Transcript
Speaker: So we have some of the least resilient trees growing along all of our power lines in Southern Ontario. The power to millions and millions of people. now we're actually making beautiful parks that are nicer to hang out in, that are producing wildlife food, but are actually saving the city millions and millions of dollars through hazard mitigation at the same time, right? Hello and welcome to the Regenerative Design Podcast. I'm your host Mathieu Mehuys and in this show I interview the leading authorities in the world of regenerative practices.
Speaker: People who do good and do well. Are you person that cares about your environment and our planet that wants to leave the planet to our children to be something that we can be truly proud of?
Speaker: to enjoy for many generations to come. But are you also a person that believes we can do all of this and do good in business? I have really good news for you. You're here listening to the podcast that is all about making our planet a better place and making your business more successful.
Speaker: Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Regenerative Design Podcast with your host Mathieu. And today we have another amazing guest. I'm super excited about it.
Speaker: ah His name is Chris Gilmore and Chris has been already many, many years deep into ecology, forestry, ah being into the wild and and talking about preparedness for disasters. And we will talk a little bit about that today, but he's ah been guiding people into nature for many, many years.
Speaker: He's also an expert in regenerative light land design, ah forest gardening, all these beautiful topics. And what i most love about what we're going to talk about today is that I used to think like, let's say five years ago, 10 years ago, you had all these people usually in the US who are like prepping, like prepping for disasters.
Speaker: And back then I thought like these people are crazy. But if you look at the world today, the the world is actually crazy. So preparing for disasters is actually a a good thing. But what I found even more interesting is the way that Chris talks about being prepared for disasters is that it doesn't have to be something stringent or hard.
Speaker: It's actually when you prepare your property for disaster, it becomes more abundant, more beautiful and and more amazing. So, yeah, that's that's what I love to talk about today. So, Chris, welcome to the show. How are you? How are you doing today?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm doing great, man. and And I love the way that you kind of frame that and intro that, you know, um to me, you know, any practical solution right now, it needs to serve our needs in the present. So, you know, our vision, support life, support good lives, ah support economy, all those kinds of things, support nature and the future.
Speaker: But it should also be resilient against some of the realities that we're facing, you know, and and you kind of named it there. The world is facing some emerging threats. You know, the world is really changing. I think we can guarantee the next 10 years is not going to look like the last.
Speaker: And honestly, I think most people are underprepared for that. But the problem is so many people are overwhelmed with just, you know, staying alive, keeping things going day to day between families, work, all the pressures. So what I love about regenerative design, the whole theme of your podcast is like regenerative design is actually like, what is a solution that speaks to both of them at the same time?
Speaker: ah So I think we can have a super fascinating conversation around, you know, how do we create um and design our lives so it's beautiful, it serves our vision, it serves our families, our kids, our mental well-being, it creates income, but it also works in balance with nature. It supports wildlife and it's resilient to disasters. It's resilient to extreme weather, all these different things. so So that's the conversation I'm excited to get in. I hope today is inspiring and thought provoking and also deeply practical for your listeners.
Speaker: I love that. i love that. And I already want like something already. I have a light bulb moment. It's like this is a a permaculture principle even. um we're not I use principles from permaculture. We're not necessarily doing it exactly. But in permaculture, when you add a new thing into your property, you want to have it fulfill as many functions as possible.
Speaker: So that's what I love. if You say, and for me, in in the projects we do, it's about beautification, increasing the increasinging the value of your property, ah being resilient, like all the things you just named. And that's a beautiful thing. Like, let's say I want to create an amazing property and it's not just for beautification, but we can add a bunch of other ah functionalities to it. So i'm super excited to talk about that.
Speaker: But before- Can I throw something in on that first? please, do, do, do. Yeah, sorry. We're already having fun here. So this is a really neat intro. So I have a background in professional emergency and disaster management, but I also have a background in permaculture and I've been having a ton of fun um kind of overlapping the principles of the two worlds. So you just mentioned in permaculture, we use that word stacking functions. You know, how can one action or one design fulfill multiple needs?
Speaker: In emergency management, we have a term called an all hazards approach. And part of the idea is like, we don't actually know what threat we're going to face around the next corner. Like it could be anything. It could be a flood. It could be a wildfire. It could be a pandemic. It could be the economy crashes.
Speaker: Like you don't really know. And if you put a whole bunch of effort into one thing and it doesn't happen and something else happens, you're in trouble. So an all hazards approach is like, what are the actions you can do that actually make you more resilient to all the potential outcomes or many of them?
Speaker: And it's kind of funny because that overlays beautifully with the stacking functions principle of permaculture. um yeah So I like to weave both those worlds together now and stack functions in an all hazards way across both worlds. So anyway, you a question there. So I just had to throw that one in. We'll go deeper into that because that's super fascinating. Let's see where we go. But I'd i'd first love to go back in history. Like and how how did you end up in in working on this amazing work that you do for land owners, for organizations? Like were you born like that? Were your parents like wilderness people or or how did it how did it all start for you?
Speaker: Yeah, I guess the short story. um So i my parents are not not into this work. you know that we We were brought up in the suburbs. um And i was fortunate that my dad used to take me into the woods as a kid. So we used to do backcountry canoe trips growing up. And I had a grandmother that really loved the outdoors. And she was an artist and used to paint. So I had some early influences with nature, even though I was mostly raised as a suburban kid.
Speaker: um But probably the the short story is for whatever reason, I got really drawn to nature as a young kid. You know, I loved like BMXing and hanging out in the parks. I just spent all my time playing in the woods. I love camping.
Speaker: um So I got into gardening and growing food was kind of like one of my first passions. So in my early, or I'd say like my late teens and my early 20s, I got really into gardening, landscape, like worked as a landscaper. um Really? gro Nice. Yeah.
Speaker: and was really fascinated with just like growing my own food. You know, I had a garden in my parents' backyard when I was like 17, 18 years old, you know, like a little veggie garden. But this is probably the real pivotal point for me. So when I left home, so I was 19 and I knew I didn't want to live in the city. I wanted to live in the wilderness.
Speaker: um And I went and I toured around working on different organic farms to basically learn how to grow food at scale. and I used to do that too. Oh, did you? Oh, nice. Yeah. But I had a life-changing epiphany on this farm. So I'm working on an organic farm. I'm like 20 years old. Where was it? Salt Spring Island. A guy named Michael Nifigals. And it's a permaculture-inspired farm called Seven Ravens. Salt Spring Island, just help me. Is that still in Ontario? No, no. This is west coast of Canada. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's actually just for people that know the United States, it's just north of like the Orcas Island, just north of Washington is British Columbia in Canada.
Speaker: And then there's a bunch of little islands off the coast of British Columbia, just right close to the Canadian American border there. So very humid almost. is it Is it like subtropical? No, like I wouldn't say subtropical. Yeah, like, you know, you can get like a day or two of snow in the wintertime, but it's it's it's much more um temperate than where I live here, you know, where we have real winters, you know?
Speaker: Cool. So yeah, what was the pivotal moment? is i Yeah. where yeah So it's a bit of an epiphany. So I'm working on this permaculture farm and where we have a market garden and we actually have a sustainable forestry operation there as well.
Speaker: um And I realized that, you know, I'm going to these markets and I'm telling everybody that we're doing sustainable agriculture and sustainable forestry. And I actually got into an argument with a logger at the time who was involved in the logging industry. And he actually made me look like a fool because I realized he knew a ton about ecology.
Speaker: He knew a ton about trees, a ton about wildlife, a ton of about plants. And here I am telling him what I'm doing is sustainable and what he's doing is not. And I realized like, well, how do I actually know our farm is sustainable if I don't actually have a deep understanding of the ecology that that farm sits within?
Speaker: If I don't really deeply know the trees and the relationships with the wildlife, the plants, the insects, all of that, then how do I know it's sustainable? I'm actually just like restating a term that someone else gave to me. So it actually sent me on this like lifelong journey of being like, you know, if something's sustainable, you actually need to be in relationship with the ecology of your region. yeah So I better start learning about ecology.
Speaker: um So that was kind of the first step that I went on that really, really long journey. And then, um so that actually took me into the world of wilderness guiding and going back to school. I went back to school and studied forestry.
Speaker: um I got wilderness guiding, taking people into the back country. I started learning traditional survival, um started getting into like foraging plants for food, foraging mushrooms, um all of that kind of stuff, which was like this new layer built on top of the gardening layer.
Speaker: And then after, so i actually became a survival instructor, like teaching people wilderness survivor in the woods. And then I started thinking about, you know, well, I still have all these concerns about the where the world's going, you know? yeah um And I really don't think that our modern infrastructure and modern people are prepared for some of the changes we're going to see in our lifetime, like in the next couple of decades.
Speaker: So I was like, okay, well, how does it take, or what does it look like to... go Sorry. Oh, by do but sorry. there's So by those changes, you mean climatologically or in other ways, like climate wise?
Speaker: I'd say all of it. No, all of it. Economy. Yeah. ah Yeah. Yeah. We've seen it in the last five years. Yeah. We're seeing social changes. We're seeing demographic changes. We're seeing economic changes. We're seeing climate changes. We're seeing weather changes. All of it. You know, it's all coming together. Yeah, yeah yeah it's it's it's real. you know like We're going to see a massive shift in the world as we know it in the in the next decade or two.
Speaker: you know And I don't think that... I feel like we're still designing for a world that we're not actually in anymore in a lot of ways around our lives, our businesses. um And I don't know that it's serving people or the environment the way that we're we're doing design.
Speaker: So it's very interesting. i want I just want to jump in also these to mention that it's extremely like sustainable. Yes, but it's also extremely expensive to keep doing the old ways of doing infrastructure, building.
Speaker: like yeah ah i just wanted to park that. And also what I find fascinating in your own experience that you got that that logger that kind of gave you a kick in the butt to to tell you like, oh you like it's so important to to really deeply understand how nature works, because otherwise you you may be greenwashed and say like, oh, everything should be sustainable and we shouldn't fly. and and We should have taxes on everything. And then we're getting into a communistic world, which we don't want to in. understanding ecology and how we can reverse the the climate change, I think it's important like in in your own experience.
Speaker: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, that's that's great. Appreciate pointing that out. So just to finish up that story, I don't want it to take too much longer here. But so i'm I'm teaching wilderness survival. And now I'm really so learning a lot about the land. I'm doing that. I'm still growing food. You know, my wife and I have started our homestead now. So we've got our little 26 acre permaculture homestead. And I start thinking about now, how do I apply what I've learned to some of the biggest threats that I see the world facing right now?
Speaker: um So I actually now go back to school to study emergency and disaster management. and then I get a job working with ah an emergency consulting firm. So we're literally now working with municipalities, working with hospitals, with hydro corporations, helping them plan for emergencies and disasters.
Speaker: So that was amazing learning for me. But I saw a bit of a gap in that world in that kind of like, you know, you I've heard you say this a few different times in different ways, but how often we go and we start designing properties, landscapes, businesses, whatever, but we don't think about nature and doing an assessment first.
Speaker: We try to build and then nature can come and kick our butts if we don't work with it. And suddenly we're not being efficient. We're spending more money. We're spending more time than we need to. And I realized emergency management works the same way.
Speaker: So many people are going, are emergency managers and planners, but they don't have that understanding in ecology. So just like I realized I can't call the sustainable agriculture or sustainable farming without actually understanding ecology and then working with ecology.
Speaker: Well, how can we talk about emergency management without a deep understanding of ecology and actually integrating ecological design? Because so many modern disasters, you know, weather has been doing its thing forever. You know, there's always been tornadoes. There's always been ice storms like that's that's that's been around long before humans were. You know, the challenge is um that so much human design doesn't work with it or take it into consideration. And the disasters are way worse because a lot of our designers aren't thinking about nature when they design in the first place.
Speaker: So one of my passions now is like, well, how do I weave these worlds together? There's the primary cultural and regenerative design with the emergency disaster management. And then, of course, there's like working with nature. And then there's the people layer. Like this needs to actually be realistic with how people actually think, our emotions, all those things that make us naturally human.
Speaker: So like, well yeah I've kind of coined this term called holistic emergency preparedness. And it's basically bridging or weaving all four of those together. This podcast is brought to you by the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass.
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Speaker: Yeah, I think that's super fascinating. I've got so much things to unpack. The first thing is like, What I love is is to in deeper is that we've, as a human race, we've like built this modern world, which is awesome. It's giving us everything almost like all luxuries in the world, but it's in the history of the the planet, it's all super new.
Speaker: So it's not very adjusted to, how nature works, even at all. And I'm thinking like if I'm i'm seeing probably this whole industry of of that is is going to grow really fast now because of ah climate change, because of other things is being prepared for emergencies and disasters. that That's probably be ah i can imagine that's going to be a billion dollar, a multi-billion dollar business.
Speaker: to be prepared for those industries. But then if we come again with our logical or let's say our conventional brain, which is mostly like engineers thinking of like, okay, we have a hundred year storm that could come by.
Speaker: So um we're going to get flooded at some point in the next hundred years. So what what should we do? Okay, we can build a huge concrete wall with lots of materials and make it like extremely expensive and super high to maintain. Like we have to continuously keep it up and then maybe in one of these hundred years it will save us from a disaster. That sounds like the logical thing to do, right? But maybe we should think about can we plant mangroves? Can we create lagoons? Can we create natural systems that that that grow on their own? Like we may have to set it in motion
Speaker: And then it can grow and on its own. Because i was ah the other day i was talking to a guy who works in in Kuwait and so in in the Middle East and he's cleaning water that is that comes from pumping oil out of the earth. And apparently if you pump oil out of out of the earth for one cubic a meter of oil, you need eight cubic meters of water. So it's it's like all this slurry water full of oil and they have found a natural filtration system that works with microorganisms to filter the water and then they have lots of water left over and they pumped it into man-made nature reserve where now flamingos are living in the middle of the desert. it's like just to like i don't know why I'm throwing that in, but we can we can totally design a world that is
Speaker: like we as humans can enhance the planet and make it even more natural and and not just make it natural because it's nice just because it makes our environment like it makes our planet more livable more enjoyable we have more shade like with these super heats that we're seeing across ah Europe and North America, like we need more and more shade.
Speaker: So yeah, just a few things. And i'd I'd love to hear from your perspective in the work that you're doing today. Do you see that industry being super like silo thinking like, okay, we have to think of emergency preparedness. So they only think of that thing, but they don't see all the other opportunities, ecology, beautification, value increase of property. Like, yeah. um Can you, can you,
Speaker: Let's see how I can formulate the question better, but it's like, how do you see that silo thinking as a conventional solution to preparedness versus your holistic approach? how How is the industry today in in that?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that siloed way is so predominant across our world right now, you know, um whether it's looking at, you know, municipal planning, you know, i've I've worked with a number of medicinal planners and municipal governments, and it's amazing how they like, it's so hard to get them to see the ecological connection with the economic connection with the supporting human connection, you know.
Speaker: um Same with their emergency management, same with even you look at like healthcare and medical issues, you know, like yeah we we do think in these very siloed ways. Now, I do think there is an openness, though, amongst people that's starting to evolve, you know, and people are starting to realize we need to think in more complex ways um and be more open to um yeah this this ecological way of thinking, I think.
Speaker: um So yeah, yeah i think I think we are siloed right now and I think there is opportunity and an openness to change and evolve because I think people are kind of waking up that like you know our infrastructure is not as strong as we thought.
Speaker: ah you know A lot of people are completely overwhelmed and stressed out by life. you know The cracks in the system are showing up and in the point that you know crepping used to be this really niche thing and we're hitting this place where like very mainstream normal people are starting to be like, hey The system, I'm not so sure about it. I don't trust it as much as I did, you know? So I i think in that there is an openness to like, well, how could we actually do this better?
Speaker: um And, you know, i'llll I'll give you a great example because you gave the oil example in kuit Kuwait, which is awesome. You know, working with nature to solve a very real issue right there. um I want to give an example that might inspire to people to think like, well, how does this actually apply to like me and my little world that I live in? Not just take a little world to say that people's world are little, but no you know what I mean by that.
Speaker: So I'm going to give you a property design example from our little homestead here. So we have a 26 acre homestead and we have a fairly old house. You know, it's about 30 years old and it's in the middle of the forest.
Speaker: And I identified two problems um that were actually a threat to our property, to our house itself. One of them was I've got a bunch of trees on a hill that's exposed to north wind right behind my house and it's sloping towards the house.
Speaker: So strong winds from the north have the ability to make one of those trees fall on my house. It's also sandy soil, which means that they're more likely to fall, right? Because the soil is not going to hold them. On top of that, the north side of our house, I was dealing with this chronic issue with boards rotting.
Speaker: So um it's costing me money literally to fix rotting boards. um So I started thinking about this problem from a regenerative and kind of permaculture and an emergency preparedness lens. And what we ended up deciding to do is I went and I actually cut down a bunch of the trees on the north side of this hill or sorry, on the south side of this hill, but on the north side of my house.
Speaker: And I think a lot of folks by nature would say, oh, well, cutting down trees is bad for nature. And I'm going to argue the exact opposite right now in how it serves my need in protecting property, um actually saved me money, is actually helping the environment and it's creating food and protecting wildlife and addressing climate change altogether.
Speaker: Literally, this one little action is doing all of those things at the same time, which means it's an all hazards approach. It's stacking function. It's a no brainer win. yeah So it starts by we take down the trees there. Now I no longer have to worry about hazard trees falling on my house in a windstorm.
Speaker: um The second thing that happened by doing that, there's now a little bit more sun and better airflow behind my house. Now, when I replace those boards on the back of the house, I'm less worried about rot. So I'm literally ah protecting my asset. i'm protecting my home now by doing this, which is great.
Speaker: Here's the fun part though, you know, if I just left that alone, that slope is now potentially susceptible to erosion and I've gone and just impacted the forest only thinking about my needs. So what we've actually gone and done is we've actually planted a food forest along that hillside now.
Speaker: And by food forest, I mean, we're we're planting, it it's like a garden, except it's based on the design of a forest. So very low work using mostly native species.
Speaker: So on that hillside, I've planted um native and cultivars of plums, which are going to grow food. But plum trees don't grow super big like those big maples and birches and poplars there.
Speaker: There's never going to be a worry about those plum trees falling over on my house. So now I'm stabilizing that sandy soil and I'm growing food and I've taken out that risk of the trees falling on my house.
Speaker: But then I also put um a species called shagbark hickory in the understory. Now shagbark hickory is a nut tree and it's going to be 20 to 30 years before it starts producing nuts. I may never get to eat those nuts. Who knows? This is where this one gets interesting when we think about long term planning um and the future. So one of the dominant species in my area is the red oak tree. And it's arguably one of the most important species for wildlife food in this region.
Speaker: Acorns, a source of fat, a source of protein. and all of the wildlife eat them in the fall. You know, the bears are eating them, the ravens are eating them, the wolves are eating them, the deer are eating them, the moose are eating them.
Speaker: Like they're they're arguably one of the most important species because they help animals fatten up and build their food stores to get them through the winter. Just a little bit south of us right now, um basically in the Northern United States, there's ah um a disease called Oak wilt that is starting to spread and it's basically killing Oak trees.
Speaker: If oak wilt ever makes it up to this area and devastates the oak trees, that's going to have a massive implication on local wildlife. Now, shag bark hickory does not grow on my latitude right now where I live, but it does grow just south of us.
Speaker: So we call this existed migration where we're taking species, they're not non-native species, but they're just not here right now. But all of the climatic conditions and especially this microsite, south facing hill, suggests that those are gonna grow here.
Speaker: So now I'm planting these nut trees from just a little bit further south here. um which again are going to stabilize the soil. They have way stronger wood than the poplars and birch that were growing on that. So even when they do get big, there's going to be less concern about branches them falling on my house because they're a stronger wood than what's growing there now.
Speaker: And now we're actually planting trees that, you know, one day, you know, humans could harvest those nuts. But if something comes in and impacts the oaks, We're now planting food for the wildlife for 30 years from now, thinking about climate change, right?
Speaker: So see how like this one design feature is thinking about the land, it's thinking about the future and it's thinking about protecting my property. On top of that, I got a ton of firewood. Like I basically cut a year worth of firewood. So that saved me like over a thousand dollars in firewood by cutting that off.
Speaker: So we accomplished all of that in just a small footprint. Now that's applying it on a local house level. We could apply this to a farm. We could apply this to a municipality. We could apply it to a business, a summer camp. Like, you know, that kind of thinking can be applied to almost anything in design.
Speaker: I love that. It's so important to point that out that like, like from a silo thinking, you'll be like, oh, you cannot... Cut down trees, that's bad. Like if you want, like people that are greenwashed will say you cannot cut down trees, but it's clearly shown that that cutting down trees creates new microclimates, will which will also help regenerate or or create new environments. Like if we go back into history, like in in Europe, probably also in in in the US,
Speaker: the the forests The native forests in Europe were not like big forests. It was all patchwork of like open fields that were grazed by animals, then shrubs. And you had all yeah have like a dynamic of forest open fields And then sunlight hits that in different angles and you get like a super diverse landscape across the board. So that's um and that now can actually replicate with agriculture as the open fields and and the way we farm the open fields can can be used for that in ecology too. So things can I...
Speaker: I would love to throw something in here, of the North American perspective on that. And this is something that that I've kind of really just been grasping and learning over the last decade. um In my work, I've been really fortunate that I get to work with a lot of Indigenous and First Nations communities um quite closely.
Speaker: And I never realized this, you know, a lot of Europeans and people from different countries that have settled over in North America, we come over here and we think that, oh, you know, there's these virgin forests of the North that were untouched and they're raw and they're pure.
Speaker: you know? And um I realized that that's actually a little bit of ah an illusion. And there's a little bit of a problem in thinking that, that like, oh, there's this pure, perfect nature. And then there's humans as this disease. It doesn't actually quite work that way. One, this landscape has already been highly influenced by recent human activity.
Speaker: So a lot of the forests that people think are native forests are actually not natural anymore. They've already been influenced. And a lot of them are actually not at their highest level of ecology, ecological health. yeah But the other one that this is was a really big eye opener for me is I realized that, you know, ah the First Nations people here and the indigenous peoples in North America, they were actually interacting with these forests for thousands of years before anyone else came over. And they literally farmed the formus. forests, you know, and I think early settlers and explorers that came over, came over and they just saw forest and they thought, oh, this is wild land. And here's these like primitive people, you know, like whatever shooting deer and the wild land. But actually those indigenous people had sophisticated agriculture systems. It just didn't look like it did in Europe. They weren't cutting down forest and planting fields. They were literally tending the forest. You know, they were pruning trees. They were planting. They were doing controlled fire burns.
Speaker: So they were actually managing the forest for food and wildlife long before before Europeans got here. And I think when Europeans got here, because it didn't look like Western agriculture, we didn't think it was agriculture, but it actually was. It was actually a very sophisticated advanced form of agriculture. There was nothing primitive about it.
Speaker: And it's actually really genius. So I think we can actually learn a lot from indigenous land management that actually really inspires how we solve some of these big issues today. I love that. It's so interesting because in, let's say Western history, the the story is, and it's true, but that's in the West that, okay, we we had ah people doing more foraging and hunting, and then we start doing agriculture.
Speaker: And from agriculture, we go into being able to live in cities and having culture. And that leads to all the modern life that we have today. But then in the indigenous worlds,
Speaker: they had sophisticated cultures and and too, but they didn't kind of ah impact the environment that much. So it's a different different perspective ah on that. And and there's there's stories that, or people say, scientists claim that that that the Amazon rainforest is man-made, completely man-made, like that every species, probably it co-evolved with with nature, but that everything was was managed and maintained by by the indigenous.
Speaker: And I love that perspective because that that puts a whole new light on like the the main paradigm we live in today. Like you just mentioned is like, oh, humans are bad for the environment. So we should not interact with nature. We should reduce population growth, which China has done. And now they're in trouble because they'll have two little people.
Speaker: I strongly believe that we can have way more people on this planet and just we need to know how to interact with nature and and be in harmony with nature. ah Then there's plenty of space for way more people. ah Some people will disagree with that.
Speaker: But ah yeah, I think we are we shouldn't again, we shouldn't take in silos. That's like a huge problem and in Europe um in this whole green movement. the The Green Deal is OK.
Speaker: Agriculture is bad for for the environment. People are bad for the environment. So what are we going to do? We're going to tell farmers to stop farming around nature reserves. We're going to put fences around nature reserves.
Speaker: And it's a no go zone. Like people can't go there. And then you have just nature that grows wild. which then actually creates also a series of problems because in an in a well, like let's say in a high biodiverse environment, there's there's there's constant interaction between chaos and order, which is chaos is like ah animals come by or boar come by and they till the soil or we as humans would cut down pieces of the forest and have a settlement. Like there's always,
Speaker: that chaos versus like nature then restores itself and and rebalances it, which that I think in in and of itself creates the highest possible diversity.
Speaker: um Like i saw it it in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. We were walking in the in the rainforest. All of a sudden we come in an area that the whole soil looks completely plowed.
Speaker: like it It looked like as if someone or a tractor and had come in and tilled the whole soil. And I didn't realize that our guide said, like, this is done by boar. And he says it it's it's extremely ah vital for the health of the the forest that it's kind of clear cut and and the boar are tilling the soil. So that I was like, wow.
Speaker: So we need to have an interaction with nature because if we put a fence around it, first of all, ah Other animals cannot get get in and out. they can't or Other than birds, they can't really migrate across these areas.
Speaker: um So, yeah, and then in belium and in Belgium, they're doing all kinds of crazy things to then maintain the natural forest, which it doesn't it doesn't really work.
Speaker: And i had I had Alan Savory here on ah as a guest who talks about ah grazing and how cows can actually save the planet by using them to re regenerate soils for even forests. Some people I've met say that that that cows are actually forest animals and they used to live more in forest. So, yeah, ah I'm interested from your perspective.
Speaker: we're like ah We're going a bit off topic, but I want to bring it back to your work. So where do you see in your own work, what what are you most excited to to work on in the next 10 years?
Speaker: Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. um Yeah, i what inspires me for the next 10 years is actually stopping working in silos and starting to bridge these things together and coming up with solutions that serve us now in the present, um but also are thinking about future generations and thinking about the environment, you know?
Speaker: and i And I mean this across like human health. I mean this across food security. um I mean this across, you know, economy, um across culture and, you know, um how do we get along with each other and the environment?
Speaker: like all those different realms. So basically designing spaces and systems that actually serve life, serve humans and the natural world and bring us back into the ecosystem in a conscious way.
Speaker: You know, a minute ago, you were just talking about how we're almost siloing nature. It's like, okay, well, we're going to like just put a fence around nature so nature can be nature. And then like humans are going to do their thing over here. But that's the same silo thinking.
Speaker: And it's naive to think that if we put a fo fence around nature, that humans doing humans over here isn't still impacting nature. Yeah. And I would say that humans not interacting nature is actually negatively impacting humans, right?
Speaker: um I love that there's a quote, you know, regardless of what you think about them because I know there's some controversy around David Suzuki. But I saw a talk that David Suzuki did years ago that was actually pretty pivotal for me as well. And he made this comment, you know,
Speaker: We can have all the environmental policy in the world and the planet, we're not going to save the planet. He's like, what needs to change is people's relationship with the planet. People need to feel part of nature. They need to deeply care about nature.
Speaker: And if you silo off nature, that doesn't actually happen. and And it's kind of naive because every single other animal changes the forest. Beavers change the forest huge. Wolves change the forest. Deer change the forest. Like all animals change the forest.
Speaker: So it's naive to think that we're going to live without having an impact. What we need to do is become conscious of our impact, right? what yeah and what Yeah, and actually understand how natural things do interact with each other harmoniously and how do we reinsert ourselves and relearn to do that. And unfortunately, you know, I would say most modern humans have become so out of touch. And I was very guilty of this myself most of my life, you know.
Speaker: um and And I feel like I probably have a ton to learn still, but the past 20 years of my life has been relearning. how to um live harmoniously with nature again and integrate that into design and now helping other people do that.
Speaker: So to get back to your question, you know, what am I excited to do? I'm excited to work with whether it's businesses, whether it's farms, organizations, individuals, around, you know, how do we start thinking about regenerative design again in a way that serves humans now and our needs now, that's actually healthy for our brains and our bodies, but is also making us more resistant and resilient to some of the biggest emerging threats of our time, whether that's extreme weather, whether that's rising food prices, all of those things I think can be solved through regenerative design.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, yeah. and our own health. You know, I mean, there is that's an epidemic right now, too. And here's another crack i'm going to point to. You know, I was literally reading an article this morning around how overwhelmed the hospitals are in Canada.
Speaker: I mean, we have amazing health care in Canada. It's well, I was going say it's free. It's not free. We get taxed for it. I personally don't mind paying tax for it though, because I can get hurt. I can get sick and I can just show up to a doctor. It's it's pretty amazing.
Speaker: But ah those systems are actually incredibly strained right now. Like even though in theory, it's a really good system. And most of my life it has been, it's showing cracks just like everything else is right now. Like our entire- Just by the sheer amount of people that need ah health care.
Speaker: Yeah, there's there's and and again it's not there's so many complex layers of as to why it's actually, it's not just one thing that's causing it. you know there's There's more people using it, but it's also, here, I'll bring it back to the podcast. I would argue that the reason how- Oh yeah, I didn't mean, just to to backtrack, I didn't mean by the amount of people using it, just like,
Speaker: that more people need it ah because there's more people that get sick. That's yeah the point that trying to awesome. Cool, yeah, yeah. And and then there is more people needing it too, though. you know Population is growing, but then we also have changing demographics, right? like Literally, we have all the baby boomers that are getting older, and we have younger people getting sick more often.
Speaker: like There's all these compounding pressures on our healthcare. care Those same compounding pressures, though, are happening on the environment. They're happening on our education system. Like, that's why I say the next 20 years are going to be way different than the last 20.
Speaker: So regenerative design, to me, is the solution. Just to backtrack the reason, what what are your indications? I have a theory that ah since Kevin O'Leary was ah supporting GMO in Canada and jeff and Canada is fully allowing GMO, which means that I can take any plant and just genetically modify it and sell it on the market. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And I don't have to do any paperwork. But if I want to have an organic farm, I have to do tons of paperwork. Like that's yeah the the world you live in right now. Yeah, it's unfortunate. I don't know if you think that's the reason. I think it's one of many.
Speaker: And, you know, and again, I think, you know, people can fall in these siloed traps of thinking, oh, well, this is the problem. You know, it's just GMOs or it's just population or it's just whatever. It's like it's all of them like that are compounding. It's not necessarily, yeah, GMO in and of itself, it may not be the the, like nature will always stabilize itself even if we start messing with the genetics. It's mostly that when you use GMO, you can make it resilient to tons of chemicals.
Speaker: So now you can use way more chemicals to grow foods. Yeah. um That are, on yeah. So that's probably, hu yeah. Or others what what other reasons do you think that the the health crisis in Canada is, or yeah, specifically in Canada?
Speaker: Yeah, ah well, it's a bunch of stuff. I mean, I think very unsustainable agriculture is part of it, you know, um like literally we're seeing less nutritional density in our food. We're seeing microplastics in our food. We're seeing all kinds of like glyphosates, you know. So for sure, you know, there's like compounding things there.
Speaker: um I also think, you know, demographics is real. Like we're literally seeing, we have way more older folks and we have health systems that have not been designed thinking ahead, you know, in that regenerative way.
Speaker: I also think the mental health crisis, you know, a lot of people are not doing well right now and there's all kinds of reasons for that. But like people are stressed, you know, like the economy is struggling. A lot of people are just barely scraping by. Stress is through the roof.
Speaker: There's a direct connection between stress and health issues, right? Stress and health, yeah. And regenerative design, again, it's meant to address all of that, right? If we design a more regenerative landscape, it should actually reduce stress for people. You know, you should be able to go out into your backyard, into it walk around a city, and it actually supports your nervous system, which literally takes pressure off of the healthcare system.
Speaker: But most healthcare, I shouldn't say most, but from my experience, a lot of people that are thinking about healthcare or thinking about municipal design or municipal politics aren't seeing the connection between how the design of the landscape and maybe even the parks reduce stress, which literally reduces stress on the healthcare care system itself. you know yeah like It's connecting the dots between those things that that needs to start happening.
Speaker: um and And why we need to just start thinking more holistically about um how we design all of it as an ecosystem. Yeah, super interesting, ah Chris. and And I'd love to hear from your from your work, like what is your specific process? and Let's say I'm a landowner in Canada.
Speaker: Maybe I've lived in the city my whole life. And I say like, hey, i want to go and live more on the country. I bought 20 acres and I have a house that needs some renovation, but I want be as self-sufficient as possible. Like what is your process in in and helping people achieve that?
Speaker: Awesome. Yeah. So I have a process that I go through that can be actually applied to a landowner, but it could also be applied to a business. It could be applied to an event. It could be applied to a family in the city or in the country.
Speaker: I kind of approach it with the same principles, regardless of what the the end outcome goal is. Cool. um and And maybe what I'll try and do is kind of bridge some of the permaculture concepts with some of the modern emergency management concepts that are really good. Yeah.
Speaker: um So, you know, one of the first um rules in permaculture is this idea of observe and interact, right? I'm sure you're familiar with that principle or or teach it. um and And it is one of the downfalls is often we get excited and we just start building things without really taking the time to do a proper assessment and proper observation.
Speaker: so why sources yeah So my first step is always just like observation. Like, well, let's first, let's get clear on what the actual goals and the needs are. Let's take ah an assessment of the ecology of the area. You know, what is the bioregion? What's the soil? What's the wind?
Speaker: But here's the layer. So that's all normal permaculture regenerative design stuff, right? yeah um'm I'm sure you work with that all the time. The layer that I weave on top of that, that might be a little bit unique is pulling from frameworks in modern emergency management.
Speaker: So in modern emergency management, ah there's two tools that I'll share with you, crowd, right now. One of them is called critical infrastructure, and the other one is called a HIRA, a Hazard Identification Risk Assessment. So critical infrastructure is thinking, what is the infrastructure that I rely on that's absolutely critical to meet my needs in the world? you know um And in emergency management, for example, like municipalities and provinces are required by law to do a hazard assessment and identify what their critical infrastructure is.
Speaker: um So for example, you know critical infrastructure could be electricity, you know it could be water, it could be healthcare systems, it could be communication systems, right? And these are things that if you know if something takes them down, it's going to have a immediate immediate negative impact on us as an individual, as a business, as an organization, as a municipality, whatever it is, right?
Speaker: So what is the critical infrastructure that we rely on every single day? So that's the first concept right there. So one of the things I'll layer on, so we'll do the natural assessment, but then I'll say, okay, well, what is the critical infrastructure that you're relying on? You know, you know, do you need electricity coming in your house? Well, what happens if the electricity stops? You know, you want to grow food, but if you're reliant on electricity to water your garden and the power goes out for two weeks during a drought or even three days during a drought and a heat wave, all that work you put into the garden might be done. Or maybe you don't even care about the garden. Maybe it's your lawn and it's your, your aesthetic flowers, but still, you know, if you have a power outage during a drought,
Speaker: and that all turns brown, that's a big set up for you, right? So on top of that though, like what happens when your fridge stops working and all the food goes in there, goes bad, you know, all those different things that we rely on critically.
Speaker: So we look at what the critical infrastructure is and then we look at, well, what are all the potential hazards that could take them out? or impact that critical infrastructure. right um So we basically do like a hazard map. So we start with a nature map.
Speaker: Then we look at the infrastructure we rely on. Then we make a hazards map. And this might sound kind of complex and overwhelming if you're hearing it for the first time, but it's actually really straightforward. you know um I can walk do this in like an afternoon with a client.
Speaker: um Once we've identified the potential hazards, the infrastructure and the environment, then we basically apply that stacking functions. That's all hazards approach. And we come up with a ah practical design plan.
Speaker: And I stress practical here, because what I like to do is people often get overwhelmed, being like, oh, my goodness, there's so many things to do. And I already have so many things to do. This is overwhelming. So what really makes it practical for me is now let's figure out what are the most high leverage things and let's break it down to the short term, middle term and long term plans.
Speaker: You don't need to hold the whole list. If you hold the whole list, you're going to be overwhelmed and you're going to probably not even want to do it. It's like, what are the most efficient things you can do right now that are realistic with your timeline and realistic with your budget and which ones have the highest leverage?
Speaker: which means like they're going to serve multiple purposes at once. So let's identify with those. We'll start with those and then we'll just slowly pick away at the other ones over time and hope that they kind of compound like interest in a bank. Well, no, sorry. Interest compounds terribly in the bank right now. you know the iology If we actually had ah higher interest rates, in theory, they should compound over time. Give it more like you know dividends that you're getting paid out monthly.
Speaker: So we want compound like dividends over time in the way that we know about this work. But I want to cut through the overwhelm of it being too much and just get really practical with like, what's the most high leverage thing we can do right now that solves as many problems as possible?
Speaker: So that's kind of the essence of the process that I go through, whether it's with a business, an organization, a farm, a landowner who just bought a piece of property, it's the same process. Well, yeah, that's amazing because it's it's kind of similar to our approach we spend way more time on analysis because once we analyze a property and we understand it, it kind of starts talking to us and in terms of this this is what it needs and how we can design it. Then we have concept, then we have a design and then we have an execution plan, which is like how to actually build it and and we might supervise the execution.
Speaker: yeah I think that's that's a very similar approach. But I love that you add that hazard map on top of it. that's That's something that I haven't heard or like it's cool to integrate that. Yeah.
Speaker: Awesome. Yeah. Can I give a couple more examples of that? You got a minute that? Oh, please. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. yeah I want to give ah another homescale example, but then I also want to give um an example. if you're Let's say somebody is listening here and they do design on a bigger level. you know Maybe it's for ah you know ah a larger property in a state or maybe it's for a whole municipality, for example. Maybe I'll actually start there because we haven't gone there and then I'll bring it back to like some homescale examples.
Speaker: But an example, and let's say like a whole community level scale, or or it could be like a large estate property. So I know in southern Ontario, um so they're they're having this El Nino year right now, right? We've got very warm ocean waters. They're expecting a warmer than normal start to the winter this year, um which could potentially mean more rain. It could mean warmer temperatures when we're supposed to be getting our snow, which actually substantially increases the risk of ice storms.
Speaker: So during El Nino years in central Ontario is when we've had some of the worst ice storms in our history. They've often burned during el Ninos, right? The city of Toronto, which is one of the largest municipalities around here, you know, millions of people living down there.
Speaker: um They've had some pretty devastating ice storms that have knocked the power out for days to weeks for people. And being in a city in an apartment building where the power goes out sucks in the middle of winter when it's cold from an ice storm. Right. Especially if you can't drive. If all the grocery stores are shut down, the gas stations are shut down. You literally can't drive on the streets because they're covered in ice.
Speaker: right This is one of the threats that's um that potentially we could see this fall because of this El Nino that's stacking right now. So here's something that people probably haven't thought about. In Southern Ontario, if you go and clear land, one of the first tree species most likely to grow back in are poplars and Manitoba maple trees.
Speaker: okay They grow in disturbed areas, they grow very, very quickly. When we create power lines, we're disturbing an area. What grows along power lines first? Manitoba maples and poplars.
Speaker: Because those two trees grow super quickly, it means their wood is also very fragile. They're incredibly susceptible to blowing over or branches or tops breaking off in an ice storm.
Speaker: So we have some of the least resilient trees growing along all of our power lines in Southern Ontario. The power to millions and millions of people. I suspect a lot of urban designers...
Speaker: and are not aware that those two species are such a risk to those power lines. So when I think about regenerative design on an urban context, it's like, well, let's do an assessment and say, hey, you know maybe we should go in and instead of just allowing the poplars and Manitoba maples to grow there, because they're literally going to fall on the power lines when there's a windstorm.
Speaker: And then suddenly there's no power to the city. And now people are freezing in their homes and people can't get to the hospital. And this actually costs the city you know how many millions of dollars every time there's a power outage.
Speaker: What if when we went and cut that power line in the first place, we went and planted it and designed it with species that were actually hardy, maybe species that actually produce food or at least produce food for wildlife, but were actually less likely to fall on the power lines in the first place.
Speaker: So now we're actually making beautiful parks that are nicer to hang out in, that are producing wildlife food, but are actually saving the city millions and millions of dollars through hazard mitigation at the same time. Right.
Speaker: So there's an example of applying it to a municipality. um actually I'll give you another, this is another neat urban example here. um i did ah um a bit of a consult with ah a girl that was running a school in the United States. I forget the city, but she was basically in an urban setting where they had a pretty high crime rate and they wanted to have an outdoor school where they had kids outdoors, but they were worried about the real threat of crime.
Speaker: And they had this urban kind of lot that they were designing for it. And they didn't want to have like barbed wire fences because it almost like competes with the vision of it. It's like, hey, we want kids connecting with community, connecting with nature.
Speaker: And if they're in like a compound to keep the danger out, it's like there's a there's a conflict between those two values there. Right. So we looked at regenerative design. How can we actually design a garden that looks beautiful, that brings in birds and butterflies and insects, but actually still mitigates hazards without people knowing?
Speaker: And we ended up looking at designing hedgerows that had thorns and that were actually quite dense, but that were aesthetically pleasing around the outside of it. So now instead of putting up a barbed wire fence, we're literally planting a hedgerow that you're not going to sneak through.
Speaker: Right. But it looks pretty and nobody looks at it and says, oh, they're whatever, you know, scared, wires scared and barbed wire. They're like, oh, this is beautiful. And it's supporting insects. It's supporting birds. It's creating habitat and it's protecting the kids on the inside as well.
Speaker: We also designed the entire layout of the innards footprint. So they had like kind of all of this different apparatus and stuff for the kids to play on, but it was all just kind of random. And there was one building that was actually concrete in the middle of it all, like kind of their classroom.
Speaker: And I had the thought, you know, if somebody ever got in there that was a threat, you want people to be able to get into that building and lock themselves in there really quickly. You know, whether it's an active shooter, whether it's just somebody sketchy, or maybe it's like there's a tornado coming. Maybe it's hail or an ice storm or it's a windburst, right?
Speaker: So we redesigned it all. So there was clear paths from every part of the property going right to the door of the building. We basically designed it so everybody could get as quickly as they can from any part of the property into the safest building.
Speaker: But nobody is like looking at this and being like, oh, this is all paranoid and whatever. It's actually pretty normal. It's just built into the flow of the whole workspace. So it actually makes for a really functional day-to-day workspace. It serves their needs right now. It serves the environment.
Speaker: But if they have a threat, whether it's a tornado or an active shooter, it's also supporting that at the same time. right That's how we do holistic preparedness and regenerative design and bring those worlds together.
Speaker: I love that. i think it's like ah as a designer, it's just another item we should look into. And it's like, OK, these are things that we have to consider in our designs and they have to work.
Speaker: And then once once the pen hits the paper, it can still look extremely beautiful and you design it in in a really nice way. And ah it's yeah it's not like this kind of ah scary looking zombie landscape where you're protecting yourself from yeah any crazy hazards.
Speaker: That's not good for people's brains and their psychology. We want to build community. We want to build relationships, you know? yeah and And I'm not saying there's not a place for a barbed wire fence. You know, you got to be real and practical too. But, yeah um you know, let's let's do our best to work with nature and work with design.
Speaker: you know, I'll give one last example because I did mention the homescale one. So, you know, we just did a municipal one. Then we did like a business one and like an urban forest school, for example. So here's a homescale one. Food prices are going through the roof right now. I've been reading about all the stuff happening with Ukraine and Russia and the grain shipping right now. And like wheat is going through the roof.
Speaker: ah We're probably not even going to see the ripple of that until like next spring, you know. um So I suspect food prices are going to keep going up regardless of what happens in Iran right now. Like this is a long term issue because there's so many things compounding.
Speaker: You know, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Iran thing, those those are huge, but they're not the only issue. Like they're one of many issues that are stressing our food systems, right? So food security or food prices is is a long term issue.
Speaker: So growing more food locally makes a lot of sense. The challenge is is that so many people are already overwhelmed. They're already so busy. So how do you actually grow food when you're already just, you know, you got to take care of your kids and you got to get them to daycare and you got to do your job and you're maybe just struggling for the bills or or maybe you are financially well off, but you're still like keeping that going is sustained is a lot, right? So many people are just at capacity.
Speaker: So throw in growing food or design, it's like becomes overwhelming. um So I've been really interested in, and I've actually been doing some videos of this on my YouTube channel lately, but I've been really thinking about, you know, how do we design home-scale gardens or community food systems that are have the highest yield possible,
Speaker: that are resistant to extreme weather events, you know whether it's drought, floods, whether whatever it is, and yeah are as low work with the highest yield as possible. like How do we bridge all of those together in the design of a garden?
Speaker: and um Some people on here might be familiar with this word. I'm sure you are. ah Others will probably hear it for the first time. But there's this concept called a perennial polyculture. And it's basically like perennials are foods that are plants that come back year after year. Every year. Yeah. A polyculture is when you plant multiple things together that kind of support each other and grow as an ecosystem.
Speaker: yeah So I've designed this perennial polyculture on our front lawn. It's right on the edge of our septic bed. um And it's basically, it produces an incredible amount of food and medicine.
Speaker: And it's so little work. Like I literally like, you know, a couple hours of tending a year. And it produces ton of food and medicine. So I've got a, so the there's a a slight south facing hill on the one side and then it's flat and it's pretty sandy soil.
Speaker: So the south facing hill, I've planted high bush blueberries, right? And they basically come back on their own every year. You know, we go out there in the springtime and every morning we pick a couple handfuls of blueberries. I've also got a bunch in my freezer, you know, we're putting them away.
Speaker: Oh my God. Once it gets up onto the flat. That's so, yeah. Blueberries, even if you buy them frozen, which I do, it's so expensive. It can become so expensive. Yeah. Yeah, so they're free. They're perennial. They come back every year.
Speaker: On the hillside, I've got a row of ah a bush called hascaps or honeyberries, which aren't native to this area. Oh, honeyberries. They're so good. They're so delicious. they're They're chock full of nutrients and antioxidants. And they're actually way more abundant than the blueberries themselves. And again, they come back every year.
Speaker: So between the blueberries and the hascaps, we have a ton of berries that grow all along. And this is just the outer edge. Once you get into the bed itself, I've got it all mulched with wood chips, which means i don't need water it very much. And it's building soil and it's doing weed suppression.
Speaker: So the mulch is we're making it more resilient to drought. Right. um And it's meaning I need to water it less, which means if the power goes out and I lose my irrigation, I'm not worried about watering it. And it's building soil at the same time. Right.
Speaker: Inside of there, we now have a bunch more perennials. So I have got elderberries growing in there and the elderberries are actually a medicine. So elderberries are one of the most potent antivirals. You can use the flowers and make tincture out of them to fight like fevers and stuff like that. And the berries themselves you can take to help prevent colds and flus or reduce the symptoms.
Speaker: So now I'm actually preparing for cold and flu season and even pandemics with the elderberries. We've also got rhubarb growing in there. oh that's And then I've inoculated the wood chips with wine cap mushrooms.
Speaker: So literally in the understory of all of this, we now have mushrooms growing, edible mushrooms. And they're ridiculously abundant. That's your first year? No, this is this was probably about two, let's say three years of building this. Three years. So you chunked a bunch of wood and in the understory?
Speaker: Or it was just a very woody soil? No, we got um arborists. love So I put the word out to the local arborist that we were looking for wood chips. And so, ah but we've had a bunch of arborists come and dump wood chips in our driveway completely free.
Speaker: The arborist, this is actually a waste for them. They're trying to get rid of them. They have to pay to take it to the dump. So we said, hey, bring it to our house. We won't charge you. Then we take the wood chips, we mulch the garden bed with the wood chips, which means we now need to water less. We need to weed less. So it's actually less work.
Speaker: Then we can inoculate the wine cap mushrooms into the wood chips because the wood wine caps need the wood chips to grow on. But what's now cool is like, you know, sure, you could just grow the honey bush or you could just grow the blueberry and that's one crop.
Speaker: But now wine cap, the two of them don't compete. I would say that the wine cap probably actually helps the others grow even better. But we're growing them in the same way. So we're increasing the amount of food in the same footprint while reducing the amount of work that it actually takes us.
Speaker: These are the kinds of design concepts I think we need to be applying to face some of the realities of our our world from the food crisis to the fact that everyone's too busy crisis to climate change and extreme weather.
Speaker: I love that. That's so beautiful. We'll talk offline if you could send us some pictures or videos and we can add it actually in the YouTube video here. ah So that would be awesome to show because I think it's awesome. Even the honey berry, it's perfect because it it usually, at least in Europe, it gives berries in early summer.
Speaker: And then the blueberries are only later. Yeah. ah And they're so tasty. Oh, my God. it's like And you have varieties that can create like super long berries. i don't know if you have the normal one. Yeah, the long ones.
Speaker: Oh, you have the long ones. They're they're so tasty. We use them ah in a lot of gardens do too. um It's actually a vine, or does it climb? ours doesn't climb. Ours is a bush. It's shrub. Okay, cool. Because there's vine varieties too, which could be awesome if you want have it grow over your house in an elderberry and rhubarb.
Speaker: Any other plants or just that, which is already amazing for just ah an outdoor space? Yeah, so, well, this is all up against, so this is basically between our septic bed and then our fenced in annual garden bed. So we do have an annual garden bed where we do grow like the tomatoes and cucumbers and all that.
Speaker: um But what I do have is I have squash growing along the fence and then spreading between the hascaps and everything. Because again, squash takes up quite a bit of space. Yeah. Right. um But it's cool because it goes eat in the the blueberries and the hascaps all fruit before the squash gets that big.
Speaker: So now those are all done fruiting and the squash is kind of taking over. The squash actually creates more shade, which means we now need to water even less because it's helping hold more moisture.
Speaker: um And the squashes can also grow up and along the fence as well. So I've literally got like it's cool when you walk into my garden, there's like six huge spaghetti squashes that are all hanging off the fence right now. Oh yeah, they're cool. So we're growing vertically as well, right? So it's just really maximizing space there.
Speaker: Yeah, that's beautiful. And I don't have to weed the squash bed because of the mulch and because of all the other things in there, there's no weeding. And I almost never water those squash. Like it's basically no weeding. It's almost no watering.
Speaker: Like it's a garden that basically just produces all of this food. So every year I need to plant the squash. Every few years I need to add a new layer of mulch. And I do a bit of pruning from time to time. But that's about all the upkeep to get all of that food and medicine.
Speaker: um And on top of that, you know, the wildlife love it, too. You know, the songbirds are in there every day. ah The one wild are we let a few what would be called weeds go in there. But I let the the milkweed grow in there like I don't weed out the milkweed because it brings in the monarch butterflies and it's creating habitat butterflies. Right.
Speaker: The pollinators come in there and they love it, which then adds better pollination to our garden because there's more pollinating flowers for them, you know. That's incredible. I love that. That's so cool. um like ah i'm I'm already playing with an idea but where we could collaborate and I could bring you ah into our community because I have a masterclass where I teach people how to design, create and maintain their own garden and your information would be super valuable to add to to the group. ah So we'll play an the idea of of having you on as a guest there too.
Speaker: um But anyway. And I do have some videos around these concepts. I do have a YouTube channel. I honestly, I don't put a lot of effort into my YouTube. i don't post regularly. It's kind of just one of those things when I get around to it and I'm an inspired. That's good. But this summer I have been doing these kind of like short 10 minute videos, just kind of explaining some of these concepts and actually showing them. So if anyone wants to check it out, it's Chris Outdoors O-N.
Speaker: ON is in Ontario where I'm from. So if you check out Chris Outdoors ON on YouTube, you can see some of those ah some of those videos of some of these beds I've been designing and how I'm just applying this holistic preparedness to the design of our gardens themselves.
Speaker: That's awesome. Yeah. So um I love that. We'll put that in the show notes. And then, yeah, we're unfortunately nearing the end of our conversation. It's been super ah interesting and and ah very, very inspiring. So, um yeah, Chris, just do you have a like...
Speaker: I always love to inspire people. Like, do you have a message for people that say like, oh, I'd love to get into the work that you're doing, but I'm stuck in an office job or I want to get into this industry, but I don't know how to and and are playing with the idea of of doing something ah either just for their whole or actually building a business around that. Do you have you have advice on how you did it?
Speaker: I do, yeah. I'm going to say the first thing is to to take a breath and go out into nature. yeah you know Often, we start to approach these challenges through our heads, right? And through, it's just like, OK, I've got to solve this problem. And then I start feeling that stress, and I'm potentially siloing myself right off the bat.
Speaker: um Some of my best creative ideas and how I often deal with the overwhelm of all the different things I manage is actually just taking that time to go out and sit in a beautiful spot in nature, quieting my mind, listening to the birds for a few minutes, feeling the grass or the plants beneath me there, and just just letting everything quiet and just taking the beauty and start to really just connect with the ecology of your area.
Speaker: And then how does the ecology of your area start to make your nervous system feel better, which then allows you to get into a more creative brain space that allows the ideas to come? And the more that you understand the ecology of your area and just how ecology works, how do you start to now model your business or your life goals or your plans to work more like an ecosystem and less like a siloed modern human?
Speaker: so So that's my advice. start with Start with a breath in nature, take the pressure off for a second, get into that creative space, appreciate nature, um and then start building like an ecosystem instead of a modern engineer.
Speaker: and And that's not to trash modern engineering. I mean, I love talking engineering. Engineering is important. It's brilliant. But let's make sure that it's held or nested within ecology because ecology is the foundation of it all. a Biology is the foundation of its all.
Speaker: So everything we do as modern humans needs to be nested in ecology and biology first. me I love that. That's amazing. And that advice, you helped me also to go on ah on a trip in Ontario, canoeing.
Speaker: ah You gave me some advice and it was an incredible experience for two, three days up in the the north northt ah of Toronto. It was amazing and I felt so empowered after. So I i need to do it more often than and good things happen from that. So ah Yeah, I love it. So, Chris, ah thank you very much for coming on the show. I love your amazing experience and your knowledge and your enthusiasm. It's much needed in this industry. I'm super excited to to stay connected. But how can people find out more about you? We already have your YouTube channel, but where else can people want to work with you, learn more about you? Where where can they go?
Speaker: Yeah, the the main spot would be the website. So Chris is spelled C-H-R-I-S. So Chris, Chris Outdoors dot C-A. And remember the dot C-A. It's not a dot com. I'm up in Canada. So Chris Outdoors dot C-A is my website.
Speaker: I do have a newsletter that I send out a couple of times a month where I share a lot of these teachings for free. You know, I talk about nature and ecology. I talk about ah resiliency. I talk about preparedness in it. And then I run a bunch of free webinars and I run online classes and then I do private consulting. So whether you're a family, an organization, a business, a municipality, um I do consulting. So all of that can be found on my website, chrisoutdoors.ca and that the Chris Outdoors ON YouTube channel that I post on from time to time.
Speaker: Perfect. Yeah, we'll put all of that in the show notes. So thank you very much, Chris, for coming on. Awesome, man. what What a great conversation. And I love the work you're doing in this world as well. Definitely values a align, vision aligned. And da yeah, hopefully we'll ah we'll collaborate a little more down the road.
Speaker: Yes, totally. Appreciate it.
