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A house in the heart of the Tower Grove neighborhood stands out with its lush green landscape.
Native fruit trees line the edges of the fence, a salad garden sits in the middle of the yard, and other herbs and vegetables are growing in scattered patches. A beehive is above in one corner and logs 鈥� used for the cultivation of mushrooms 鈥� are stacked beneath a tree.
Matt Lebon, a foodscaper in St. Louis, is the owner of this 鈥渦rban food forest,鈥� a type of gardening that focuses on edible and perennial plants. It is the home of Lebon鈥檚 business, , which aims to replace traditional ornamental landscaping with edible plants.
This style of agriculture, Lebon said, may hold the key to weathering major climate changes.
鈥淭he idea behind this edible landscape is that these perennial native plants come back every year and that every year the system gets more robust, resilient and bountiful, so that you鈥檙e putting in less work and getting more out of it,鈥� Lebon said.
Lebon didn鈥檛 grow up with a green thumb.
鈥淢y story is one kind of a childhood disconnected with nature, with plants, with animals,鈥� Lebon said. 鈥淎nd I had no thoughts about where food could come from beyond Schnucks.鈥�
But while working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, he lived in a rural farming environment. Many members of the community had livestock, fruit trees and vegetable gardens.
鈥淚 witnessed firsthand how these small farmers were masters at managing the local ecology with a deep understanding of the plants and animals with which they were cohabitating,鈥� he said.
And when the town experienced drought, he said, they were prepared.
鈥淚t was a really remarkable thing to see the resiliency that comes with a super diverse self-sufficiency model, one where people are not simply going to be affected by a summer drought because there鈥檚 all these other ways of weathering the storm, if you will,鈥� Lebon said. 鈥淭his gave me the context for the power of resiliency.鈥�
Lebon returned to Missouri and began working at EarthDance Organic Farm School, a 14-acre organic farm school in Ferguson. He said it faced many climatic challenges, like soil erosion, tilled soil getting washed away in water events and gullies forming during big rainstorms.
In response, he and his team implemented a farm-scale water management system 鈥� a type of land management that reestablishes a hydrological cycle, funneling water into the landscape as opposed to letting it run into the storm water system. They also planted fruit trees like pawpaw, a deep taproot native fruit that flowers late and is well-suited to challenging climatic conditions.
He used this knowledge and experience to create his own business. His now seven-year-old urban food forest is host to native fruit trees like the pawpaw as well as the persimmon, jujubes and perennial herbs and shrubs. Lebon advocates for these lesser-known plants by offering tours to the community.
鈥淚f we can get them even a taste, it will immediately light them up usually and get them intrigued to grow it in their own yard,鈥� he said.
And since the founding of Custom Foodscaping, he鈥檚 tried to rely on earlier lessons of diversity and resilience.
鈥淪o one of the recent challenges that a lot of us gardeners have faced is the lack of cold winters,鈥� Lebon said. 鈥淪o a super-cold winter can kill certain pathogens, can prevent certain insects from overwintering, or it can simply significantly reduce the amount of insect eggs that overwinter.鈥�
Overwintering is a term used to describe a type of hibernation insects use to survive the cold. But without cold winters, more insects can survive the harsh conditions. Lebon said he's had issues with flea beetles 鈥� a pest that affects brassica plants like arugula, broccoli or cabbage.
鈥淎rugula is a really important early spring green, and if it鈥檚 super holey, then it is really hard to bring to market,鈥� he said.
But he found a solution.
鈥淚 think that the way that I chose to mitigate that was to grow lettuce,鈥� Lebon said. 鈥淭urns out lettuce has almost no pest or disease issues here in our climate. Which is to say that diversity always wins.鈥�
