Animate Your Property/Add Value

The Edible Forest Program

Here’re a few things we did with our house (in Ottawa Canada) to animate it:

-planted an edible tree cover/treescape [we are growing an apple tree (6 varieties) and a pear tree (with many varieties) as shown above; please also refer to the “Edible Forest Program” below]

-think about this for a minute! 

-it’s like the Raymond James tree of rare and magical fruit–you plant ‘em, they provide shade in summer, protect you from wind, increase your property value and then feed you! 

-watch the first 27 seconds of this video, it’ll inspire you (after that it’s just a commercial…)

-erected backyard sheds (I found a great source of Amish sheds near Ottawa ON, see postscript below)

-added a hammock

-put in garden beds, one of them raised

-put in a separate patio for our sideyard apartment tenant to use and deck for the main house where we live

-plant flowers (the above is a poppy)

-installed a separate sideyard apartment entryway/sidewalk for our tenant

-here’s a second walkway to rearyard for us to use

-put in frontyard parking for the apartment on pavers (it’s legal cuz it’s considered landscape material) not asphalt (cuz that would be considered a driveway by ordinance/bylaw enforcement officers)

-main driveway for our use

-zeroscaped frontyard (lots of fern cover will appear here in a few weeks)

-garage office for moi

Here’s a program I designed to create an edible forest in our town via its realtor community. 

This is my outline:

1. realtors, instead of giving gift baskets or bottles of wine for every home sold, would give fruit trees
2. this will help create a significant tree canopy (shade, beauty, wind protection) over the years and help the city feed itself too
3. there are 3,000 realtors in Ottawa and 30,000 in Toronto, imagine if they each sold 5 properties per year and gave 2 or 3 fruit trees per home sold?
4. I think mortgage brokers should also get involved as well
5. that would mean maybe as many as 45,000 trees per yr in Ottawa and an incredible 450,000 in Toronto
6. trees would be saplings available locally for less than $10 each
7. preferred varieties—serviceberry, pear, grape, black walnut, cherry, gingko, hazel and plum
8. probably not apple trees because they require too much care and attention
9. the other species require ~ zero upkeep
10. all species would be adapted to cold weather
11. there is evidence to show that homes on street with a significant tree canopy sell faster and for about 6-8% more than similar houses on roads with little tree cover
12. all trees would be self pollinating (which means they can propagate their species alone without help)

Watch again the 1st 27 seconds of this video—it’s fun and sort of gives you an idea of how important trees are to human beings:

The Tree of Rare and Magical Fruit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8QzVgV2pD4&list=PLd3QdcBlEm9-qxz5RCsvySOF5tgM15J04

Here’s an email I sent to a coaching client who had just purchased a rural home about this:

Tay, can u
please re-read this about why you should treat even your principal residence as if it was a rental: https://profbruce.tumblr.com/post/153639912969/why-you-should-treat-even-your-principal-residence

Also, one
of the best ways to boost rural (or urban) property values is to add to your
treescape for privacy, shade, wind protection, ecological reasons (mammal and
bird habitat, CO(2) interment, cleaner air (trees also suck up carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen
dioxide), produce more O(2), reduce AC needs, “forest bathing”, reduce
dust, eliminate grass, which needs to be cut and fertilized/weeded/watered, produce lumber, firewood, conserve water and soil, muffle noise, medicine
production), educating kids, erecting a hammock, and natural beauty plus food (edible fruit) production… so read
these too:

How to Grow
a 100-Year Forest in 10 Years

https://profbruce.tumblr.com/post/154983059834/how-to-grow-a-100-year-forest-in-10-years

Animate Your
Property/Add Value: The Edible
Forest Program

https://profbruce.tumblr.com/post/144551275589/animate-your-propertyadd-value-the-edible-forest

Measuring
the Value of Design and Creativity: Value of a City’s Treescape

https://profbruce.tumblr.com/post/138796280199/please-sir-i-want-some-more-i-found-this-article-i

Cheers,

@ profbruce

postscript: supply of Amish sheds–

Another supplier: Brian Lauzon in Quebec–

www.westquebecshedcompany.com