Living Landscapes

Living Landscapes We want to promote & educate the benefits of growing native species and bee pollinating plants.

05/05/2026

Busy as a bee this time of year, we have managed to get many trays of strawberries, walking onions and bocking 14 comfrey for sale. Working on some personal garden space, cleaning up last year’s growing beds and up potting trees. We will have Nanking Cherry, buttonbush and nine bark ready to go soon along with an array of pollinators and some fruit bearing seedlings.
We are hoping for a normal spring weather pattern so our friends and neighbors can get out and plant a sustainable garden for many years to come. Reach out if we can help you with anything or ask questions, enjoy the sunshine! ☀️

04/14/2026

We hope everyone is having a busy spring and putting those muscles to work doing what we love. One area of our permaculture homestead that seems to always be playing catch up is the compost pile. We go through a lot of compost, usually 25-30 yards per year and this is an topic that takes time so planning in advance is helpful. Recently we found out one of our neighbors that we barter with for their goat compost is moving away and this is our last opportunity to get a good pile going.
We also raise rabbits so that helps the compost pile but no where near enough for our needs so we recommend always exploring options with neighbors to work together and develop mutually beneficial relationships to keep your forward momentum running smoothly.

03/21/2026

As we hurry around trying to get our greenhouse ready we must not forget to prepare cuttings for customers and get ready to propagate. This week we took around 400 grape cuttings and next week we will tackle the p***ywillows and the elderberry, the p***ywillows are one of the first trees that bees look for as they come out of dormancy and an excellent resource for them to lean on as the catkins are already growing out and soon will provide our little bee friends with wonderful nourishment. We will put our cuttings on marketplace for those interested or you can contact us via email or text, info is listed on our homepage.

Spring is coming and of course things don’t always go as planned. As we embarked on the building of a workshop late last...
03/14/2026

Spring is coming and of course things don’t always go as planned. As we embarked on the building of a workshop late last fall we moved all of our equipment and tools etc into our greenhouse to make way for the project and now that planting season is upon us we have to find a home for all of that stuff.
Sarah recently started about 400 different varieties of pepper seeds and we will wait a little longer than last year to start the tomatoes, with the rainy spring last year we sat on a lot of plants and we are trying to hedge our bets better this year.
We’re going to plant some different plants this year from seed we collected such as sweet cicely and echinacea, black locusts and a few others. The drought last summer took its toll on seed production and our hazelnuts and chestnuts had hollow husks but our strawberries did pretty well and we will be propagating those as the weather breaks and offering some to our customers.
We really want to promote natural healing and we have planted a bunch of medicinal plants last year and we will be educating people on the health and nutrient benefits of comfrey. Comfrey is very versatile and we grow a Russian variety called Bocking 14 which only spreads by root division. The plant attracts bees like crazy and its leaf growth can be harvested multiple times a year and used as a mulch and a natural fertilizer supplement. The leaves can be used in salves as well and has long been used to help heal bruised bones, arthritis and other muscle damage.
On a side note we have done farm sitting and pet sitting for local folks for a few years and we have been getting more requests from hobby farmers and homesteaders to take care of their animals while they take a much needed vacation. It’s been really cool interacting with different types of animals and learning how each one fits into a particular size homestead. Here’s a couple pictures from our most recent customers.

Heading out to New Hampshire today to bring an exciting new addition to the homestead. We have raised silver fox rabbits...
01/03/2026

Heading out to New Hampshire today to bring an exciting new addition to the homestead. We have raised silver fox rabbits for many years and branching out and picking up a breeding trio of American Chinchilla Rabbits. We will be able to offer folks a few different types of rabbits this upcoming year, black silver fox, blue silver fox and American Chinchilla Rabbits.

We hope everyone is staying warm this winter and planning your next gardening adventure for next year. I was struck by a...
12/28/2025

We hope everyone is staying warm this winter and planning your next gardening adventure for next year. I was struck by a comment that a customer made this past spring as him and his wife were coming back for the second time to try and make their Homestead in New York a little more self sustainable. The first thing he said to me was someone can watch all of the YouTube videos in the world about how to create a self sustainable homestead but he said that me and my wife Sarah are actually doing it. That was very satisfying to hear someone recognize our efforts .
Living in a rural location we have found our lack of learning how to optimize social media, not having a website etc to be a great disadvantage in our attempts to help others with small properties grow their own food and think about long-term investments in their property as a food source and hope to work on those areas . The unfortunate truth of the matter is some years we make a little bit of money and get all excited but many times we don’t actually turn a profit at all and that is frankly a little depressing and needs to change .
The exciting news for next year is We are going to be investing more time in aromatic and herbal medicine and we have registered a business with the state called Clarity Holistics! We are going to focus on utilizing our certified naturally grown property to make herbal teas, tinctures, incense, and salves. We are also going to focus a little more effort on our meat rabbit Operation to make that more profitable and possibly do some workshops this summer for those interested in learning how to raise their own meat rabbits. One of our big projects is going to be creating a little small getaway for a holistic retreat for people that want to join us on a weekend , just relax or spend time connecting with nature.
We hope that all of you are making a big list of things that you want to accomplish next year as well and we look forward to talking with people and seeing old friends again in the spring! Thanks for your support!!

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11/14/2025

We have had a busy couple of weeks, planted our garlic, harvested our pigs and spent most of the day heeling in tree seedlings for winter. I think Sarah and I got around 400-500 seedlings all set until spring, still have to put up fence around seedlings in our raised beds and protect our willow trees from our arch nemesis the bunny rabbits.
We definitely had a rough growing season and difficult sales but we want to give a big thank you to those that stopped over and brought friends and relatives.
There’s so many inspiring videos and stories online along with guru’s selling a course to put you in a position to quit your job and grow plants full time. While I can appreciate the positive themes with these inspiring tales the reality is much different for most growers, we have had a couple years where we did pretty good but nothing spectacular and many many more years of working for 5 months non stop with two of us and barely break even.
We love growing trees and fruits that benefit humans or wildlife and probably will always be propagating something and improving our sustainability and other peoples lives as well. We have talked extensively and definitely need to get out of the mindset that we will make a living on our small one acre homestead, it’s to frustrating honestly to try different things and work ourselves into the ground every year for very little payback.
Most of our future offerings will be made from our current stock and not at a scale that we usually do so that we can allocate more time and efforts that will financially sustain us better. We look forward to connecting with our friends and new customers in the years to come and hope your path to sustainability is a success!

08/18/2025

Good morning, it’s definitely been a weird summer and the lack of rain has caused some ups and downs for sure. We utilize a natural spring in the ground and use that water typically for watering plants and feeding outside farm animals, that spring went dry last week so You have to get creative I guess.
Many of the plants are feeling the effects of no rain or hardly any. My wife Sarah spent a good portion of the day yesterday picking tomatoes and making tomato sauce, adding fresh garlic and basil from our garden to the mix and we freeze it. We recently planted Solomon seal, Astilbe, wild Bergamont, obedience plant, Cranesbill and some blue Queen sage. In addition we planted blue glow thistle and 50 lavender plants. We are slowly adding more native plants, especially ones that provide beautiful flowers as we are dipping our toes into making dried floral arrangements and some wax sachets from our Homestead. We also got certified naturally grown this year so that was a nice accomplishment to make, and we hope to continue with that organization for many years to come. It was developed by a farmer back in 2002 as an alternative to the lengthy paperwork and government Intervention with the certified organic process. We found their peer review program unique, we get inspected by another CNG member and they actually put their farms reputation on the line by verifying that we are adhering to naturally grown practices and other standards and we will be doing the same for other farmers in the program. We will keep you up-to-date with some pictures as things start to grow and fill in and as always thank you for all of your support!

07/29/2025

We wanted to send out a thank you to everybody that bought trees and plants from us this year. Due to the wet spring, we ended up with hundreds of heirloom tomatoes and peppers left over and couldn’t bring ourselves to throw them away. We donated a lot of plants to local schools, neighbors, VFW’s and other people in need . We ended up taking a couple of months to build a lot more raised beds and extend garden areas and have over 400 tomato and specialty pepper plants growing currently. It’s been suggested that we offer some pick your own heirloom vegetables and those will be ready soon if anyone has an interest .
We are also very excited to let everybody know that we officially received our inspection and now certified naturally grown. Some of our focus for next year will be garlic, strawberry plants and medicinal herbs and herbal tea blends. Thanks for all of your support! 

It’s that time of year where everything at our nursery wakes up and is ready for a new home. For those interested every ...
05/03/2025

It’s that time of year where everything at our nursery wakes up and is ready for a new home. For those interested every Saturday during the month of May we are going to have a plant sale and offer our heirloom vegetables such as tomatoes and peppers that range from sweet to super hot. we have a number of flowering and pollinating attracting shrubs for sale along with p***y willows and red currants .  a little later on in the month we will have table grapes available and with some advanced notice we can get walking onions, Jerusalem, artichoke and Comfrey ready for you. Thanks to everybody that supports our little backyard nursery and hope to see you, we do offer sales during the week by appointment thank you. 

Address

1775 Howard Hill Rd
Benson, VT
05731

Telephone

+18025586903

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