The Chrysanthou Property
Our property is a large, south-facing pie lot in Cochrane. We back onto the train tracks, so our backyard has an expansive slope that gets lots of sun in the summer. The backyard is sunny, dry and windy, and overnight temperatures can be quite cool even in summer. When we purchased the property, this berm was a mixture of grass, dandelions, thistles, toadflax, and bushes/trees. It had an inset fire pit area that was beginning to slump. We wanted to change this system (which was moving toward a small bush/tree ecology with lots of caragana) to a food forest with self-sustaining understory. We are halfway there, with many permanent shrubs and trees in place, but with little progress on the understory.
Adrian Buckley with reGenerate Design prepared a plan for our food forest taking into account the need to create wind breaks and sun traps to create smaller, micro-climates within which we could have smaller garden beds for veggies and herbs. His design included a rainwater harvesting system of 3000L and several sections of shrubs and companion plants that curve down from the berm into the grassy yard. The plan is to eventually replace all of the grass with fruit-bearing shrubs and small trees, with garden beds and pathways in between. We have many hardy species in the system including saskatoon, currants, seabuckthorn, sweet cherry, apple, cranberry, raspberry and honeyberry and many herbs and some flowers.
Our property is a large, south-facing pie lot in Cochrane. We back onto the train tracks, so our backyard has an expansive slope that gets lots of sun in the summer. The backyard is sunny, dry and windy, and overnight temperatures can be quite cool even in summer. When we purchased the property, this berm was a mixture of grass, dandelions, thistles, toadflax, and bushes/trees. It had an inset fire pit area that was beginning to slump. We wanted to change this system (which was moving toward a small bush/tree ecology with lots of caragana) to a food forest with self-sustaining understory. We are halfway there, with many permanent shrubs and trees in place, but with little progress on the understory.
Adrian Buckley with reGenerate Design prepared a plan for our food forest taking into account the need to create wind breaks and sun traps to create smaller, micro-climates within which we could have smaller garden beds for veggies and herbs. His design included a rainwater harvesting system of 3000L and several sections of shrubs and companion plants that curve down from the berm into the grassy yard. The plan is to eventually replace all of the grass with fruit-bearing shrubs and small trees, with garden beds and pathways in between. We have many hardy species in the system including saskatoon, currants, seabuckthorn, sweet cherry, apple, cranberry, raspberry and honeyberry and many herbs and some flowers.
