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View ProfilesPublished April 2, 2024 at 1:37 p.m. | Updated April 3, 2024 at 10:34 a.m.
Once upon a time, there were yards and there was food production, and never the twain should meet. Yards were for shade trees, grass, and maybe a flower bed or two; vegetable gardens were penned and tidy; and berry patches were relegated to fence posts.
But imagine replacing that expanse of grass with plants that provide food for people and habitats for wildlife. Fruit trees are the perfect size for us to pluck their bounty, and nut trees shelter us from the sun. Perennial herbs and vegetables boast beautiful flowers that thrive where delicate ornamentals and grass grow parched. Then there's the come-hither appeal of ripe berries.
"We evolved to find little red berries," said Jacob Holzberg-Pill, 4-H educator for special projects at the University of Vermont Extension and owner of Juneberry, a landscaping company named for the edible serviceberry. "People want more interactive landscapes, and they want to have a more involved relationship with their food."
He's among a growing number of Vermonters who are leaning into edible landscaping, also called foodscaping. It's a gardening practice that weaves edible plants into any land available, be it an orchard, backyard or porch pot.
Holzberg-Pill's own third-of-an-acre yard is a foodscaping master class, as Seven Days discovered during an early spring tour of his house in Burlington's New North End.
The first sign of edible landscaping was the skeleton of an imposing Nanking cherry bush guarding the front door. The expressive sprawl of limbs convinced this reporter to ignore the door and keep walking to the side entrance, where the landscaper emerged, bearded and smiling, in a camel-colored work jacket and pants — the unofficial uniform of someone who works outside for a living.
Many foodscape enthusiasts draw knowledge and inspiration from Holzberg-Pill. The Burlington resident regularly teaches edible landscaping workshops with the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, Red Wagon Plants, Gardener's Supply, Access CVU, Vermont Garden Network and Rock Point Commons.
While the permaculture or foodscaping movement has a long history, Vermont has seen a surge of interest in edible landscaping since the onset of the pandemic, according to Kyle Albee, a board member of Branch Out Burlington! The volunteer group has been selling fruit trees at its annual tree sale for about 17 years.
"The fruit trees have always been popular, especially peaches and cherries," Albee said. But in 2020, "people went crazy. We sold out a tree sale that normally takes months in seven days." Since then, he added, "the demand for fruit trees really hasn't decreased. It just seems to keep going."
With his landscaping business and workshops, Holzberg-Pill "is really filling that need of 'Where do you go to learn how to prune fruit trees? And if you're planting them in a Burlington yard, where do you go for plants?'" said Elise Schadler, program manager for the Vermont Urban & Community Forestry Program at the state Department of Forests, Parks & Recreation. The state has no resource for residential fruit trees, she said, so educators such as Holzberg-Pill play a vital role in empowering others to give it a try.
As the tour of Holzberg-Pill's yard continued, he pointed out a mulberry tree bordering the back deck, planted there because it bears fruit daily for two months. Each visitor to the backyard is welcomed with fruit as they pass the tree, he said.
Just beyond the deck grow clumps of 10 or 20 different perennial herbs, a few already sending up green shoots, for the family to grab for cooking or the kids to sample. They're interspersed with species of dormant flowering perennials — more than Holzberg-Pill could count. One trick he uses to foster a diversity of plants to attract beneficial insects and wildlife is to plant heavily in small spaces, growing most things from seed or propagation.
"Where neighbors are putting in three [plants], I'll put in 10, and then I'll put in 10 of another thing and then 10 of another," he said.
Beyond the herb garden, the yard offers a dazzling variety of edible shrubs, including grapevines, a dozen varieties of blueberries and raspberries, and four kinds each of blackberries, strawberries, elderberries and bush cherries.
"Then we have all these other random fruits that nobody's ever heard of before," Holzberg-Pill said. Schisandra, for instance, is a traditional Chinese medicinal herb, also known as five-flavor fruit for its ability to impart sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami flavors at once.
This gardener's goal is to have berries all season.
"When friends come over, our kids get to show off the fruit, and then the friends get to eat it and the neighbors get to come by," Holzberg-Pill said. They're always tasting the latest crop of the season.
Beyond the berries, chickens live in a roomy coop shaded all summer long by trumpet vines, which provide food for hummingbirds. The chickens' bedding is neighborhood leaf litter, which the family eventually composts to fertilize the berry bushes and trees. There are a lot of the latter, too: six or seven varieties of apple tree, two varieties of pear, four varieties of peach, and a few varieties each of juneberry, mulberry and cherry.
The list goes on. Holzberg-Pill moves or divides many of the plants as his family observes what thrives and what they like. Though he planned the garden when they moved in five and a half years ago, he said, a sense of experimentation and playfulness is evident in every corner of the yard.
"We're not a garden magazine," he said.
The yard still makes a stunning visual impact. A wooden arbor covered in vines and roses usually greets backyard visitors, leading them into what feels like a secret garden. The arbor had to come down over the winter to accommodate a new accessory dwelling in the backyard, but Holzberg-Pill hopes to bring it back this summer.
The family cultivate their yard's aesthetic appeal not just for its own sake but to attract those human visitors — and interest some of them in trying foodscaping. Because Holzberg-Pill and his family are in the yard so often, he said, they've made friends with several neighbors who are slowly filling their own front yards with veggies, berries and trees in lieu of grass.
One nearby foodscape comrade is Ren Weiner, owner of Miss Weinerz, a small bakery that is well known for its sourdough doughnuts featuring local ingredients. Foodscaping was a natural extension of the business and helped it grow, Weiner said. She and her family own a less-than-quarter-acre plot on which they keep chickens and grow herbs, flowers and at least 20 varieties of fruit in the front and back yards.
Weiner's organic raspberry canes come from Hinesburg's Red Wagon Plants. As the crop has matured, she's been able to scale back on buying raspberries for her baked goods and use the savings to purchase a wider range of local produce.
Bats visit the yard by night, and every year Weiner finds monarchs and native pollinators. To her mind, an edible landscape is way more fun and functional than crispy grass she'd have to mow.
"We've done really minimal work to get maximum output," Weiner said.
Gardeners wondering how to get started with foodscaping should check out the annual Branch Out Burlington! tree sale and Burlington Community Tree Nursery, both hosted at the University of Vermont's Horticulture Research Center in South Burlington. Schadler also recommends East Hill Tree Farm in Plainfield and Elmore Roots Nursery. All four resources also sell nut trees, a great addition for larger yards and landscapes.
Branch Out Burlington! board member Albee suggests also looking for low-cost plants at conservation nursery tree sales, such as those held by the Winooski Natural Resources Conservation District and Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District.
But any nursery in Vermont will probably offer options. Holzberg-Pill said starting on a foodscape comes down to digging a hole, watering it and mulching.
Weiner agreed. "There's no wrong way to start, and you don't need to know anything," she said. "It can be as simple as planting garlic in the corner ... It doesn't even need to be edible. It's so nice that it is, though."
The original print version of this article was headlined "Feeding Frenzy | Jacob Holzberg-Pill helps cultivate Vermont's growing appetite for edible landscaping"
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