Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Ecological Landscape Professional
    The Ecological Landscape Professional
    The Ecological Landscape Professional
    Ebook128 pages1 hour

    The Ecological Landscape Professional

    By Erik Ohlsen

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Create a meaningful career restoring the planet. Ecological landscaping provides implementable solutions to many of the world's problems including career paths for a growing regenerative economy.

    Integrating the principles of permaculture with the practices of professional landscape design provides a powerful strategy to restore the planet and create a regenerative economy simultaneously. A global movement has already taken root throughout the landscape industry and standards are transforming away from old practices that pollute and destroy ecosystems toward methodologies that repair the environment.

    The Ecological Landscape Professional outlines best practices for ecological landscape design, landscape fertility plans, ecological planting strategies, water-harvesting systems, project management, professional design processes, and building a regenerative career developing your own ecological landscape business. An ecological landscaping approach can provide implementable solutions to many of the environmental challenges and community issues that we face globally. Imagine what life would be like if your job was to design and implement regenerative landscapes, farms, and restoration projects.

    Imagine a career where you grow food, catch and store water, repair watersheds, build wildlife habitat, sequester carbon, build healthy soil, and transform your community. We can't afford to wait for anyone else, we have to act now to save what's left for future generations. Restoring our world can't be a weekend hobby any longer as we so desperately need to scale regeneration.

    That's was this book is all about. It's here to inspire you, to educate you, and to empower you to gain the techniques and strategies necessary to have a beneficial and ecological impact on your community. The best practices inside this guide will give you tools you can use to create a livelihood regenerating the planet. It's a toolkit to change your life and the world around you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherErik Ohlsen
    Release dateMar 19, 2019
    ISBN9780997520231
    The Ecological Landscape Professional

    Related to The Ecological Landscape Professional

    Related ebooks

    Business For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Evoking The Natural: Dan Pearson

      Feb 4, 2019

      Evoking The Natural: Dan Pearson
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Perennial VEGETABLES

      Mar 30, 2018

      Perennial VEGETABLES
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Starting A Food Forest

      Aug 20, 2014

      Starting A Food Forest
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Plan Your Permaculture Plot

      May 14, 2021

      Plan Your Permaculture Plot
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Our Favourites To Suit Your Needs

      Dec 23, 2020

      Our Favourites To Suit Your Needs
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Living LANDSCAPE

      Sep 11, 2019

      Living LANDSCAPE
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Backyard Orchards: A Better Way

      Jun 9, 2021

      Backyard Orchards: A Better Way
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Growing Choice

      Jun 5, 2021

      Direct drills are firmly back in vogue as the emphasis shifts towards boosting soil health as well as cutting establishment costs. Some machines will only perform to their best in no-till conditions – working into the firm surface underneath stubble,

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Hidden Half Of The Garden

      Oct 21, 2021

      The Hidden Half Of The Garden
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Cover A Lot Of Ground With Winter Cover Crops

      Sep 11, 2020

      Cover crops have many benefits for your garden soil, and for the food crops you’ll later plant in their place. (See “5 Benefits of Cover Crops,” Page 55.) To reap these benefits, you’ll need to cultivate strong stands of growth that can suppress weed

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Zen Garden

      Jan 2, 2019

      Zen Garden
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Succession Planting

      Mar 2, 2021

      Succession Planting
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Edible Invasives

      May 8, 2020

      Edible Invasives
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Grow Green Manure

      Apr 10, 2020

      Grow Green Manure
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The FUTURE is WILD

      Apr 21, 2022

      The FUTURE is WILD
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What Lies Beneath

      Mar 1, 2022

      What Lies Beneath
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      May-august

      May 5, 2022

      May-august
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What I’ve Learned

      Oct 20, 2022

      What I’ve Learned
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Make Peace With Weeds

      Dec 2, 2021

      Make Peace With Weeds
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Black Magic

      Nov 1, 2022

      Black Magic
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Ecological Landscape Professional

    3.5/5

    3 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Ecological Landscape Professional - Erik Ohlsen

      The Ecological Landscape Professional

      Core Concepts for Integrating the Best Practices of Permaculture, Landscape Design, and Environmental Restoration into Professional Practice

      Erik Ohlsen

      The Ecological Landscape Professional

      Core Concepts for Integrating the Best Practices of Permaculture, Landscape Design, and Environmental Restoration into Professional Practice

      Copyright © 2019 by Erik Ohlsen

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      Published by StoryScapes

      www.erikohlsen.com

      StoryScapes

      PO Box 116

      Sebastopol, Ca 95473

      erik@erikohlsen.com

      Dedicated to my dearest mentors, Penny Livingston-Stark, Brock Dolman, Starhawk, and James Stark. Thank you for always believing in me.

      Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter 1

      A Solution to Regenerate the Planet

      Chapter 2

      The Ecological Design Lens

      Chapter 3

      Land Observation and Analysis

      Chapter 4

      A Professional Design Process

      Chapter 5

      Designing for Water Resilience

      Chapter 6

      Soil Fertility Strategies

      Chapter 7

      Ecological Planting Systems

      Chapter 8

      Integrate Outdoor Living with Hardscapes

      Chapter 9

      Enhancing Wildlife Habitat

      Chapter 10

      Start and Grow an Ecological Landscape Career

      Acknowledgements

      About the Author

      Introduction

      With the perils Planet Earth is facing today, it is easy to see that human land-use patterns have and will continue to play a significant role in the degradation of watersheds, topsoil, and life as we know it. Many development industries contribute to these environmental catastrophes including contracting, agriculture, energy development, and, yes, landscaping.

      This book provides alternatives to the ecological destruction that results from conventional landscape design and installation. With the expanse of water-guzzling lawns—and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides—landscaping in the Western world has become a toxic enterprise.

      The truth is, we do not have to treat our landscapes this way to have them provide beauty and function. In fact, an ecological landscaping approach can provide implementable solutions to many of the environmental challenges, and community issues that we face globally. Ecological-oriented landscaping is an approach that integrates landscape with the cycles of nature through sustainable stewardship and regenerative design.

      These are landscapes designed to catch and harvest water. They build and grow healthy topsoil. They can provide remarkable habitats for any number of wildlife species. They can produce large amounts of food, fuel, and fiber while providing opportunities to better connect humans with the natural world.

      The best thing is that ecological landscaping can regenerate our planet through the processes of sequestering carbon, regenerating watersheds, reforesting degraded lands, and providing economic revitalization and career opportunities for people willing to do the work. In this way, people can live harmoniously with their environments. These lifestyle changes not only help the earth but benefit humankind in many tangible ways.

      I’m so excited to share this book with you! Since I was 19 years old I have been designing, building, and stewarding ecological landscapes. My entire adult life has been about deeply investing and connecting people to the land and regenerating our ecosystems.

      It all started when a group of friends and I decided to create a nonprofit organization with the mission of planting community gardens to grow food and save heirloom open-pollinated seed. At a young age this community of caring and passionate earth tenders awoke to the perils of industrial agriculture, water privatization, water consumption, and the rampant use of chemicals in the agriculture and landscape industries. We formed our group and called it Planting Earth Activation, PEA. Over a two-year span we gave away nearly 200 edible heirloom seed gardens throughout California. I got to witness firsthand the beneficial impacts ecological design and grassroots organizing can have on our communities and landscapes.

      Regenerative design and stewardship became the main focus of my life as I launched into many endeavors over the years. I started a nonprofit that worked to divert waste in my community and create living compost and compost tea to build soil in our bioregion. I helped form grassroots collectives to educate about ecological solutions to healthy food, clean water, and stopping corporate interest from ruling our lives through the privatization and commodification of seeds, food, and water.

      Then in my mid 20s, I met the love of my life, started a family, and endured a chronic health crisis. All of a sudden, I had a greater need to earn a basic income to provide for my growing family and rising healthcare costs. I was unable to continue my nonprofit and grassroots activism work because it required me to travel and my health situation meant I had to stay local. I knew that I couldn’t just get a job and be happy. I had too much vision, inspiration, and drive to make a positive impact on my community and the ecological systems I live in.

      Out of this intense time in my life I started my first ecological landscape business, Permaculture Artisans. Our mission was and still is to regenerate landscapes, connect people to the land, and build regenerative economies that care for our staff and our clients.

      Starting Permaculture Artisans led to a major aha moment in my life. I realized that regenerating our world doesn’t have to be just a hobby. We could build a regenerative economy this way. Maybe this was part of the solution to the urgency I felt about our global ecological and social collapse. I have always strongly believed that every person has a basic right to clean water, healthy food, shelter, and time to enjoy their lives. Starting my ecological landscape company gave us the ability to not only restore landscapes but to provide livelihoods for people. Over the last decades, Permaculture Artisans has created numerous opportunities for people to have right livelihoods through the restoration of nature. All of this, contained inside a purpose-driven ecological landscape company.

      Greatly inspired by the impact Permaculture Artisans was having on all involved, I felt even more moved to build regenerative economy. I then founded The Permaculture Skills Center, a vocational training institute and demonstration site to provide inspiration and offer tangible hands-on training to people who want to build ecological landscapes and farms and to help folks transition into the regenerative economy by training them to start their own landscape design/build businesses and regenerative farming endeavors.

      I am honored to have taught thousands of students worldwide about permaculture design, community organizing, and environmental restoration. I’m grateful to work with hundreds of clients to help them vision, design, and implement their landscapes.

      Ultimately, this book reflects what I feel is one of the most powerful tools we have for quickly transitioning to a regenerative, whole system-based economy. I hope that you find value in this book to change your life, that it helps you develop your own career and life path that contributes to the health and vitality of all of life on this planet, including your own.

      An opportunity is upon us right now. It’s a choice we make as a culture. Do we continue to prop up development and land use practices that destroy the land around us or do we create a new nature-based economy through restoring our world?

      What if we can create an economy that provides meaningful income for people and benefits the environment at the same time? Isn’t that worth our investment? That is the opportunity we have right now,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1
      pFad - Phonifier reborn

      Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

      Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


      Alternative Proxies:

      Alternative Proxy

      pFad Proxy

      pFad v3 Proxy

      pFad v4 Proxy