Workshop 6: Cultivating the Gardens of Your Dreams
Creating and cultivating a garden / landscape is both an outside job and “an inside job”. The physical aspects may take a long time to materialize — and take focus, planning, and persistence to gradually come to fruition in the face of many high desert gardening challenges. We will look at your priorities, garden layout, budgeting, and more through applying the principles of Permaculture to gardening with native plants. As we gardeners learn to observe and interact with the native landscape around us, we come to see patterns that we can replicate at home. Through patience, starting small, and managing our own internal dialogue, we’ll gradually learn to maximize diversity, catch and store energy, and obtain our desired yields using native plants at home.
Chris Anderson has been gardening and practicing aspects of sustainable living since 1994. He worked on organic farms and nature centers in West Virginia, Vermont, andNew York before creating his own market garden business, Onion Creek Gardens, in Ohio. From 1999-2002, Chris coordinated the Rural Action Environmental Learning Program, a mobile environmental education program bringing the joy of nature to children in four school districts of Appalachian Ohio. Chris has been gardening in the Sedona area since 2005 and practicing Permaculture since 2001. Chris is the Garden Center Lead at the ProBuild Garden Center in West Sedona, one of the best sources for native and ornamental plants, gardening supplies, and rain harvesting tanks in our region.