Senga's Blog
Eco-chic Outdoor Living & Exterior Design
"My gardens, my passion and I will show it how it easy it is for you to be your own exterior designer and live the sustainable lifestyle in your own backyard..."
Senga Lindsay, Senga Landscape Architecture Inc.
Starting January 1, 2010 I will take you through the 'Garden of Eaten/Eden" - a 'Year in the Life of a Sustainable Garden' using my personal garden and show you how you can create beautiful outdoor spaces for entertaining that can provide an abundance of food from our edible green roof, bee hives, egg laying 'chooks' and recipes on how to prepare it with my husband chef and other award winning chefs from B.C.
For more tips check out my other blog at Gardenwise Magazine & my designer article series.
Recent Blog Posts
Mar. 11/10 - Eco Friendly Tip #2 For Your Sustainable Garden - A Rain Garden!
Another Rainy Day in Vancouver!March 11/10 and the rain continues. According to the weather forecast - bright skies are not on the immediate horizon. Yesterday I spoke about Eco-Goals for your garden - starting with my #1 goal - 'Holding Your Water' and how our use and disposal of water in our gardens could be managed much better. 'Holding Your Water' is my term for returning water you use or water that runs off your impermeable spaces (roofs, walkways) are best directed into the ground as opposed to our local sewer system. Rain chains are one simple technique for channeling water from your roof draings into the ground. But what other low tech ways are there to acheive the same thing? [more]
Mar. 10/10 - Eco Friendly Tip #1 For Your Sustainable Garden Rain Chains
Rainy Days of VancouverWhoever invented the saying 'April showers bring showers brings May flowers' must have been thinking of Vancouver and must have actually meant January, February, March, April....you get the picture. One would think that with all the rain we get each year that a water shortage would never be an issue. Wrong! Infact, most summers see the Vancouver area being subjegated to outdoor water restrictions. Reservoirs run dangerously low as drier summers fail to replenish them. This is aggravated by the fact that we as homeowners simply use and waste too much water. For example, by simply ignoring that leaky outdoor tap, hundreds of gallons of water are wasted each year. Times that by a million people and there goes hundreds of millions of gallons literally down the drain. [more]
Mar. 9/2010 – The Planning Stage: Turnip 'Early Snowball'
Confession time here – I think I have had turnips maybe 1-2 times ever in my life and I am pretty sure they were camouflaged with a myriad of other root vegetables in a dish served at some high end restaurant in Vancouver whose claim to fame is that it serves food via the 100 mile coupled with the slow food (whatever is in season) philosophy. My memory is so vague I can’t even remember what they actually taste like. But in 40 (weather cooperating) or so days I am about to find out. [more]
Mar. 8/2010 – The Planting Stage: Square Foot Garden On Edible Green Roof
Edible Green Roof as Food Producing Machine!Today I was working on my edible green roof. Despite the fact that it is only March, I am optimistic that spring has come early. So I decided to lay out my grid lines as per my square foot gardening strategy and started sewing my cool season crop seeds. First published in 1981 by Mel Bartholomew, grid patterns instead of rows to grow your fruits and vegetables reduce wasted space by eliminate aisles and at the same time decreases the amount of weeding. Growing plants such as tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash vertically (on a 5-6’ trellis system) at the back of each bed frees up much covered horizontal space. And for greater efficiency interplant fast growing and maturing crops like radishes and leaf lettuce with slower growing plants such as tomatoes. By the time the tomatoes fill out their space, your faster growing crops have been long consumed in a gourmet dish! [more]
Mar. 6/2010 – The Planting Stage: First in Garden - Onions, Scallions and Garlic
First in the Garden - Onions, Scallions and Garlic For those in the culinary know - onions are probably the most coveted vegetable in a chef's culinary repetoire. This according to my husband. And this is followed by the close second - garlic. Almost evertime my husband goes on a major grocery shopping excursion, he comes home with a bag of both. March 6 in the garden and time to start planting the edible green roof. And what better way to celebrate a very early spring but to put out sets of my onions, scallions and garlic cloves. I have elected to take the easier way out start off with sets (bulblets) instead of seeds as my previous attempte the previous November resulted in nothing but the vestiges of rotting bulbs. From what I understand it can be a hit or miss depending on the weather - by planting in late fall. [more]
