Are you looking to improve your landscaping and gardening techniques, and learn more sustainable ways to prepare, plant and tend your lawns & beds? Whether you are a professional landscaper or a home gardener, this workshop will help you adopt and integrate landscaping practices that are not only beautiful, but support essential ecosystem services such as providing pollinator habitat, decreasing erosion, and storing carbon in the soil.

If you’re a professional landscaper, this is a great opportunity to impress your client base with sustainable and resilient landscaping methods that decrease weed pressure, increase plant nutrient availability, and sink & store water. For home gardeners, you’ll walk away with these benefits as well as more ideas to enhance your existing design.

Participants will learn:

• Organic techniques to care for your gardens
• How sheet mulching can reduce weeds and need for watering
• The pillars of soil health and the benefits to investing in soil
• Other advice for maintaining healthy soil, such as Carbon:Nitrogen ratios, benefits of getting your soil tested, and basics in soil microbiology

Schedule/Agenda:

1:00 – Welcome, Introductions, Overview of Soil Health & Microscope demonstration

2:00 – Field walk & Sheet mulching demonstration

3:15 – Next steps for your site

4:00 – Closing

About:

Resilient Roots is a non-profit organization whose mission is to inspire, empower and promote awareness about permaculture landscapes that are primarily edible and guided by ecological principles. We believe we all can make small but meaningful changes that regenerate our land and feed our neighbors, and we can encourage these changes with a big, supportive community. We have a demonstration garden in Marstons Mills on property owned by the Barnstable Land Trust (BLT). The class will be partially held in the BLT barn and partially in the neighboring garden.

Healthy Soils Action Plan

The Healthy Soils Action Plan was developed over the past three years under the direction of the Commission for Conservation of Soil, Water & Related Resources with crucial input from a steering committee with expertise in soils across five land use categories: farms, forests, wetlands, lawns and other developed open spaces, and impervious areas (buildings, roads, and parking lots). This event is supported by Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs in order to provide a soil health curriculum for homeowners and landscapers, implementing healthy soil practices outlined in the Healthy Soils Action Plan, including turf best practices, nutrient management, tree planting, and SOC testing.

About the Instructors:

Rubén Parrilla is the Soil Technical Coordinator and Education Director for NOFA/Mass and trained in microscopic soil microbial identification through the Soil Food Web School. He is a Certified Lab Tech and studied Environmental Design at the University of Puerto Rico. Rubén has 15 years’ experience working at different capacities in the environmental laboratory industry. He has been performing soil carbon proxy testing, soil health assessments, soil chemical analysis, and soil microbiological evaluations for NOFA/Mass  over the past year and has extensive experience farming and working with farmers, including beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers. Rubén performs soil health related outreach and education events for NOFA/Mass by leading monthly farmer learning calls, providing hands-on workshops and instruction at soil health education events, and networking with farmers and individuals in the agricultural industry. He is a fluent and native Spanish speaker and fully English/Spanish bilingual.

Kristie Kapp is the Founder and Executive Director of Resilient Roots. She has a Master’s in Ecology from Yale School of Environmental Studies and over twenty-five years of farming experience. She is a regenerative landscape designer who focuses on edible and native plantings and has been designing permaculture landscapes since 2014. She has taught farming and gardening to every age group through several different organizations.

Accessibility:

The barn where we’ll hold the presentation-based information is wheelchair accessible, but the garden is not as accessible by wheelchair. If this prevents you from attending, please contact [email protected] to discuss potential arrangements.

Refund/Inclement Weather Policy:

For information on our refund and inclement weather policy, click here. 

Capacity:

Capacity for this event is limited to 25 people. Register ahead of time to secure your space! 

Carpooling is encouraged: head to the dedicated event rideshare site to coordinate.

Questions?

Contact Hannah at [email protected]