Abundant Design, LLC provides Des Moines and Central Iowa with Edible & Sustainable Landscaping, Regenerative Land Use Consulting, Permaculture Design and Installation services.
Our Mission:
Our Mission: To enable individuals and communities to take an active part in the cultivation of systems that provide the highest quality fruits, vegetables, herbs and other yields, in a way that benefits themselves, cares for the land and environment, and provides a surplus to use, share and reinvest into the system.
That's why I'm super excited to partner with and share Sunday, a newer lawn care company that helps empower everyone to grow better, healthier, greener spaces today, and for generations to come.
Sunday is dedicated to changing the world one yard at a time!
Each Sunday product is created to support the entire lawn ecosystem - by working with nature, not against it, and using leading-edge science to get back to how nature is supposed to work.
Sunday lawn care products use better, simpler ingredients (with names you can pronounce) to boost active grass growth and cultivate rich, living soil for a healthy, more self sustaining lawn.
Sunday also has effective and easy to use products for weed and pest control that use carefully selected ingredients with your family in mind.
This project started with a call from the homeowner who had a dangerous slope to mow with potential for erosion issues. Although the last few years were very busy, we were able to fit this mid-summer project in when we happened to be working nearby.
The homeowner wanted something to hold the bank stable, without a retaining wall and pollinator friendly if possible. But not something too wild looking...
Little Bluestem to the rescue! This hardy native grass has a nice blue-green color in summer and will spread to hold the bank in place. It grows to about three feet tall with a fibrous root system. A selection of native wildflowers, lower diversity for a 'tidy' appearance, will give the bees and butterflies something to enjoy as well.
For this one, we stripped the existing sod, evened out the grade across the slope, added in prairie grasses & wildflowers, mulched and also tried a new trick (similar to these products at Amazon affiliate link) to hold the mulch in place until the plants fill in.
This new little patch of 'prairie' with Little Bluestem's fall colors of copper to crimson, and wildflower blooms will give this space year long interest to the homeowners and passing traffic on this somewhat busy intersection (which made for an interesting installation).
This is a great year to start that garden you've always thought about!
Bill Mollison, co-founder of Permaculture
With rising inflation, due to a multitude of issues - supply chain problems, lost productivity during the pandemic catching up, and efforts to stimulate a lagging economy - growing a garden can help reduce food costs.
Sure, brand new stylish cedar raised beds will cost a lot to get started, especially with current lumber prices. Wood scraps can also be found if you know where to look, or build one out of used pallets. Look for the "HT" stamp which means Heat-Treated for durability instead of chemically treated. The gardens built with these may not last as long, but they will get you started and can be replaced easily after a few seasons.
But also skipping that step and adding new in ground garden, or adding soil on top of cardboard can be a great lower cost option.
Increasingly bare shelves, with a seemingly random rotation of available products, eggs and chicken (even before the bird flu) to fresh fruit and vegetables, are causing some to think of new/old ways to get through temporary, but increasingly longer, grocery shortages. This can definitely can be alleviated with some homegrown produce, neighborhood veggie swaps and farmers market items.
Also, with a stressed food supply, every calorie you grow and consume, is one less calorie this system has to provide. The more people do this, the more pressure it takes off the food system and supply chains - our friends the farmers, truck drivers and retail workers. Even if you live in an apartment a few herbs or tomatoes growing on a sunny deck or patio makes a difference.
A few dollars in seeds can yield many, many times that in food savings!
These are such a fun plant to grow, and due to the loss of shortgrass prairie ecosystems, the population of Pulsatilla patens, or Pasque Flower, is declining. Growing some in our yards can help support the native insects that rely on them.
Pasque flower on our sidewalk prairie
Blooming early makes it a nice addition of color to somewhat drab, early native landscapes.
The Pasque Flowers common name is derived from the Hebrew word for Passover, "pasakh", and refers to it's Easter flowering period.
