by Kathy Litchfield
A version of this article first appeared as a post on the NOFA AOLCP website.
Every landscape Patty Laughlin plants has at least one low-bush blueberry. She considers the blueberry a “gateway fruit” as it is low maintenance, easy to grow and delicious, and seems to quickly lead to a client’s discovery of other wonderful edible plants. Even if clients don’t ask for edible landscaping, she finds a way to integrate something low maintenance that will provide food for wildlife as well as the humans inhabiting the land.
“I’ve always focused on edible gardening. My dad was a master gardener when I was growing up and we always had a big vegetable garden and lots of fruit trees and berry bushes. I didn’t know how spoiled I was until I went to college,” she laughed. “Blueberries are native, so easy to grow, and edibles are so engaging for people in a landscape. The level of interaction you create between the humans and animals and landscape itself gets amplified when you bring edibles into the picture.”
Laughlin, a former corporate process improvement specialist (focusing on increasing efficiency) and high school science teacher, named her land care business Lorax Landscaping after the Dr. Seuss character of the same name. She also has a blueberry incorporated into her logo.
A Blueberry Focus
“When I was teaching high school science and started working with kids on the environmental aspects of things, it made sense to bring Dr. Seuss into the classroom. The original cartoon was one I’d play in my science classes on Earth Day,” she said. “So when I started my company and was focusing on organics, edibles and native plants, I bounced around ideas and this is what stuck.”
The blueberry fits with her business focus of using native, perennial and edible plants. Laughlin shared that she has been known to fall behind while hiking with her family when she spots blueberry bushes. Growing up in Maine, a favorite hiking spot was on Rumford Whitecap, where she still goes every August. “I used to make everyone dump their water bottles so I could fill them with blueberries,” she laughed, “but now I just take extra containers.”
Always a gardener, Laughlin turned her passion into a business and founded Lorax Landscaping in 2009, always focusing on edibles, natives, organic and ecological approaches. She is a New Hampshire Certified Landscape Professional, a New Hampshire Natural Resources Steward, holds a certificate in permaculture design, a degree in horticulture with a concentration on landscape operations from the University of New Hampshire and a bachelor’s degree in physics from Dartmouth College.
Using Edibles to Engage Clients
Most of her clients are residential or small businesses – she designed and installed landscapes for a the local gym, barber shop, several restaurants, a chiropractor, and a salon – that are seeking a creative design focused on health and wellness for their landscapes, far from the cookie cutter commercial types so often seen in public places.
She uses a questionnaire to solicit the desires and ideas of her clients and finds that whether they want to grow vegetables, revitalize perennial beds, or landscape their entire property, there is always a place for low maintenance ornamental perennial edibles. In fact, if she has a choice between two plants equally suited for the site conditions, she’ll always choose the edible one.
“Because it raises that level of engagement, and I’ll say, ‘Oh by the way, you can eat these’ and it gets people thinking. Often times they call me for the next step, wanting more edibles,” she said. “It’s also a wonderful fit for people wanting to attract more wildlife into their yards, and a good fit with organic landscaping.”
“I think, as garden designers, we easily overlook edibles for ornamental landscaping, just because they’re categorized as edibles. We need to remember that they can fill any of the niches an ornamental does: shade or flowering trees, shrubs for borders, hedges or screens, perennials, ground covers or vines for climbing. And, many edibles have valuable features you can take advantage of in the landscape besides being edible. Be careful though, the fact that a plant has edible parts doesn’t excuse you from assessing its characteristics and challenges and putting the right plant in the right place,” she said.
The Top-Ten List
Laughlin has identified ten favorite ornamental edibles that she suggests land care professionals should consider integrating into their next landscape: Blueberry, Beach plum, Sand cherry, Elderberry and Alpine strawberry, Pawpaw, Persimmon, Asparagus, Rhubarb and culinary herbs.
Laughlin is a NOFA Accredited Organic Land Care Professional (NOFA AOLCP) and considers herself a lifelong learner. Education remains first and foremost for Laughlin, who is an adjunct professor at the Thompson School of Applied Science at the University of New Hampshire. She has taught pest management with an IPM focus and a soils class there, and also gives many community talks for local groups and garden clubs.
“What I enjoy most is educating and developing relationships with my clients. I don’t want to just plop in a landscape. I want them to learn along the way, why I do certain things the way I do them, why it’s important and what they can do to help. I really enjoy what I call garden coaching – for example, teaching them to prune, why you prune when you do, what you’re looking for, helping people to identify bugs and whether they’re potential problems or being helpful,” she said. “I don’t like to do long term maintenance for my clients; it detracts from their relationship with the landscape. I’d rather teach them the skills they need to be effective.
“I believe part of what we do with organic land care and ecological approaches is hoping we’re making it better for the next generation; that there is a healthy landscape for them. I think about them a lot when I’m doing design work,” she said, recalling a day she helped her two young nephews capture a bug, identify its features, and look it up on the computer to learn that it was a native leaf hopper, not doing anybody any harm, that would probably become food for a bird or frog. “Being able to share that kind of thing is really fun for me,” she said.
“Because I have education in my background, a lot of the rewards of this work for me are seeing light bulbs turn on for people, or seeing that they’re making a positive contribution. Knowing we’re improving soil biology or seeing a client’s delight when they suddenly have amphibians in their backyards or turkeys wandering through eating seed heads off the grass we’re no longer mowing.
“Somewhere along the way, my parents and grandparents instilled in me this idea that we should leave things better than we found them, and I think that is part of our role as land care professionals,” she said.
For more information, contact Laughlin at patty@loraxlandscaping.com.
About the Author
Kathy Litchfieldhas been a journalist, graphic designer, and marketing professional for 18 years. For seven years, she directed the NOFA/Mass Organic Land Care Program and enjoyed meeting hundreds of accredited professionals while coordinating courses, managing grant-funded outreach initiatives, and overseeing educational programs. Sharing people’s stories has been a passion since her 10-year stint working as a newspaper reporter and magazine feature writer just out of college. Today when she’s not writing, Kathy can be found weaving chenille scarves and shawls for her business, Firecrow Handwovens, and raising chickens, pigs, and organic vegetables on her Western Massachusetts farm.
