About

i’ve always been a nature nerd. i’m an artist, and my love of nature was reflected in my art. i love being outdoors in natural settings, and i love animals.
i grew up in rural Massachusetts, so i spent a lot of time as a kid exploring woods and farmland and following streams and running from cows. i could usually find some food out there, too, whether it was wild growing fruit, edible greens, nuts or just a swiped ear of raw cow corn. and among my friends, family members and neighbors, many kept gardens – and were really good at it.

i moved to Florida when i was about 20. the New England winters were too hard for me. the year-long summer (relatively speaking) seemed an idyllic cure for seasonal affectation, and still is now.
for a long time, i was a renter. i didn’t garden, but i was really into bonsai for a while. when i quit drinking at 25, bonsai became my new sober hobby.

when i bought my home with a small patch of land that was really mine…
i immediately became obsessed with permaculture gardening.
at the time, i was aspiring to be a professional artist. but it wasn’t working for me. the interpersonal aspects of it were too much for my natural introversion, and the business aspects placed demands on my time that inhibited me from actually creating artwork that i loved. plus my art was often strange and not easy to market to the local community. (artists work harder than people know. please support your local artists!)

i reconnected with my creativity by getting dirty in the yard. playing with plants felt so restorative and true to my own nature – it was all i wanted to do. even at the height of the summer. from sun up to sun down.
hailing from New England meant i had a lot to learn about what would and wouldn’t grow here, and if so, when. it also meant i had a whole world of tropical and semi-tropical plants to explore. the nature nerd was in heaven.

i built the garden in stages, using no-till methods, planting willy-nilly like a squirrel, leaving much up to nature herself.
the plants, i selected for hardiness and usefullness.
i dug a pond and built a natural gravel bog filter for it so i could add emergent aqauatic plants and create self-watering stations.
i read and read and bought seeds and plants and experimented and failed and tried again and succeeded and learned.

the result is a back yard that can feed me with very little input of time and energy, more like a semi-cultivated foraging experience than what one might call a garden. it’s verging on food forest. it’s heading in that direction after six years of planting and growing, intense phases punctuated with phases of neglect.
in the process, i’ve gained a lot of knowlege and understanding. i have valuable, actionable information that i want to pass on to others for their benefit and for the benefit of the environment.

in our present culture, there can be something inherently rebellious about growing your own food. to whatever degree a person does this, they are taking responsibility for the quality of their nutrition and reducing their dependency on capitalist structures. and they’re reducing the strain on the natural environment, often creating homes for displaced animals in their areas.
sticking up for nature is, sadly, a revolutionary take in a world of strip malls, sod lawns and bland decorative hedges. it’s anti-consumerism, in the right way.

maybe you connect with some of these ideas, too. or maybe you just want to make a salad without going to the store. and that’s okay.
it’s not an all-or-nothing thing.
you don’t have to go off-grid or never order take-out or only buy used clothing.
creating native habitat is great, but non-native plants are okay, too (if they’re useful and non-invasive).
you can get into the guerilla gardening revolutionary flavored ideology, or blow it off entirely.
it’s okay to start small and it’s okay to keep it small or grow slow.

start where you’re at and do what you want. the benefits will still be there because gardening is rewarding as heck, especially if you’re growing food.

-corina pelloni