A Review of Suite U Course: Ecological Gardening: Organics and Beyond
Serendipity always takes me by surprise. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but I'm still amazed when things come together easily or when a chain of coincidence leads me to a new place. Not long ago, the editor of a regional magazine asked me to write a piece on the healing power of human touch. Now, although I've written for the magazine for years, she wasn't aware that I was a massage therapist. The assignment allowed me to discuss one of my favorite topics, as well as feature some great area massage therapists.
The latest bit of serendipity involves the same magazine, but a new editor. In asking me to write on landscape design, she had no idea that I was taking a SuiteU course on Ecological Gardening: Organics and Beyond, which focuses on creating a haven for humans and wildlife in your own backyard. Nor did she know that the landscape designer she asked me to interview would want to focus on that very topic: creating a personal haven. Don't you just love it when things come together like that?
Before taking Bob Ewing's course, my knowledge of organic gardening was mainly limited to growing vegetables and a few flowers. In Ecological Gardening, however, I learned much more about what it takes to create a truly ecological garden. At the same time, I started looking at my own yard and garden with a much more critical eye.
I live in a typical North American suburb, not far from the city of Pittsburgh, PA. The area is known for cold winters, day after day of cloudy weather, and a bumper crop of white tail deer. None of these make gardening easy, at least not conventional gardening. But what I learned from Ewing's course and the recommended textbook, Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, is a different approach to gardens.
Both course and book focus on the idea of creating a home-scale permaculture. Hemenway defines permaculture as: "a set of technqiues and principles for designing sustainable human settlements."
The word is a contraction of both "permanent culture" and "permanent agriculture," and the idea is to create landscape designs that are modeled after nature yet include humans. For example, when choosing a shade tree, you could choose one that simply provides shade and maybe has a nice shape to grace your front yard. Or you could choose one that provides nuts, attracts pollinators, pulls dust out of the air, and provides a nice basis for a personal haven.
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