Vancouver garden expert explores regenerative growing in new book

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The Regenerative Garden: 80 Practical Projects for Creating a Self-Sustaining Garden Ecosystem

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Stephanie Rose | Cool Springs Press

$32.99 | 176pp.

It was pain that brought Stephanie Rose into the garden. But it was passion that kept her there.

“I started gardening because I got sick in 2006. It was sort of overnight. I got a headache and I wasn’t able to get out of bed,” Rose recalls of the mysterious autoimmune disease that left her “severely disabled” for two years.

As her health began to return, Rose turned to her small, East Vancouver yard in the hopes that getting busy outside would help her body to heal.

“I started gardening as my, I guess, self-directed rehabilitation program,” Rose says. “I decided, this is where I’m going to heal. This is what I’m going to do to build my strength in both my body and my mind.”

Without any gardening experience, Rose set to work learning about best practices. Poring through countless books on the topic, she garnered as much knowledge as she could from the pages. And then she set about getting her hands dirty.

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“I ordered some seeds and started with a little bit of herb gardening, some vegetables,” Rose recalls of her early gardening attempts. “It was a very slow process. It didn’t happen overnight.”

Over the following five years, Rose transformed her outdoor green space — and, in the process, also completely transformed her life. Her interest in gardening would see her join her community garden, start a charity garden, and, in 2009, join the Vancouver Master Gardeners group.

Gardening has also become her business — parlaying into a full-time career that sees her create content for her site Gardentherapy.ca, along with penning a growing library of books on all matters of horticulture, permaculture, herbalism, green space design and more.

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“Primarily, I’m a gardener and so I write about how to grow things practically — and then make beautiful things with them,” Rose explains of her assorted how-tos and do-it-yourself guides.

Out this spring, Rose’s 11th book titled The Regenerative Garden: 80 Practical Projects for Creating a Self-Sustaining Garden Ecosystem, aims to turn conventionally held principles of gardening upside down.

“The reason why I wrote this book The Regenerative Garden is because I feel like we’re doing it all wrong,” Rose says. “This whole idea of creating garden boxes and bringing in soil and planting seeds and taking out everything, pulling weeds, watering, watering, watering, harvesting, and then shutting it down for the winter is really not how gardening is most efficient.”

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Rose says this cyclical production of gardening that involves the removal and return of new materials goes against what nature prescribes for healthy growth.

“It’s a constant cycle of regeneration,” Rose says. “And so in this book, I took those concepts looking at what the forest or the meadow does, and broke them down into projects so that people could employ them in their own yards.”

The longtime gardener says that readers will be surprised by how much less work a regenerative approach to gardening can be. In fact, Rose’s own home garden is proof.

“There’s this misconception that gardening is hard work. That it’s a chore. That it’s something that we do on the weekends because we like it and we enjoy it, but at the same time, we sort of do it in that season starting in May and ending in October,” Rose says. “My yard is very, very low maintenance. For many years, I’ve had people come over and look at the gardens and look at what I’ve created and say, first of all, how can you do this as a disabled person? Secondly, how on earth do you maintain this? It must take you hours.

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“But anybody who knows me quite well knows I spend a lot of time here, but that I almost never work on the garden. I just go out and enjoy my time in it.”

The book is divided into six chapters: Soil; Water; Plants; Climate; Ethics; and Community. Rather than read like individual elements to tackle, the projects outlined in each chapter “work in harmony with each other,” according to Rose. 

“It’s creating our yard into an ecosystem that supports itself,” Rose explains of the underlying theme. “It seems really overwhelming when we talk about it that way. And a lot of people who are drawn to the idea of permaculture are really intimidated by the information in permaculture. So, I tried to make this very practical.”

Sticking close to sustainability and regeneration, Rose covers topics in each chapter ranging from planting a bee border with the aim of increasing pollination to collecting and storing rain water. Ethics deals with reducing waste in the garden, while the climate chapter explores ideas around gardening in one’s specific “microclimate,” dealing with windbreaks, shade mapping and more.

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“I’ve listed all the projects in all the chapters with a concept of good, better and best,” Rose explains of the hands-on activities. “Ideally, anything that you can do to get started.”

In the Plant pages, Rose also offers tips for growing a greener lawn, a topic of conversation and inquiry the master gardener says is one that regularly arises. Her response, she admits, is one not everyone is going to appreciate: go beyond just grass.

“There’s so much resistance to it because even those who are ecologically friendly, have a hard time sort of getting comfortable with the idea of having things like moss or clover in their lawn,” Rose says. “I’m not all about removing all the grass, but I am about looking at the ecosystem. And when we have something like a lawn, we’ve got tons of little plants, only one kind. It’s essentially a monoculture. And they all have very shallow roots, and we cut them before they can seed themselves, which seems ridiculous.

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“We cut the leaves before they can create their own mulch or nutrient return to the soil. And we remove all of those cuttings away.”

In the book, Rose recommends several alternatives to go-to lawn materials ranging from Bugleweed (Ajuga reptans) to Yellow Daisy (Chrysanthemum multicaule). Although, she admits she’s on the “clover bandwagon” at the moment.

“This is a really hot trend in all the landscape circles but people are resistant to it,” Rose says. “I have a clover lawn and it needs to be mowed maybe five times a year.”

As opposed to grass, Rose says that clover “supports itself really well” thanks to its “nitrogen fixing” properties and its solid root system, which helps guard against muddy patches during wet weather. 

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“It’s this deep green and it’s full of beautiful little bees and butterflies that come to visit the clover when it’s blooming,” Rose says appreciatively.

The final chapter of the book, which focuses on community, is Rose’s personal favourite.

“I originally was going to call this wildlife because it seems like a typical thing when we’re building our ecosystems,” Rose explains. “(But,) it’s not just wildlife that use our gardens. It’s ourselves, our families, the members of our community, the people who pass by our front gardens, our neighbours.“

The chapter details projects that bring people, plants and animals together, such as building a seed library and planting a children’s garden, as well as building butterfly pathways where the eye-catching insects can stop for a rest amid their migration.

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“In a regenerative garden, the garden grows on its own,” Rose says. “We’re just there to help facilitate building and designing it and then allowing it to produce what it is that we’re asking it to produce — whether it be flowers, or beautiful landscape, or a place for entertaining our friends or to support our communities or to feed our families.”

Experiencing a relapse with her health within the last year, Rose says she’s once again disabled. But, that hasn’t slowed down her eagerness to get outside to enjoy in her garden.

“I think it’s just going to be a lifetime of living with a disability and using gardening as a way to still be able to work,” Rose says simply. “You have to balance the amount of energy that it takes with the healing that you’ll get from it.”

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5 must-have tools for home gardeners

Looking to up your garden game? You’re going to need the right tools.

In order to narrow down the list of essential items, we asked the team at the Canadian company Lee Valley to dish on the must-have gardening gadgets for home gardeners.

Tool time

This Lee Valley Garden Tools Set ($109) includes all the essential hand tools to get you gardening including a trowel, cultivator and Jekyll weeder.

Make it rain

From a gentle mist to a full-on jet, this Large Shower Spray Nozzle ($29.50) is sure to meet all your watering needs

A quick trim

Clip and snip with precision with the Felco Composite-Handle Pruners ($45.50). The petite pruners fit comfortably in hand ensuring any trim can be done with ease.

Dig it

Go to ground with this Garden Auger ($59.90), which is perfect for small garden beds or planting single greenery items.

Ultimate accessory

Elevate your gardening experience with a garden accoutrement that’s designed with comfort in mind like this Folding Kneeler Stool & Tool Holder Set ($82.50). The packable piece features compartments for easy organization of your essential tools while you garden.

All items available at Leevalley.com.

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