Edible landscaping is the use of food-producing plants in the residential landscape. It can combine fruit and nut trees, berrying shrubs, vegetables, herbs, edible flowers, along with ornamental plants into aesthetically pleasing designs. These designs can adopt any garden style and may include anywhere from 1 to 100 percent edible specimens. A gardener can install an entirely edible landscape or incorporate some edible plants into existing gardens.

But where did edible landscapes begin?

This Ecological Landscape Alliance online presentation on May 12 at noon begins where agriculture began, the Zagros Mountain Range on the border of Iran and Iraq. From there it travels through the Middle East and Europe showing how we went from subsistence farming to aesthetic gardening in response to the rise of privilege. The remaining portion of the presentation covers edible plantings in a variety of settings such as within flower gardens, in garden islands, and in containers and closes with different annual and perennial plants commonly found in Edible Landscaping.

Sven Pihl, founder of CT Edible Ecosystems, LLC is a Regenerative Land Planner/Designer and Permaculture educator formerly based in Connecticut. Sven designs multifunctional Edible Landscapes and Forest Gardens for homes, commercial properties, campuses and public spaces. He’s passionate about regenerative landscape design to create productive agro-ecosystems. His education ranges from local coursework to the University of Missouri’s Center for Agroforestry and Multifunction Carbon Sequestration Agroforestry at the Yale School of the Environment. He has worked on Permaculture and Agroforestry projects from New Jersey to New Hampshire.

Sven currently works for the Savanna Institute as the Agroforestry Technical Service Provider for the state of Illinois and Indiana and is working to rebrand CT Edible Ecosystems into a national entity.