Laureen Rama

Owner

My lifelong passion is beautifying landscapes in ways that enhance the natural environment. I have been landscaping most of my life, from helping my parent’s landscape yards as a child, in towns across Western Canada, to beautifying landscapes as an adult. Traveling and living in different landscapes around the world and North America has inspired my designs.

I love flowers, especially designing landscapes with hardy, perennial flowers to provide colour and joy all growing season long. I also love delighting my clients with landscape designs that go beyond their desires and bring them more than they imagined. This involves listening, intuition and sharing ideas.

I’ve taken courses, read lots of books and magazines, visited and spoken to gardeners whenever and wherever I can, and experimented with what works and what doesn’t in many different kinds of yards.

I have worked as an international development educator, public involvement consultant, management consultant specializing in creativity, and as a shamanic healer and teacher.

I work with a crew and sub-contractors who love the earth and beauty and pleasing clients too!

Kaleigh Schmidt

Designer and Supervisor 

Kaleigh Schmidt is a Landscape Designer, graduated from Fanshawe College in Ontario through the ‘Landscape Design’ degree program. Passionate about bringing nature into the yards of many she continued her education, getting certified through The Living Centre in Permaculture Design, Forest Gardening, Food Foresting, as well as ‘Shamanu’ an earth wisdom mentorship.

Kaleigh learned about the succession of an ecosystem as well as the significance of soil building practices for optimum garden health. She is dedicated to regenerative designing and has always been infatuated with nature and plants, with growing curiosity and wonderment. She is knowledgeable about the many roles of different plants and their importance within the larger ecosystems of our planet as well as the smaller eco-systems of our lives and bodies. She hopes to copy nature’s intelligence within her designing process.

This has inspired her to create an ebook ‘Urban Nature’, as well as traveling to volunteer on permaculture farms located in Spain and California. Being immersed in the landscaping industry since 2013 she is happy to contribute her skills and knowledge as a team member of Eco-Yards.

Logan Gibbs

Supervisor

Logan comes to Eco-yards with 6 years of landscape experience. The majority of his work has been hardscape projects (paver bricks, retaining walls) and a variety of whole yard builds with hardscape and softscape (plantings, dry rivers) features. Logan also has many years experience working on ice roads in Northern Canada and ski hills in Western Canada.

After spending a season learning permaculture (eco-friendly) landscaping in 2018, he went on to work 9 months at an industrial compost and humanure facility. The contrast between eco-friendly, sustainable landscaping and industrial composting clarified for him that the healthiest and most earth-friendly way to make a difference in the world was through building ecological landscapes that nurture the soil, plants, animals and people.

Logan also has a passion for holistic health and appreciates the systems thinking approach that ecological landscaping provides. 2020 is Logan’s first year with Eco-yards and he is excited to be part of the team.

 LANE SHORDEE

Lead Hand/ Landscaper

Emily Brooks

Landscaper

Emily was born in Calgary, but grew up in small town Saskatchewan. She will be completing her Bachelor of Arts degree in Sustainability and Sociology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in April 2020. Through her education, she has been able to focus on a variety of sustainability issues, and gain a passion for sustainable community building, social justice, and environmental conservation.

For two summers, Emily worked in the forests of Northern Saskatchewan as an environmental field tech collecting data for a Boreal Caribou habitat restoration project.

Emily has always loved nature, wild plants, and being outside, and grew up with a family who are passionate about gardening and the outdoors. She spent most of her summers digging in her grandmothers’ gardens and helping family members with small gardening and landscaping jobs (paver patios, retaining walls). Emily is excited to move back west and start gaining hands-on experience doing sustainable landscaping with Eco-yards.

Our Process is beautiful and sustainable too!

Every morning our crews circle up and set the intention to work harmoniously, lovingly, safely, efficiently, all while creating beauty. And they do! They work with joy and respect for each other and our clients. Our clients often say that as much as they love what we have done, they love the energy our crews bring to their home just as much.

We work to avoid using techniques that are harmful to the environment. This is what makes us stand out from other landscaping companies in the city. Here are some of our techniques:

• When we remove sod we take it for composting.
• Cover-over lawns with newspaper rather than hauling sod to the landfill.
• We usually use shovel, pick axe and wheelbarrow rather than bobcats.
• Minimize driving.
• Use materials that are local and organic.