Beacon Refugia

Beacon Refugia

104 gardens and counting! That is how many garden's we have built in the 12508n zip code as part of our focused Beacon Refugia project Cumulatively 42 acres (and growing), all paid for by our wonderful environmentalist clients!

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Creating the Right Environment to Grow Backyard Vegetables

There is a saying in the permaculture world: “Create the conditions for x to happen.” Create those conditions and x will thrive.

So in creating the conditions for backyard vegetables to happen, part of it is simply getting the plants. In this blog post, I’m going to discuss a few ways for you to get good-quality plants to grow in your garden, including starting your own from seeds.

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Lakeside Retreat in the Hudson Highlands

Tucked away at the end of a forest road in New York’s Putnam Valley sits Indian Lake. A resident living alongside the ancient glacially-formed lake invited One Nature to improve their property.

The purpose of our invitation was to help our client hide some less-appealing, but important concrete walls, open the space and enhance the soft-scaping. We did this by demolishing a section of the standing wall, building a curved stone retaining wall, and incorporating a custom wooden panel fence into a new freestanding border wall along the northern property line. In addition, a line of five Maple trees were added along the border, and several small plantings filled in the hardscaping.

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Stairway to (Aqueous) Heaven

Stairway to (Aqueous) Heaven

As temperatures begin to rise in spring and into summer so too do our desires to seek water and cool off. From embedded mountain lakes to boardwalk-dotted marshes, each town in the Hudson Valley has its own hydrous haven nearby. If you’ve ever spent time in the New Paltz or Kingston area at the base of the Catskills you may be familiar with one or more of the many rivers, creeks, lakes and waterfalls located there. Historically, the area was a key component of the Delaware and Hudson Canal in the 1800s and provides drinking water to NYC some 100 miles to the south today. While folks in the city get to drink the water, those of us a short distance up north get to play in it - and that is exactly what one of our clients intended to do!

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Tips for Growing Fruit Trees in the Hudson Valley

Tips for Growing Fruit Trees in the Hudson Valley

If you’re going to plant a tree, why not plant one that feeds us and feeds the beneficial insects? Who doesn’t want backyard grown peaches, apples, pears, plums, and cherries?

Growing fruit trees is an awesome idea. Do it. But you must be prepared to put some time in with your trees. Fruit trees are not “plant and walk away” plants, at least not in the Eastern United States. If you do that and expect yields of unblemished fruit you’ll be disappointed. But if you do a few things to help your trees along, they can be deliciously rewarding.

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Historic Trail Restoration in the Taconics

Historic Trail Restoration in the Taconics

In the spring of 2019, One Nature was contracted by a couple in Putnam Valley to design and construct a trail which would connect a secondary driveway on the property through the woods to their beautiful lakeside property. As trail enthusiasts, the homeowners hoped to maintain the history of the land which once hosted some of the earliest renditions of the Appalachian Trail some decades ago (see image below). It was also in the clients’ interests to construct this trail for their family, for the future generations who would follow this path alongside a tranquil creek into the heart of the woods -- a haven for exploration and imagination.

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Elevated Forest and Edible Landscape

Elevated Forest and Edible Landscape

At a busy corner in Newburgh you can see a striking cedar fence, with young trees growing alongside it. If you look closer, you can see that the fence actually weaves in front and behind the peaks of a large earthen berm, which is dotted with plants and elevates the garden above the sloping streetside. Beyond the fence you can see the fruits of native shrubs such as blueberries and blackberries, while vegetables grow alongside in raised agricultural beds. The fence, the trees, the berms, and the edible plant life are all part of a solution, a solution to the noisiness and visual clutter that crops up in urban environments.

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Mianus River: Woodland Trail and Fishing Access Platform

Mianus River: Woodland Trail and Fishing Access Platform

The newly completed woodland trail and fishing access point are the latest installation in a five year project at Mianus River Park, CT. Following recommendations from the Mianus River Park Ecological Master Plan which we developed in 2013, our team set out to design a better entrance to the park that would enhance the user experience while protecting the local environment. In the past, high visitation rates and excessive foot traffic have caused ongoing shoreline erosion, sedimentation of the riverbanks, and loss of understory vegetation.

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Restoration Master Plan for Cummings Pond

Restoration Master Plan for Cummings Pond

In Stamford, Connecticut, community members and local environmental stakeholders expressed concerns over the degradation and pollution of Cummings Pond, which has been altered over recent decades by urban development and sediment deposition. In response, our team has provided research-driven consultation and ecologically-principled recommendations that take into account the larger context of the pond.

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Propagating Plants for NYDEC

Propagating Plants for NYDEC

New York City spends billions of dollars to protect its drinking water system, arguably the City's largest capital asset. Since 2016, One Nature has propagated plants for riparian stream corridor restoration project in the New York City's West-of-Hudson Reservoir system. These plants, grown with no chemical herbicides or pesticides, are critical to ensuring that the forests around the reservoirs are healthy enough to filter pollutants from the drinking water. Seeds are collected from the Catskill Mountains, started by our partners at the NYC Greenbelt Center in Staten Island, and grown-to-size in our plant nursery. At least 5,000 trees are delivered each fall to partner Soil and Water Conservation districts for installation.

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Main Street Pop-Up Park

Main Street Pop-Up Park

In 2014, One Nature partnered with Green Teen volunteers to transform a vacant lot in Beacon, NY into a temporary pop-up park. All across the world, real estate speculation causes land in dense urban areas to lay vacant, sometimes for decades. This project creates a temporary landscape so that the land can be ecologically and socially productive until such time that development occurs.

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