Horticulturist Senga Lindsay is teaching a class on edible landscape design. Photo courtesy Mike Wakefield
Local, fresh and sustainable are a few buzzwords that we, as Vancouverites, hear daily. But environmentally friendly food options can be tough on a student’s wallet. What if you could have organic produce and stretch your dollar further?
Senga Lindsay, author of the book Edible Landscaping: Urban Food Gardens That Look Great, will be using her extensive knowledge of plant systems to teach students how to do just that.
The horticulturist-turned-landscape architect will be teaching a UBC continuing studies class on “edible landscape design” this March. The three-day workshop will lead students through basic design and construction lectures on how to properly create a garden space.
“There are a lot of reasons why people should grow their own food,” said Lindsay. “It’s social, it’s healthy and it’s less taxing on the system.”
Having your own garden could also be the golden ticket to shedding that freshman 15. According to Lindsay, it helped her lose weight in a natural way.
“Growing your own food allows you to become very food aware,” she said. “You start growing all this stuff, it’s great, you’re eating it and all of a sudden, junk and the bags of chips just don’t seem quite right.”
Lindsay’s debut book shows the average person that creating a beautiful and wholesome garden with their favourite plants is possible and easy — and maintaining a garden and healthy diet does not require hundreds of dollars and several hectares of land.
“There is a lot of wasted space in an average city lot that is just lawn,” she said. “While you’re maintaining your lawn with pesticides and fertilizers and all that other stuff, you could be growing food for you and your family organically.”
And according to Lindsay, it doesn’t have to be hard.
“People think it’s gotta to be rows and rows of vegetables and tons of weeding. But it can just be pieces in the garden,” she said.
The edible landscape design course, which runs from March 8–10, will teach students how to integrate gardening into a sustainable garden space that is unique to their living situation.
Though it may sound complicated, there’s no experience necessary for the course. “Any beginner can easily grasp it. Once you understand how you work through it, it’s pretty easy,” said Lindsay.
“My thing is, if you’re going to have a garden anyway, or a yard or a balcony, just replace it with edibles. You get something out of it, and you get beauty out of it at the same time.”
To learn more or register for the edible landscape design course, visit http://www.cstudies.ubc.ca.
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