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Edible Landscaping

Colorful flower power July salad.
 
 

Eat the Lawn

By Arianna Alexsandra Collins

July is a perfect time to gather flowers and greens for salad and pesto. There is an abundance of wild and garden edibles, so why make the trip to the grocery store for produce when you have a variety of food to choose from right in your yard? Create a daylily salad, with a little yard-grown purslane topped with pedals of bee balm for color and bergamot flavor finished with a tasty vinaigrette.

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HMC Brookesville garden, alternate leaved dogwood, pagoda dogwoo 

What Is Rewilding?

by Heather McCargo and Anna Fialkoff

The term rewilding first appeared in the conservation world in the 1980s with a continental-scale vision to protect large tracts of wilderness and connect these areas with migration corridors. Maine’s Wild Seed Project considers rewilding to be not just for the large wilderness areas or charismatic megafauna like wolves. Instead, they focus on actions that people can take right outside their doors.

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Designing Gardens Accessible to All

by Rachel Lindsay

An accessible landscape provides not just access but varied experiences to all visitors. Ecological designers take the concept of universal design even farther and consider how the landscape, especially public and participatory gardens, can benefit not just people of all abilities, but also wildlife, pollinators, soil microorganisms, and watersheds.

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Planting Edible Native Species – A Case Study from Massachusetts

by Russ Cohen

A newly daylighted stream at Willard’s Woods in Lexington, MA presented a serendipitous opportunity for introduction of edible native plants to the conservation area. At a double session focused on propagating and planting edible native plant species, Russ Cohen and co-presenter Georgia Hann included this 2017 project at ELA’s 2020 Conference & Eco-Marketplace in March. Here, Russ follows up the conference session with a deeper dive into the Willard’s Woods project.

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Edible Plantings in the Built Landscape

Surrounded by uncertainty, more people are thinking about how their landscapes can provide food. Lawns are yielding to vegetable gardens, and suppliers of chicks have struggled to keep up with demand. For those who don’t want to take on the responsibility of a new garden or chickens, we asked a couple of ELA members to share how they introduce edible plants into the landscape.

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