10 Insights from 10 Years of Edible Landscaping
This week marks our 10 year anniversary of incorporation! We are so grateful for our past clients, students, and collaborators. In celebration of this milestone, we wanted to share our top 10 takeaways, and the projects they came from. It was hard to narrow it down to 10, so if your project didn’t make the list, please know it doesn’t mean your project wasn’t special to us! We selected this list to showcase a broad spectrum of takeaways and lessons learned.
It’s not often we take the time to reflect on how far we’ve come, but over the past 10 years we’ve had the opportunity to serve several hundred clients locally, and thousands around the world as students. Recently, we mapped out our past clients and students, and it was was astounding to see the pins all across the globe. It was amazing to see how far we’ve come, as this was all once a dream, and has only been made possible by people like yourselves.
Check out the map below, maybe there’s a pin for your house!
One of our first working names for our business was “Food Forests Worldwide”, and while we haven’t yet achieved our goal of helping to establish a food forest in every major city on Earth, we’re proud to be a part of a growing movement all around the world.
In no particular order, below you will find our top 10 takeaways from past projects. We learn so much from every project, but we’ve narrowed down one key takeaway from each project. We hope that you’ll take find something to take home with you as well.
Edible Forest Labyrinth
This edible forest labyrinth was one of our first major projects, and for the past 9 years, we have had the honour of maintaining it. There is so much to say about this special project, but our biggest takeaway is that being intentional with a garden, can be a pathway to profound insight and peace.
Wheelchair Accessible Backyard Bounty
This project was particularly meaningful, as it was our first wheelchair accessible project. It is filled with edible and medicinal plants, as well as a bountiful harvest of Morel mushrooms, but the best part was our client’s reaction. During our walkthrough, he gazed at the mountains across the water, and began to tear up, saying “I’ve never been to this part of my yard before”. It was a profound experience to help open up new pathways like this. Our takeaway here, was that we want to create more accessible edible landscapes! There have been few projects more rewarding than this.
Culinary Curvy Beds
Our big takeaway here, is that ferrocement raised beds offer unmatched flexibility in their design. Most raised beds are limited by straight lines, but ferrocement is so much fun to work with as designers! If you have a small rectangular yard, ferrocement raised beds offer the opportunity to completely transform the look and feel of your space, with creative, organic shapes that maximize planting space and accessibility.
Edible Rooftop Children’s Garden
The goal here was to bring nature onto the rooftops, and provide inner city children the opportunity to connect with the elements and their food. We learned a lot about wind-resistant edible plants, but the biggest takeaway was how fortunate we are to have access to gardens and wild spaces, but not every child has that opportunity. We love bringing the magic of nature and growing food into urban food deserts - there are so many under-utilized balconies and rooftops in our city and beyond!
Shady Edible Forest Garden & Stonework
This shady backyard had a major slope, which made access a problem not only for our clients, but also during the installation process. Site challenges are opportunities in disguise, and the result here was a tiered edible landscape filled with lush, shade-loving edible perennials such as elderberry, currants, huckleberries, edible ferns and more, with stone terraces and steps that add a ton of character to this landscape. Our takeaway was that the greater the challenge, the more unique the final result! While this site is quite shady, it also means it is drought-resilient and lush, even during the summer months.
Stormwater Food Forest/Raingarden
This edible landscape began as a major problem. Flooding from the street resulted in flooding in our clients basement, and they were looking for a solution to their stormwater challenges, as well as something that would offer curb-appeal, colour, and deer-tolerant culinary delights. The result is a drought-tolerant edible raingarden lined with herbs, berries, and edible flowers, along with addressing their stormwater concerns. Our takeaway here is that water can be both a liability AND an asset - it all depends on how it is managed.
Self-Watering Furniture that Feeds You
These custom raised beds/benches are actually wicking beds, and have a water reservoir inside that nurtures the edible perennials planted within them. These raised beds have since been moved to another location, where they create an outdoor living room with a fireplace in the center. Our biggest takeaway here is that you don’t have to choose between a garden and a living space!
Multi-Generational Edible Escape
This design-build project was completed in 2022, and since then, it has become an edible escape for not only our clients, children, and grandchildren, but also for many of their friends. Complete with a covered outdoor living room and fireplace, it has become a place for gathering and tending to the garden, for many who live in the city and don’t have gardens of their own. There are times we worry we aren’t reaching enough people to make a real difference in the world, but here we are reminded that a single garden can have an impact on many families across generations. Our big takeaway here, is that while we work mostly on private residences, these edible landscapes can provide peace, nourishment, and inspiration far beyond the property lines.
Front Yard Foodscape For Aging in Place
This project is a recent completion, and has completely transformed this under-utilized front yard. We have learned so much from this project, as our client holds a PhD in Gerontology (the scientific study of old age, the process of aging, and the particular problems of old people), and we have much to share with future clients. One of our biggest takeaway here, is that front yards offer a major opportunity for community connection. The food and medicine growing here is a great conversation piece, and healthy conversations are essential for healthy aging!
Food Forest Earthworks & Outdoor Living Room
This 11 acre project required massive earthworks and water management, and to this day is our largest passive water harvesting system, with five layers of swales, overflow, and terraced food forest. It also includes a gorgeous mediterranean outdoor living room with wood-fired hottub, pizza oven, and a luxurious outdoor shower. It was a very large undertaking, and the stakes were very high harvesting such vast quantities of water, but once again these water-related challenges provided tremendous growth and resilience during major heatwaves and drought. Our key takeaway from this project was the power of collaboration. We worked with a number of designers and consultants for a diversity of perspective and experience, alongside our intrepid clients who purchased an excavator and operated it themselves. Working together, even the boldest visions may come to fruition.
Honorable Mention: Hugelkultur Workshop
This project was a workshop we hosted at our home in 2017, led by our friend and teacher Javan Bernakevitch, fresh from his visit to Austria to train with Sepp Holzer, pioneer of the hugelkultur beds. Hugelkultur, which translates as “mound culture”, are the ultimate raised bed. Our takeaway here, is that no other raised bed provides near the vertical space, microclimate diversity, and production per square foot. This single hugelkultur provided a comical amount of food, with vining beans on the trellis, shade-loving greens on the north side, and sprawling zucchini, squash, and heat loving crops on the south. To this day, it has been our most productive planting bed.
What’s Next:
We have been fortunate to collaborate with our evolving team and clients over the past 10 years, and we are excited to see what we will achieve over the next 10 together!
We are currently booking into the fall, but have recently had two slots become available for design/build projects this summer.
We anticipate these will fill quickly, but we’d love to collobarate on something extra special. These days, we’re particularly interested in creating sensory gardens that appeal to all the senses, as well as drought-tolerant edible perennials and native plants.
If this is something of interest to you, we’d like to help make the process a little easier.
For new clients, we are offering $100 off initial consultations for the next 30 days.
For previous clients, we are providing free one-hour consultations to the first three people who reach out.
If you are interested in discussing a project, idea, or challenge you are facing, let’s chat!
We are keen to assist you and your land.
To all those who have supported us over the years, as team members, valued clients, and our extended community: we express our gratitude!
Thank you for your continued support - we look forward to helping more people, grow more beautiful food.
Here’s to the next 10 years of growth!
In gratitude,
Joshua Clae Wagler
Co-Founder & Creative Director
Edible Landscapes Design Ltd
