Quest to Agriscaping

Shortly after we got married I was out tending to our yard when I had thought that if I am already watering my yard, wouldn’t it be great if my landscaping served multiple purposes and could sustain my family. Then I wouldn’t have to feel bad about wasting water. What if it could be used to eat, make cleaning supplies, have medicinal qualities, and be beautiful? Basically, a garden hidden in the beauty of the landscape…what is Agriscaping!

It was at that time that I decided to make a very light impromptu promise to myself that one day I would be self-reliant as possible. Have a mini-farm in the city yet have it be easy and eye appealing.

At that time I knew very little about gardening and only helped my parents harvest gardens, not plant them. Back then it was still dial-up internet and my best resources for researching would be at the library but the thought of hauling 4 children to the library to do research was not appealing

Fast forward 15 years later and I found Meetup where Justin Rohner from Agriscape Technologies was hosting an event where we could tour houses that had created editable landscaping.

Agriscapeing- a hybrid of gorgeous landscaping with editable plants I couldn’t wait to check it out. Read more about that here. 

I loved visiting the yards and seeing what they had done. But alas life was busy and nothing more was done.

For the next two years, I attended some of Justin’s Meetup workshops and followed him on social media but our yard stayed the same. It was overwhelming. I didn’t want to plant anything unless I knew exactly what to plant and where. I finally took a small leap of action and scheduled a consultation for a designer’s eye. You can read more about our consultation here.

You can get your own consultation here.

My agriscaping experience didn’t have to end there

My experience didn’t have to end here. There were several options that Justin’s team could help us with. We could

• Take a course to help us learn how to implement the information
• Or we could have partial help implementing
• Or we could hire Justins team to do it all

I just wasn’t full in and sure we could afford any of it and I would attempt things on my own.

Our results from our consultation with Justin

Lavendar Landscape

Another year went by when I had an opportunity to have Lavendar Landscape make some plans for my yard. They were wonderful to work with. I received a beautiful 3D video and 2D plans. This is what my backyard would look like.

Option 1: Babbitt Option 1 Backyard -Stage with water-Click Here

Option 2: Babbitt Option 2 Backyard- Stage no water-Click Here

Absolutely dreamy and totally fell in love with the design but when I asked about all the plants being editable they weren’t as familiar with that idea. They did research and put as much as they knew into the design but I was still hoping for the majority to be editable.

Shrub Hub

And a little while later I found Shrub Hub running a special for $79 they would design a yard. I figured since Lavendar Landscape had done my back I would check into Shrub Hub to see if they could do editable landscaping but for my front. I was supposed to have a  1/2 hour consult call with a designer. The guy called 20 min late and then only gave me 5 min to describe what I wanted. Needless to say, I was frustrated but I guess I get what I paid for. I can’t even really read it or see what is what.

Then Covid Happened

Shortly after Covid became a thing. My sister-in-law called me saying if I needed groceries I better get to the store and get them as the shelves were all bare. I didn’t believe her and several days later when I went in for my normal grocery shopping I walked into a horrifying sight.

All the shelves were empty!

It was like something straight out of a horror show!

I only found gluten-free pasta and a few veggies and that was it. Freezers and shelves were empty. A few years ago we had been in a situation with no job and things looked sparse and scary that I wouldn’t be able to feed my family yet I knew I had family or friends who would have been happy to buy us food if we had needed it. This time the panic was different. For the first time, it seemed real that families could literally go hungry. I swore I never want to feel that feeling again and now more than ever ready to make this Agriscaping work.

Point and Plant

I reached back out to Agriscape Technologies for a Point and Plant. One of their fabulous specialists, Matt, came out and walked my property with me. The difference between the very first consultation was I was given a microclimate map and information about how much food my property could grow and how I could use greywater. Even though I had been given a chart of things that could grow in those microclimates I was overwhelmed thinking about how later on those microclimates would change and then would all my plants die.

The Point and plant for a nongardener like me, who just wanted to brainstorm and be assured the plants I wanted were correct were exhilarating!  Matt was just throwing out so many ideas and I knew I wanted more than just a plan and he was getting what I was going for. Matt then reminded me about the FAB 5 program. 

I knew when I scheduled the point and plant that I was going to hire Agriscape Technologies to do my plans and after asking what the plans included and some other elements that I would want Matt convinced me what I really wanted would be to apply for the FAB5.  After thinking of how long it has taken to take action, the overwhelm of planning on our own as well as the learning curve among so many other things I decided that in the long run it would be cheaper and force us to be accountable to get going.

Applying for FAB5

It was super exciting when Justin Rohner, the owner of Agriscape reached out to us and wanted the whole family to be present. Made sure we would all be helping and wanted everyone’s input.

He asked us

• what our favorite meals were,
• what we loved to do outdoors,
• specific things we wanted in the yard,
• what was already in the yard that we wanted to keep or get rid of
• we filled out homestead priorities and an editable checklist. this was done over a zoom

At this point, I was so excited that if we qualified I was going to make this work.

Here we are in the FAB5 Agriscaping Technologies Program

My biggest concern was that could I come up with the money to be a part of the Agriscaping program as well as still afford to plant things.

I decided if I can at least meet these goals it won’t really matter what I complete because I will still have taken action and be accountable and have momentum. I realize that my dream yard will take years for me to be able to afford and create but I plan on being here for life and I guess I won’t ever get bored. 🙂  I sure hope I can plant a lot but my main goals are

• To complete the Agriscaping Mastery Courses
• Get a dream landscape blueprint that shows the main attractions of my yard.  It will include all the plants and things that would surround these attractions. Something that even when my program is over I can still look at and take a section of the yard and work on as I can afford and whether I have professional guidance or not. Basically my own recipe I can follow to create that dream yard.
• Figure out my harvesting schedule. How to prune.
• Map of when to harvest what is on my dream list.
• I get help figuring out the greywater
• Get good soil and a composting system down. In the past, my gardens have tasted so nasty and I believe it was because of the soil.

Come follow us on our journey through the FAB5 program and us making our yard all editable!

How about you? Are you doing anything to be self-sustaining? I would love to hear if so.