Urban Eatin’ is proud to be comprised of a diverse array of passions, skills, and experience. We fully embrace each member’s drive to pursue their individual gardening loves, and madly enjoy watching the business grow into a complex web of such unique people’s horticultural personalities.
Urban Eatin’ Awards:
- Elwick Community Garden Project (2011)
- Boys & Girls club (Mentorship program – 2009/2010)
Paolo
Paolo grew up running around his grandfather’s grain farm and his grandmother’s veggie patch. He is fascinated by the immense activity that goes on under our feet, in the soil. He’s an experienced gardener and loves to design and build all sorts of eco-friendly, garden accessories including cold-frames and compost bins.
Awards:
- Certificate of Recognition at Youth Ecoaction Program
Certificate/Training:
- Soil Food Web Workshop
- Build-A-Business Program – SEED Winnipeg
Favourite Plant: eastern white cedar (thuja occidentalis)
Strongest Skills: garden design as well as construction of elements such as compost bins, cold frames and trellises.
Naomi
Naomi grew up eating peas till her belly hurt in her grandparents’ large vegetable garden in Calgary. She started landscaping after high school and couldn’t stop. (Nothing beats working outdoors in the summer). It was after 3 seasons of landscaping, that she was certified as a landscape technician in Vancouver. After spending two seasons working at Assiniboine Park Conservatory in the English Garden, she started romancing the idea of starting her own endeavour. Remembering how she loved her grandparents’ garden and the rising concerns of where our food comes from and what our food actually is spurred the idea of having her new direction be food-based. She met with a small group of folk who could relate to the garden in the same way as she, and Urban Eatin’ was then created with the collective thoughts of the founding members.
Awards:
- Certificate of Recognition at Youth Ecoaction Program
Certificate/Training:
- Master Gardeners (Current student)
- Residential Landscape Technician (Burnaby BC)
- Forest Garden Permaculture Design (Ness Creek Saskatchewan)
- Build-A-Business Program – SEED Winnipeg
Favourite Plant: Sequoiadendron giganteum
Favourite Scented Plant: Hamamelis virginiana
Favourite Vegetable: Fresh Peas in a Pod
Tommy
Tommy is currently pursuing an Environmental Design degree at University of Manitoba. He has many interests ranging from nature, permaculture and sustainability to art and spirituality. He does work as a freelance designer, but enjoys spending his summers outdoors helping establish a healthier relationship with our land, plants and food. He has worked as a gardener at the St. Norbert Arts Centre, and has taken several permaculture, composting and natural building workshops, including an apprenticeship at The Farm in Tennessee.
Certificate/Training:
- Environmental Design at University of Mantioba (Current Student)
- 5-week Apprenticeship at The Farm (Tenessee), mainly focussing on Permaculture, Natural Building, and Composting
- Mid-to-large Scale Composting course through Resource Conservation Manitoba (now Green Action Centre)
Favourite Plant: Mullein
Least Favourite Plant: Kentucky Bluegrass
Strongest Gardening Skill: Eating
Mark
Mark’s love for gardening first developed, complicatedly enough, while living in a basement apartment in downtown Winnipeg. Inspired and endlessly interested in plants as medicines for the body and mind, their historic and shamanistic uses, and the effect that their presence in his home could have on the spirit, he dove headfirst into a world of fluorescents and high-intensity discharge bulbs. Mark believes whole-heartedly in the enrichment of one’s living environment through the presence of plants, and that every surface, nook, or cranny in the home can become a growing space.
Certificate/Training:
- Master Gardeners (Current student)
- Worked several years at Sage Garden Herbs
Favourite Plant for indoors: Piper Nigrum (black peppercorn)
Strongest Skills: Blinking & Teaching Workshops
