Plants & Living Systems

An orchard in your backyard – think of it!  A virtual grocery aisle, providing a ready crop of fruit and livestock to provide your family with healthy, nutritious, free food, enough to enjoy in [...]

Cruise through suburbia one spring or fall day, and you’ll see them: rows upon rows of paper bags of leaves, lawn clippings, and yard waste, waiting for municipal pickup. Ironically,  the [...]

In our last blog, we looked at how water and soil interact in assuring the success of your permaculture property. In this post, we’re going to take a look at how you can revive the soil ecosystem [...]

It’s been a number of years since we moved from our first homestead in suburban Calgary, but we still love to hear the gasps of awe and admiration as we show its Before and After pictures: from a [...]

If you listen to conventional wisdom, you might begin to think that planting fruit trees on your property is a terrible idea – they’re prone to diseases and pests, and demand endless spraying and [...]

“Food forest” – “forest garden” – “agroforestry” – if you grew up seeing farms with single-crop fields stretching away into the distance, these terms may provoke some cognitive dissonance. [...]

Work is a Failure in Design – it’s a motto I use again and again, and it’s especially true when you look at composting. The common problems that gardeners struggle with are usually red flags, [...]

Imagine a garden where every plant, insect, and drop of water plays a vital role in a vibrant ecosystem. This is the heart of an epic permaculture garden, a space that transcends traditional [...]

In my last post, we looked at the hidden risks in one crucial system of human civilization – energy – and how those risks could undermine the entire house of cards within a decade or [...]

When your farm is located, like ours, in a zone 3B spot challenged by wind, drought, erosion, and cold, protecting the soil and collecting water become major concerns. And so we’ve settled on the [...]

Hey Everyone,  This summer, we won’t be around Calgary much. We have taken a contract position with the Groundswell Network Society, in Invermere, BC, to act as their Resident Permaculture [...]

Join us for a beautiful and info-packed video tour of our permaculture homestead! This is a 3-part series where we explain and explore our: – thriving food forest complete with fruit trees, [...]

Last week, I gave you my top 7 tips for designing a passive solar greenhouse. But once you’ve got the greenhouse in place, how do you manage it to get the most out of it? After 5 years of [...]

In this video Rob showcases one of the major water harvesting feature – an underground rainwater cistern – on Rob and Michelle’s urban home property. This rain tank is unique because [...]

Our How we designed our Solar Greenhouse blog is one of the most read blogs on our website, so I thought it was time for an update! This post will cover the benefits of our greenhouse, the [...]

Below I have put together a video about a tool that every designer should be familiar with. It is called a solar pathfinder. I use this tool in almost every consultancy that I do and it not only [...]

Last weekend both Jordan and I had an amazing opportunity to be part of Rob Avis of Verge Permaculture’s Design Team, participating in an applied Design Practicum at the Groundswell [...]

Permaculturists everywhere are crazy about their compost teas and extracts. They have turned building compost tea brewers into a science and concocting the perfect tea recipe into an art. We [...]

Spring has sprung and there is much to be done at the Verge Headquarters - planting and transplanting, installing a drip irrigation system, amending the soil for a new growing year and plenty [...]

A few weeks ago we had our amazing interns prepare a soil sample to be sent off to the Soil Food Web Lab in Vulcan. (See the blog,

Michelle, Rowan and I were driving home from a vacation in the mountains when we passed by a swale on a farmer’s field in the middle of Alberta cattle country. Naturally, it piqued my [...]

Luke is our outgoing intern and the 2011 Contest Winner for the Sunnyside Garden Centre Writing Competition: "How is gardening a form of artwork, and how does gardening build [...]