Zachary Berger gains rare land care certification status
This past summer I completed the intensive organic land care course offered at the University of Southern Maine and earned accreditation through NOFA- the Northeast Organic Farming Association. This is a very exciting milestone for me, a culmination of over twenty-five years of land care and design starting as a teenager working my family’s organic garden. The NOFA course provided an abundance of new knowledge of soil, fungi, bacteria and plants as well as a means of refreshing many of the principles I studied back in college.
What does organic land care mean? It is a sustainable ecological landscaping system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. Soils are alive!! And this is why no synthetic pesticides or synthetic fertilizers are used in organic land care practices. Sustainable landscape design begins with a thorough understanding of a site’s soil and plant relationships and the ideal approaches to enhancing and preserving these relationships in ways that are practical, compatible and aesthetically-pleasing. The primary goals of organic land care are:
- Maintenance of soil health;
- Elimination of the use of synthetic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers;
- Increase in landscape diversity;
- Improvement of the health and well being of the people and web of life in our care.
