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Create an abundant and nurturing landscape,
regenerate ecosystem health,
and provide healthy food for your family
FOOD FORESTS for COLD CLIMATES
Imagine...
walking out into your yard or venturing into your community commons and being surrounded by food abundance, nurtured by your beautiful landscape as it provides sanctuary from the pressures of the outside world. Everywhere you look there is LIFE - green, lush, woodland-style plantings of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, insects and birds. Plants that provide important ecosystem services, pollinator support, food and medicine. Plants that support healthy nutrient-cycling, beauty and scent. Enticing pathways that invite you onward as you pick ripened fruit, berries, and other edible treats. There's an incredible sense of peace and tranquility in the awareness of belonging to this vibrant, diverse and beautiful forest garden ecosystem that you've mindfully and respectfully help create, knowing that you will evolve together through the years to come, and that the future will indeed be fruitful!
What if you could turn this enticing vision into your reality?
If you're like most folks, you grew up with a fairly established idea of what a property landscape should look like, and it usually involved a sea of grass and a whole lot of maintenance to go with it. We're talking lawns as far as the eye can see, a veritable monoculture of manicured monotony, and nothing edible in sight.
But what if there was a way to turn this boring, maintain-the-status-quo, useless space into a productive and beautiful landscape that would provide value and abundance for many years to come?
If you're ready to ditch the current popular paradigm, and are keen to build deep layers of resilience into your landscape, we've designed this incredible workshop to help get you started
It doesn't matter whether you have a tiny courtyard garden, a small plot, an average urban lot or are living the rural life on the homestead- this workshop will give you the information, resources and strategies you need to take that next step into bringing more food security and resilience into your life and helping you shorten your food supply chain, all while giving you the power to exercise greater control over the quality (and safety) of your own food.
Did you know that as recently as the 1940s, Canada produced all of it's own basic fruit and berries? Now, 80% of all fruit sold in our grocery stores is imported, and much of what we do produce is exported to other countries.
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With tariffs now a reality, all of us will be facing some important decisions about how and where we access our food going forward. It may become difficult for us to continue to have access to some of the produce that we have come to expect in our grocery stores.
The good news is that by planning and planting a forest garden, or food forest, you can grow a diverse polyculture of productive species that you know will produce well in your climate and growing zones, and you can meet your needs hyper-locally.
There's never been a better time to plant
a forest garden!
PERENNIAL GROWING SYSTEMS + ANNUAL VEGETABLE SYSTEMS =
COLD CLIMATE FOOD SECURITY
Hands down, one of the best strategies to employ if you want more cold-climate food security is to utilize both annual vegetable gardens and perennial systems, allowing you to leverage seasonal currency in the short and long term. And this holds true even if you don't live in a cold climate.
It just makes sense.
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You can be sure this is how our ancestors managed their food supply, augmenting their annual gardens with foraged fruit , berries and mushrooms, harvesting useful plants for medicines, dyes, weaving, and other uses, as well as cultivating fruit trees that were good producers for their area. They knew which fruit were good "keepers" for winter eating, and how important it was to have a diversity of foodstuffs through the seasons.
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So why plant a forest garden rather than just a few fruit trees?
A forest garden is comprised of so much more than a few fruit trees. Through thoughtful planning you can create an assemblage of species, with various roles and functions that not only support the health and productivity of your main production species but also support ecosystem health and dynamics. You can include plants that meet your specific requirements for medicinals, herbs, dyes, pollinator support, nutrient cycling, and so very much more. You can accomplish this by mimicking the way natural forests function, using nature as your guide, and setting the stage for the ecosystem to create multiple matrices of relationships that help the system thrive and require minimal management.
You can learn to transform an unproductive landscape like this:
into a lush and vibrant ecosystem, like THIS:
Getting the right tools and correct strategies before you begin your project is the key to success and to avoiding a number of common mistakes that can seriously jeopardize the productivity and health of your system. Believe me, over my many years of consulting and designing hundreds of forest gardens, I've seen every mistake possible when it comes to food forests. Most times, it's a result of high levels of enthusiasm combined with low-levels of experience or information. Sometimes it's just a lack of understanding about how ecosystems function and what the needs of healthy ecosystems actually are. When you consider the investment of time, energy, resources and care that go into establishing a forest garden, doesn't it make sense to get it right the first time, instead of trying to fix costly mistakes down the road?
HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS FULL-DAY, INFORMATION PACKED
IN-PERSON WORKSHOP
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Food forest fundamentals - the foundations of success
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The key principles of food forest design
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Requirements for ecosystem health
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Ecosystem dynamics
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The importance of diversity
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Ecosystem succession
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Plant roles and functions in the food forest (and why stacking functions is important!)
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Plant niching
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Site and soil preparation for your forest garden - what works and what doesn't!
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Nutrient cycling in the food forest, and how to best support ongoing levels of fertility
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Plant guilding- the art of assembling mutually-supportive species
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Stages of implementation
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and so much more!
Meet Your Instructor, Carmen Lamoureux
Owner and founder of Calgary’s URBAN FARM SCHOOL, Carmen Lamoureux is dedicated to helping gardeners and permaculture enthusiasts gain the freedom, confidence and skills they need to live more abundant and resilient lives.
With a background in the fields of sustainable land management, forestry, soils, silviculture, and permaculture, as well as in the horticultural sector, Carmen’s grounded base in ecosystem dynamics informs her practical approach to meeting our needs while respecting natural systems.
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Carmen is an experienced, respected and sought-after designer of regenerative landscapes in both urban and rural settings, and has consulted on hundreds of properties. She believes that our landscapes can be designed to provide not only healthy food, but also sanctuary, beauty and ecological vibrancy.
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Through URBAN FARM SCHOOL, Carmen offers practical workshops and presentations to inspire conscious and creative solutions for regenerative local food production. An international Permaculture instructor, Carmen is also a regular instructor for Government of Saskatchewan Indigenous Affairs, the Calgary Horticultural Society, the Alberta Master Gardeners Association and various other organizations.
Here's what some of our past students have to say about the
FOOD FORESTS for COLD CLIMATES workshop:
"The Cold Climate Forest Garden course I took with Urban Farm School was amazingly comprehensive! Learning from nature's design, the importance of diversity in the soil, how to create "guilds" (companion planting on steroids!) and so much more- Through Carmen's years of experience and her practical approach, I feel very well prepared to start my own cold-climate food forest, and have gained a wealth of information that will serve me for many years to come. Very highly recommended!" Maryke S.
"Carmen is an exceptional instructor and educator with a passion towards systems ecology and regenerative agriculture. She teaches ecosystem sustainability and resiliency through the application of permaculture principles . The knowledge she has in regards to vegetation succession, soil regeneration and species diversity is shared from a theoretical perspective and then applied to urban systems where it transforms landscapes into productive and healthy ecosystems. The diversity of species she introduces into these ecosystems play fundamental roles in the productivity and resiliency of the landscape. Carmen is an inspiration to everyone wanting to create resilient, productive and sustainable ecosystems." Renee L.
If you're ready to start future-proofing your landscape and create your very own productive and beautiful food sanctuary, register below for this full-day workshop!