WEST LINN ─ Glen Andresen, Metro’s natural gardening educator since 1994, will present a slide show talk on Edible Landscapes on Thursday, February 10, 2011 from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. at the West Linn Public Library, 1595 Burns Street in West Linn.
A Master Gardener for 20 years, Glen Andresen will offer tips on how to creatively deal with small spaces, what to grow, how to prune as well as answer specific questions from the audience. This presentation is the second in the Sustainability Lecture Series co-sponsored by the West Linn Sustainability Advisory Board and the West Linn Public Library.
Andresen views all the space around the house as a garden. Edible plants are attractive in their own right, according to Andresen, and are great ways to fill in barren spaces. Even a forty-inch tall rhubarb can offer tropical-like splendor. However, he also believes that consideration should be given to how the space will look after a harvest and to cultivating plants that can attract beneficial wildlife to the garden.
Glen Andresen’s own home garden in Northeast Portland boasts 40 fruit trees, 17 raised vegetable beds, grapes, rows of berries plus honeybee colonies ─ all on a city lot measuring just 60 by 100 feet. Most of the presentation slides were taken in his own garden. “A good example is twice as value as good advice,” says Andresen, who is a trend-setter in his own neighborhood. After filling in his driveway parking strip with edible plants, four of his neighbors followed suit.
For Glen Andresen, gardening is all about sustainability and the practices that can go on forever: building soil and enhancing wildlife that will then enhance the garden. For home gardeners this is good news since, as Andresen explains, “It’s about letting nature do as much of the gardening as you can.”
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