From Landscape to Foodscape

Cultivate Resilience

Turn your outdoor space from landscape to foodscape! Explore how to transform a traditional decorative landscape into one incorporating edible plants for the table, no matter the size of your outdoor space.

Image: Priscilla du Preez via Unsplash

From Landscape to Foodscape

This new gardening series includes walkabout presentations, lectures, indoor and outdoor demonstrations, and workshops aimed at creating resiliency against rising prices at the supermarket, as well as providing healthful, nutritious fruits and vegetables from your backyard, front lawn, deck...

The series follows the natural progression of gardening from ground and planter prep to plant selection, then on to food preservation and pantry stocking for winter.

Sessions take place on one Saturday per month, April to October.

Overviews of each learning session are provided below.

Learning Sessions

April 5 | Introduction to Foodscaping

Reimagine your landscape as a foodscape. Learn about different ideas and strategies for using edible plants to create new yard designs that can provide many benefits, including increased biodiversity, self-produced food, reduced maintenance inputs, and soil and water conservation.

FULL DETAILS

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May 10 | Soil Enhancements & Composting for Your Garden

Quality soil is the foundation for a healthy garden or landscape. Explore the science of soil to better understand how you can conserve and rebuild quality soil for your agricultural and landscape needs. Participants will also learn about different composting techniques to build their own soil enhancements to divert food waste from the landfill while also reducing the need for commercial compost.

FULL DETAILS

Image: Edward Howell via Unsplash
June 7 | Introduction to Container Gardening

Short on time? Limited by space? Hampered by poor soil? If you answer “yes” to any of these challenges, container gardening might just be for you! Join us as we learn how to grow container-sized fruits and vegetables to maximize your summer harvest. From apartment balcony gardens to driveway container pots to even a more formal backyard potager plan, you’ll learn how to choose the right size container and select appropriate plants as you work to create some food resiliency during these challenging times and reap healthy benefits along the way.

FULL DETAILS

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July 19 | Safety Workshop: Jams, Jellies & Marmalades

Let’s capture summer in a jar! That’s our goal as we explore food safe, shelf-stable recipes for jams, jellies and marmalades. This hands-on workshop is limited to six participants as we will be in the kitchen working with in-season ingredients such as strawberries, blueberries and more. By the end of the class you will have created preserves encapsulating the vibrant essence of fresh fruit flavors of the summer season.

FULL DETAILS

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August 16 | Safety Workshop: Pickles, Chutneys & Relishes

You can pickle it! As gardens explode with fresh produce, we’ll be taking a look at food safe, shelf-stable recipes for pickles, chutneys and relishes. This hands-on workshop is limited to six participants as we will be in the kitchen working with in-season ingredients such as cucumbers, tomatoes, and the ubiquitous zucchini. By the end of the class you will have created products that add a little spice to your meals as we discuss various preservation techniques such as fresh pack processing, low temperature pasteurization, refrigeration and fermentation.

FULL DETAILS

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September 20 | Pantry Prep & Storing the Harvest

Summer is over and it’s time to take stock of your pantry. Storing food for the coming winter is our focus in this class as we consider the various options available to us. Refrigeration and freezing are relatively easy approaches as we rush to harvest our gardens before the first frost hits. We’ll also look at long-term solutions such as drying, canning, and pickling as we discuss the science of food preservation and what might work best for you and your family. Let’s prepare together and create some resiliency against weather and other challenges to food security.

FULL DETAILS

Image: Marcus Ganahl via Unsplash
October 18 | Cooking from Your Pantry

Stay tuned... details to come!

Image: Anshu A via Unsplash