InFocus Magazine

Helena Hartwood is no ordinary landscape designer. When it comes to gardening, this Comox Valley master gardener and owner of Hartwood Garden Designs looks at vegetation in a different way.  She strives to achieve varying heights, textures and colors by incorporating vegetables and fruit-producing shrubs, vines, hedgerows and trees.  She calls it “edible landscaping.”

For Hartwood, landscaping in the new millennium needs to both look and taste good.  With food security now a global issue, people need to realign their attitudes and think food, not just lawns and flowers for their own yards, believes Hartwood. The time is ripe for the “slow food” generation to take root.

Hartwood’s love of gardening was fostered during many years working summers at her grandparents’ Niagara-on-the-Lake orchards.  Although she considered becoming a landscape architect as a young woman, she was more interested in the softer side of landscaping, like planting vegetables and pruning fruit trees. So instead, she obtained an Arts degree from a Welsh university, specializing in stained glass designs.  Her arts background now serves her well as a landscape designer.

In 2007, Hartwood attended a landscape design course at Vancouver Island University.  Her eyes ignite with enthusiasm when she recalls that first day.

“Within the first hour I knew this is what I was meant to do,” Hartwood says.  “It was like an epiphany for me.  I suddenly realized that I could make designing edible landscaping a career.”

Now, as a master gardener, Hartwood is on a mission to introduce edible landscaping to everyone.  She spends one day a week offering advice at Anderton Nursery in Comox.  The rest of her time is spent doing garden consultations, workshops and garden tours in the Comox Valley, as well as Campbell River.

“My days are spent going through gardens with homeowners.  I help them identify existing vegetation and then advise them on pruning, feeding and weeding, so they can do the work themselves.  And I do regular garden maintenance on a contractual basis,” says Hartwood.  “I work mostly on my own but hire excavators and arborists, for example, for really big jobs.”

When designing edible landscapes, Hartwood combines various types of vegetables with edible flowers to create garden beds and containers that are esthetically pleasing, easy to care for and productive. Corn, sunflowers and pole beans, for example, provide height.  Swiss chard and fancy lettuce add color.  Parsley, basil and other herbs can add beautiful texture and fullness.  Amongst it all, nasturtiums and other edible flowers can provide variety and an added splash of color.  Various types of vegetables and flowers can even be planted to help pollinate and control garden pests, eliminating the need for harsh chemicals.

For arbors and fences, Hartwood incorporates kiwi, grape and hops vines.  Strawberries cascade down from hanging baskets—well out of reach of pesky rabbits.  Hedges can be comprised of blueberry, gooseberry and hazelnut shrubs.

Hartwood loves nothing better than spending time under the canopy of an apple tree, showing someone how to properly prune their trees and, in doing so, foster a sense of pride and accomplishment when they are blessed with a bountiful harvest.  But with families smaller than they were 50 years ago, and with fewer people knowing how to preserve fruit and produce for the winter, helping people cope with, quite literally, the fruits of their labor, led Hartwood to an organization called the LUSH Valley Food Action Society. (LUSH stands for “Let Us Share the Harvest.”)  She now serves on their board of directors.

“LUSH Valley is an amazing non-profit organization that has been working to ensure ‘food security’ for people in the Comox Valley since 1999,” explains Hartwood.  “I am involved with the harvest-sharing Fruit Tree Project.  LUSH Valley works with people from Fanny Bay to Black Creek who have fruit trees but are not utilizing the harvest.  This includes [but is not limited to] cherries, plums, apples, pears, kiwis, figs, hazelnuts, walnuts, quince and grapes. We bring in teams of volunteers to pick the fruit and then divvy up the crop into thirds, which are then distributed to the tree owner, the volunteers and LUSH Valley.  Our portion is then given, free of charge, to various soup kitchens and other social food programs in the Valley.  In the near future, LUSH plans to start selling some value added produce to the public, from their office and warehouse on Piercy Avenue, to help raise money to fund operations.”

During the 2008 harvest season, LUSH Valley volunteers picked more than 16,000 pounds of fruit.

This year, they have has set a goal to double that amount.  Close to 75 people have already registered to help pick the fruit, and more are welcome to come forward.  Many have volunteered as a humanitarian gesture, because they just want to help.  Some, however, are doing so because they need this food.

While the Fruit Tree Project is an integral part of LUSH Valley’s work in the community, adds volunteer president and acting executive director, Betty-Anne Juba, the association is active on many fronts.

LUSH Valley also has three large vegetable garden plots under cultivation in the Comox Valley—on property donated for use by area landowners. The gardens are cared for by participants of a provincial and federal government-sponsored job creation program.  They are learning marketable job skills, as well as helping grow food to distribute to local agencies working with the impoverished.

Juba dreams of the day they can add protein to their grocery supply list.  “Just imagine how much more nutritional value we could offer with donations of eggs, milk, meat and other protein-based perishables,” Juba says.  For that to materialize, however, cash donations to help purchase walk-in refrigeration/freezer units are desperately needed. Use of more garden space and a greenhouse or two, to be able to grow food year round, are also high on LUSH Valley’s “Dream Donations” list.