Portfolio

Residential

raised beds

Raised beds are a great way to design a 3-D garden space in your yard. Each bed is accessible via pathways and from all sides, so the garden soil is never disturbed. It’s an effective way to grow an abundance of food in a more controlled system. Drip irrigation is often installed in each bed to ensure the soil never dries out. Check out our video about our new ferro-cement raised beds!

Enclosed Gardens

Our team of experienced woodworkers can build custom raised bed gardens designed to keep pests, deer and dogs out of your garden. Each bed is made from local materials and crafted with the goals of the client in mind. We think they look pretty beautiful, too!

residentIal Case study: A DEER-RESISTANT RESPITE

These clients faced major deer interference in their Creve Coeur property. Veggies and fruit trees had no chance! Our solution was to design and build a a beautiful cedar enclosed garden that keeps out critters of all sizes and matches the mid-century aesthetic of our client’s home. The kids love harvesting veggies for dinner!

IN GROUND GARDENS

In ground gardens offer a way to grow food in areas where there is already optimal soil health. We can add mulch, gravel and stone pathways to define the beds and build in drip irrigation lines with timers for easy watering.

homesteads & SMALL FARMS

We love small farms and rural homesteads sites because of the rich possibilities for creating edible abundance, from food forests, to greenhouses, to agroforestry systems that integrate livestock with fruit and nut trees. Our homestead designs prioritize water cycle restoration through the creation of berms, swales and other appropriate earthworking, as well as ecological care with an emphasis on natives and perennials.

Fruit Trees & Berry Patches

One of the greatest pleasures of growing fruit trees and berry patches is the access to incredible fruit that isn’t typically found at the grocery store. We love to connect clients with locally-adapted and native fruit plants that thrive in the St. Louis region yet are hard to find due to a lack of public awareness. We’re here to change that! Cultivated varieties of pawpaws, jujubees, currants, goumis, persimmons - even plums and apples - can thrive with a minimal amount of maintenance and without the use of harmful pesticides. Here’s a look at some of our clients’ delicious harvests!

Restaurants & Corporate Projects

Vicia - A Chef’s garden

As Vicia has been named St. Louis’ best restaurant and one of the top restaurants in the country, this edible landscape is very much a chef’s garden. The foodscape is anchored by unique fruit trees, shrubs and a groundcover of alpine strawberries. A huge diversity of colorful herbs and edible flowers invite the Vicia staff to pick the most unique and fresh ingredients for their world-class menu. Reclaimed St. Louis brick serves as the walkway for Vicia staff to move effortlessly through the space.

Check out Vicia’s Instagram Stories for some behind-the-scenes highlights of our installation.

viciarestaurant.com

THE ROYALE FOOD & SPIRITS

The Royal, an inviting pub in St. Louis’s Tower Grove South neighborhood, is known for its beautiful patio. Vining grapes and a espalier fruit tree add life to the brick setting. A stone installation showcases the abundance of a fig tree ready for harvest.

DOMAINE WINE STORAGE

We worked with the team at Domaine Wine Storage to imagine how the sparse back patio at their St. Louis office could be transformed to an edible paradise for meetings, company parties and entertaining clients who store their fine wine in Domaine’s facilities. We created a custom arbor with Hardy Kiwi shade coverage, constructed grape trellis rows with Norton, Concord and other varieties for sampling, and integrated colorful companion plants like Zinnias, Cosmos and Rainbow chard to create a beautiful setting for enjoying a glass of wine with colleagues and clients.

SONGBIRD

A beloved breakfast and brunch restaurant with a strong community spirit, Songbird wanted a small scale growing space outside its brick and mortar in The Grove. Cedar raised beds set against a sun-soaked brick wall will provide the kitchen staff with a place to grow herbs and flowers.

DELI STAR CORPORATION

Seeking to create a space that supported the health and wellbeing of its employees, Deli Star Corporation in Fayetteville, Illinois has become a model for living out its corporate values through foodscaping. The Employee Garden has helped foster a wellness culture at Deli Star, offering nourishing food for employees as well a space to move, connect with other staff members and get some sunshine. Look for more updates on this project in the spring of 2021!

Schools & Churches

Principia Permaculture orchard, Educational garden

Working closely with the high school science teachers, Custom Foodscaping helped turn this grassy hillside into an explosion of edible plants and native flowers. To manage water on this sloping landscape, contour berms and swales were use to slow water and sink it into the ground. A food forest was planted on the berms with a tremendous diversity of native flowers, herbs and fruit trees, all of which produce in the spring and fall while students are in school. Students K-12 can now utilize the permaculture orchard to make herbal tea, study native pollinators, hold class under the pergola, and harvest loads of fruit.

principiaschool.org

oasis urban farm, A Community Farm and Orchard

In collaboration with Jubilee Community Church, Good Life Growing and The Nature Conservancy, CF designed and installed linear food forests to support this community farm. To kickstart this site’s development, an MSD grant allowed Jubilee to install 150,000 gallon rainwater catchment tank. All the rainwater that falls on the church roof is stored underground and used to irrigate the farm. CF worked with Jubilee and community members to select dozens of fruit trees like pawpaws, jujubes, cherries, serviceberries, and figs. All trees are supported by a myriad of native nitrogen fixing perennials. These natives will aid in attracting pollinators and also employ their deep taproots to break up compaction and supply a perennial source of fertility to the soil.

Kirkwood Early Childhood Center

The KECC garden was designed to encourage movement, engage the senses and create fun foodscape moments for kids. An abundance of berry bushes allow students to take their pick of raspberries, goji berries, bush cherries and more. Hexagon raised beds provide room for kids to stand around the beds and observe as the KECC chef harvests produce for school meals. One of our favorite elements of this design is the “encouragemint” path which features five types of mint the kids can sample. The garden’s sensory-stimulating paths encourage children to walk barefoot on various stones, wood tree cookies, river rock and pine needles as a way to build strength, coordination and confidence.

COMMUNITY CHRISTIaN CHURCH

In this community led project, Community Christian Church worked with CF to design and install their church garden.  CF guided the process of killing off invasive weeds organically, constructing a secure deer fence, and locating a water line.  Once infrastructure was up, CF led community work days to amend the soils and create well defined garden beds. 

Jacob Thorne, Senior Minister had this to say: “Matt was able to guide us in the development of our community garden from start to finish (although we know it’s never really complete). With a blank slate, and high hopes, we went from a patch of dirt to a bountiful garden—all for the purpose of growing and sharing with one another. We are grateful for Custom Foodscaping and look forward to a continued relationship.”

Campus & Community

On Olive

On Olive is a 3+ acre residential development in Grand Center that will include 27 homes and 16 condominiums - and a market-garden style edible landscape as a central community amenity. Custom Foodscaping was recruited by philanthropist Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Steve Trampe of Owen Development to create a food forest as the centerpiece of On Olive. Residents will be able to harvest an abundance of medicinal herbs and berries, organic vegetables, greens, and fruit right outside their doors!

Edible Landscapes

A BACKYARD BOUNTY

This urban food forest features meandering pathways, a rain garden and a myriad of perennial edibles. Fruit trees like pawpaws, figs, hybrid persimmons and Asian pears occupy the top layer of this yard, while multipurpose flowers, herbs, and groundcovers fill in to take advantage of all the sunlight this site has to offer. Each year this food forest will become more and productive while requiring less and less work to maintain.

A woodland foRaging experience

For this partly shady backyard, CF emphasized native shrubs and groundcovers that are commonly foraged in the wild areas of Missouri. The sunnier main corridor of the yard features raised garden beds for incorporating vegetables into this backyard landscape. A live edge bench and trellis invite the homeowners into the landscape while serving as a screen to the carport.

Rainwater Management

ecological rainscaping, rain gardens & water catchment

Water is life. It can also cause many problems if it’s not properly managed. Water belongs in the ground, not in our sewers or basements. Through ecological water management techniques, water can be captured for irrigation use during dry times, guided through rain gardens and swales, and generally be allowed to seep back into the Earth where it can do what it does best.

Greenhouses

Season Extension for your farm or Garden

A greenhouse or high tunnel has so many benefits! With some supplemental heat you can use these structures to raise seedlings and grow an abundance of greens and root crops throughout the winter. When the heat moves in, roll up the sides and watch heat-loving crops perform beautifully all summer long.