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Giving Tree Gardens has been busy building some exciting Minneapolis landscapes this summer.  This pizza-oven and natural stone patio installation is the latest and greatest portion of the newly renovated Permaculture-made-pretty backyard living space at the Loomis residence in NE Minneapolis.

Team work pays off and this project brought together a great team [...]]]> Giving Tree Gardens has been busy building some exciting Minneapolis landscapes this summer.  This pizza-oven and natural stone patio installation is the latest and greatest portion of the newly renovated Permaculture-made-pretty backyard living space at the Loomis residence in NE Minneapolis.

Team work pays off and this project brought together a great team of creative and skilled builders.

The lovely and functional pizza oven you see here was hand built by Minneapolis’ own Frances Michaelson with rooftop construction help from her father, Paul Sylvester.  Click here to veiw pictures of the oven construction.  Built from locally sourced materials, including re-used street pavers, clay and sand from clients yards, beaver hewn logs from the Mississippi River’s edge, and re-used tin roofing, this is an Earth-friendly permaculture landscape installation.

The pizza oven, patio, and roof-top are just a portion of the many changes that this back yard has undergone in one season.  A Chicken coop, compost bins, fruit trees, a quaking aspen grove, rain-barrels, and butterfly gardens are all newly in place in this sustainable landscape.

For those who are wondering, you too can have a pizza oven built in your backyard.  Click to view this page to learn more about our Backyard Pizza Oven services.  Or  Click here to schedule a home landscape consultation.

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Here are some images of a butterfly enjoying the Joe Pye Weed in our gardens.  Gotta love a friendly garden visitor!

The Parker residence in Edina, MN was once an empty lawn.  Teeming with birds, butterflies, bees, and beauty, this backyard now reflects natures abundant bounty.

Two rain-gardens, a stone patio and stone walkways, and large butterfly gardens that all define this healthy home landscape were all installed only 3 years [...]]]> The Parker residence in Edina, MN was once an empty lawn.  Teeming with birds, butterflies, bees, and beauty, this backyard now reflects natures abundant bounty.

Two rain-gardens, a stone patio and stone walkways, and large butterfly gardens that all define this healthy home landscape were all installed only 3 years ago.  As a testament to the power of good compost the trees, shrubs, and perennial habitat plants in this native landscape have matured at a  much appreciated rapid pace.

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     The Sorensen residence in St. Paul has become a refuge and home for bees and butterflies.  Giving Tree     installed these beds in May 2012, these pictures taken in July show the strength of good compost in the soil.   Plants in these beds have grown with wild abandon and are [...]]]>

     The Sorensen residence in St. Paul has become a refuge and home for bees and butterflies.  Giving Tree     installed these beds in May 2012, these pictures taken in July show the strength of good compost in the soil.   Plants in these beds have grown with wild abandon and are already supporting a wide variety of bees, and butterflies.  The Sorensen’s love their bees so much they made a blog to help us all follow the buzz!

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Even a professional gardener needs a place to sink his hands in the dirt and unwind at the end of the day.  Here’s a few pictures of the front yard gardens at my Minneapolis home.

Click on any image in the gallery below to enlarge.

Organic gardening and farming are based on the notion that when we build our soil’s natural fertility through composting we strengthen our environment and grow the land’s capacity to provide us with health.

It’s a pretty good system when you think of it. We throw [...]]]>

Organic gardening and farming are based on the notion that when we build our soil’s natural fertility through composting we strengthen our environment and grow the land’s capacity to provide us with health.

It’s a pretty good system when you think of it. We throw out scraps, and the scraps become our food. So simple, so elegant, so effective.

At Giving Tree Gardens, we’re such big fans of compost because we’ve seen it’s powerful results. Our gardens and lawns have all quickly filled in and grown with health and beauty using nothing but good healthy compost for fertility.

Last spring Giving Tree Gardens began working with farm partners to build Grow! Twin Cities Urban Farm. At this 12 acre city farm growers with various talents ranging from tomato and potato farming to bee keeping and mushrooming have come together to grow food for urban eaters. This farm space has been the perfect place for us to launch our composting operations.

With consultation from local composting experts Peter Kern, owner of Kern Landscape Resources, and Professor Tom Halbach, from the University of Minnesota, we designed an 85 feet long compost pile. Friends of the farm and Giving Tree Gardens employees set to work transforming our greenhouse and hauling in the compost pile’s base layers of wood chips and landscaping waste.

We now bring in 2 tons of Minneapolis’ finest coffee shop, vegetarian eatery, and beer brewery waste per week to compost inside our largest greenhouse. Composting takes place inside the greenhouse for two reasons. First, composting in the greenhouse means that our pile doesn’t stop cooking all year long.  Second, and more importantly, the fact that we’re heating our greenhouse without any petroleum products means a huge environmental win for everyone involved.

If you’ve purchased food, beer, or coffee from Peace Coffee, Harriet Brewery, Caffetto Coffee Shop, Tao Foods, or Second Moon Coffee Shop, then you are contributing to healthy soils, and local food production at our Grow! Twin Cities Farm.

If you’d like to support more of our farming and composting efforts, there are great ways to get involved. You can sign up to volunteer, donate to the farm, or sign up to follow our newsletter.

Many thanks to all the hard working compost helpers!

Whenever a young person learns to garden, the future grows a little more green and healthy. When an entire school learns to garden together, sustainability sprouts in the imaginations of tomorrows community.  This spring, Giving Tree Gardens worked with the Anoka-Hennepin School District to teach some of the basics of Earth- friendly food gardening to [...]]]> Whenever a young person learns to garden, the future grows a little more green and healthy. When an entire school learns to garden together, sustainability sprouts in the imaginations of tomorrows community.  This spring, Giving Tree Gardens worked with the Anoka-Hennepin School District to teach some of the basics of Earth- friendly food gardening to students at two schools in the district.  We had so much fun working with students and staff that we’ve just got to share the good times with the rest of the world.

Imagine what our communities would look like today, if all of us as kids had the opportunity to learn to grow our own food at school.  Instead of learning to grow food, the daily school lunch is the most engaging and oft repeated lesson that our kids get about food.  What is that lesson?

It was an honor for us at Giving Tree to be invited to garden with the students at Mississippi Elementary and Northdale Middle School in Coon Rapids.  Composting, edible weeds, the importance of avoiding chemicals, soil preparation, seed planting, native plants, habitat creation, and companion planting were the subjects of 3 all day gardening classes.  School staff and teachers brought the students out in shifts.  Over 400 students were able to get their hands dirty digging in to learn how to grow healthy food and habitat.

At Mississippi Elementary we built on a theme that we had started last year when we extended the garden installation within the schools Nature Center to include 6 crescent moon shaped garden beds.  Every grade came out to plant, and each got their own garden bed to prepare and plant with different companion planting arrangements.  Within each bed we also planted one native butterfly attracting plant so that we made sure to grow habitat for our winged friends along the way.

At Northdale Middle school we worked with 7^th and 8^th grade students in the schools AVID program to plant a highly accessible veggie garden and two fruit trees right out the back door.  Plants were all arranged in companionship groupings, and both the apple and pear tree that were planted were given their best friend plants of dill and mint to grow by.  Some of the students were very impressive with their strong knowledge about organic vegetable gardening!

Both of these school projects were funded by SHIP grants (State Health Improvement Program) from the State of Minnesota Health Department.  These grants are designed to “help Minnesotans live longer, healthier lives.” Gardening for medicinal and edible plants as well as sustainable habitat development are among the most effective long term strategies we have available for increasing health in our communities.

Imagine how healthy our children would be if all of our schools had organic student led gardens to grow even half of the food the kids eat for lunch.  Thanks to the SHIP grants, and the imaginative staff in the Anoka-Hennepin Schools and school district, we have planted the seeds of healthy change in a couple of local schools.

Is your block club, church group, or office place ready to go green? In this time of shrinking budgets we need to recognize the assets in our communities and help them grow into a sustainable future!

Community Design Forums are meetings where folks come together to create action plans for moving forward with changes that [...]]]> Is your block club, church group, or office place ready to go green? In this time of shrinking budgets we need to recognize the assets in our communities and help them grow into a sustainable future!

Community Design Forums are meetings where folks come together to create action plans for moving forward with changes that positively affect their community’s environment. By sharing needs, knowledge, and ideas communities get to know the power within their ranks and discover ways to help grow their green ideas.

Facilitated by Giving Tree Gardens owner Russ Henry, these forums bring together his skills as a professional Earth-Friendly Landscaper and a volunteer Restorative Justice Facilitator. Russ sits down with consultation attendees and asks them to share their concerns, ideas, efforts, and knowledge with each other so that communities can not only draw from his experience in the garden and landscape, but more importantly, attendees learn about each other’s skills and abilities.

Giving Tree Gardens now offers our professional landscaping consulting services for all those do-it-yourself clients that would simply like a little advice.  Many of our clients love to garden themselves, but want to have a professional on their side.  In order to help folks get the most out of their consultation time, Russ [...]]]>

Giving Tree Gardens now offers our professional landscaping consulting services for all those do-it-yourself clients that would simply like a little advice.  Many of our clients love to garden themselves, but want to have a professional on their side.  In order to help folks get the most out of their consultation time, Russ Henry has designed the Healthy Yards, Healthy Lives Home Consultation! This Earth-friendly landscaping and organic gardening consultation will help home gardeners apply the 7 steps outlined in the link above.  From garden design and layout, to landscape installation methods, and landscaping maintenance routines, to back yard organic garden food production and promoting healthy ecosystems, this landscaping consultation is a one-stop shop for improving the quality of life on this planet one back yard organic garden at a time!