Edge of the Wild

Ecological Land Care & Design

Serving clients in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts


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©2024 Mag-Ex

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Consultations

I offer different kinds of consults for different goals--let me know which one of these sounds like you:
  • You’d like some direction for your own yard makeover ambitions
  • You’re interested in land care services on an ongoing basis--let’s discuss your goals and a management plan to achieve them
  • You’re interested in a new design for your yard--let’s see how we might get there

For anybody who would just like a little direction, and for both my Land Care and Design Project clients, I offer and begin with an hour or so of a consultation. In these visits, I do some contextual research beforehand, take your goals into mind, look around with you at your landscape of interest, share the plant species I notice and what appears to be happening onsite, and give my thoughts on how I might approach next steps of land care or design planning. Contact me to learn more!


Seasonal Land Care

Over recurring Land Care visits from April though November, I cultivate a yard’s existing native plant communities and work with clients to blend their landscape goals and space activities more softly into their neighborhood ecosystem. The plant community expression of each yard and neighborhood is a special thing to behold and learn to integrate with, and this connection is something I try to cultivate. This is most of my work, currently. Design happens with every decision of what to leave and encourage, and what to cut, weed out, and discourage. Each year brings more understanding of the plant communities at different successional stages and the life that shapes them.

Areas of Land Care Work:
  • Manage Invasive Plants This is the most important aspect to rewilding with care. Managing the most domineering plants in a landscape thoughtfully allows for more local floral and faunal diversity to reveal itself! 
  • Pruning, Periodic Mowing, ScythingCutting at different times will have different results on plants, and can drastically impact the shape and successional stage of a plant community
  • Diversify Garden Beds/Layered LifeMulching is great for protecting the soil and newly established plantings, but after that initial season, a communal variety of differently shaped plants should begin to occupy spaces, and have the added benefit of reducing time spend weeding
  • Reduce/Rewild LawnsThis can be a lovely way to see what lives around you, and inform future design decisions. Context dependent.
  • Ecological Stormwater Management/Rain Gardens/Green InfrastructureRain gardens and swales are trendy--let’s make them beautiful, resilient, and practical over the long term, suited to their context
  • Land Tending CoachingI love sharing what I’ve learned and helping others begin their journey of thoughtful land care for beauty and abundant life!

Landscape Management Plans


The slower months of June, July, and August are also a good time for me to consult on and work on Land Management Plans for larger properties--not a garden, but thoughtful tending plans for the “edge of the wild.”

Landscape Design Plans & Planting


In the slower months of the year--mid-late summer, and winter especially, I work on Landscape Design Plans for a couple of clients, usually a large one in the winter and a smaller project in late summer. These are garden designs that I aim to blend into the native plant communities of the space. I aim for full garden beds of plants to occupy different niches of time and space, with the goal of cultivating stability, little to no future inputs of mulch, fertilizers, or treatments--just some monthly weeding, cutting, and the occasional transplanting. My designs are informed by my land care experience, which I think is crucial to great design, because land care is design! :)

I also do the planting of these designs, and can often follow up with continued care, a management plan, or coaching if you wish to take on care afterward yourself.

Ecological Land Care Workshops


More to come!



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