow which is a medicinal plant, great for headaches it's also a dynamic accumulator which helps with soil fertility and it buzzes for a really long time it flowers for a long time and you'll see an impressive range of parasitoid wasps, flies all the natural pollinators. People can't believe it. They just can't believe it. One of the first questions Jonathan asked me was : Is there a place where water accumulates? I said yes, right over there. For them it was part of the natural irrigation process I tell people how there's a little pond that forms there and then flows into a little stream and moves around and irrigates and that it's all done through a natural design People are stunned. It's as if I'd shown them a new technology. They can't believe such a simple system can accomplish that. What I mean, is that with a place like this people develop a new conscience. A very important thing in the design approach that is permaculture - because it's really that, an approach to the design of human systems in a very general sense - is that we think in terms of usefulness and function. So if I build a pond for instance. I'm in the city, I have too much water it goes in the storm sewer the city needs to treat it. If I retain it on my property I can irrigate with it if I collect it in barrels but I can also make a pond. In the pond I can grow food and also create habitat. We invite the birds to bathe in it. Insect-feeding birds will eat pests. The frog will eat slugs at night while we sleep. We won't need to do all that. We too often isolate the elements rather than seeing all parts as a whole and say, it's ok if birds come and eat blueberries because they provide services. They poop, which fertilizes, they eat the bugs so it's ok to exchange a few berries in return for ecological services. Deep down, I hope that these sensible approaches agroecology, carbon farming large-scale and residential permaculture I hope that all these solutions can go beyond the community of experts and reach the masses to become the norm. It's so much more than just a garden it's a place of transmission of very old knowledge it's a place of transmission of a fundamental relationship with the world.