Our Services
Lawn to Meadow Conversion
We transform high maintenance grass lawns into Low Maintenance Native Perennial Meadows, potentially for free.. A program with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (D.C.N.R) of Pennsylvania offering land stewards with at least ¼ acre or more of lawn to a free conversion into a Native Perennial Meadow and or Upland Forest/Food forest, if the yard meets all qualifications. Ecotopian Earthcare is an approved contractor for the PA DCNR.
Why have your lawn converted into a Native perennial Meadow?
1. Lawns with turf grass are water-intensive, covering over 2 million acres in Pennsylvania and contributing to environmental issues.
2. Meadows, with the right native species, require no watering, minimal mowing, and offer ecological benefits, such as preventing flooding and supporting diverse wildlife habitats.
3. Turf lawns contribute to pollution through noise, fossil fuel use, synthetic fertilizers, and toxic herbicides, impacting water quality during storms.
4. Meadows, mowed only once a year, are chemical-free, sequester carbon, and fertilize themselves with nitrogen-fixing species.
5. Lawns, with shallow root systems, contribute to flooding, while meadows, with deep roots, help absorb more water and prevent erosion.
6. Turf lawns lack biodiversity, creating ecological dead zones harmful to pollinators.
7. Meadows provide quality habitat for beneficial insects, bees, butterflies, and birds, offering a diverse range of blooming cycles and winter bird feeding opportunities.
8. Choosing meadows over lawns contributes to restoring habitats that have been largely replaced by monocrop GMO fields.
Ecological and Edible Landscaping with Native Plants
Including - Rain Gardens, Pollinator Gardens, Riparian Buffers, Food Forests, Medicine Gardens.*Landscaping can be ornamental and still have a function for our ecosystem by incorporating Native Plants in an ecological design.
*Native Plants are required to host many beautiful butterflies, moths and beneficial insects to your site. There is a Native plant alternative in structural look to every typical ornamental foreign plant from the nursery trade that provides little to no help for our ecosystem and oftentimes becomes invasive expanding and taking over wildlife habitats.
*We give free estimates at an in person site visit where we can measure your ideal planting spots along with taking any preferences you may have on native plant species and placement. Our designs range from 5 to 10 cents per square foot. Which will include a printed design for the site caretaker.
*Additional services to the design can be accompanied by our supply of Native Plants from our local Nursery, and our team of landscapers can be hired to plant the design and maintain the planting for the first year or more.
Pollinator Garden
Host a small space on your land from 100 to 1,000 Square ft. for a variety of Native Perennial Wildflowers that bloom 3 seasons of color and 4 season habitat for birds, butterflies, bees, and beneficial insects
We grow all of our Wildflower plugs by seed ourselves that we collected the previous year. With around 40 different flower species to choose from, we group together at least 12 different species that compliment one another in habitat preference, growth habit, bloom time, and color.
Specialized Types of Ecological Landscaping
2. Food Forests/Permaculture Design
Permaculture Design and techniques study the patterns in Nature’s blueprint and scale it down to match the planting site. By arranging the edible perennial agriculture in such a way with the land, Permaculture design allows for harmonious bio-diversity between plants by way of companion planting with multiple layers that symbiotically create a self nurturing ecosystem while providing more food per sq.ft. and less work for the gardner than an annual garden or typical agricultural farm
3. Rain Gardens
A Rain Garden is a planted depression that soaks up rainwater runoff from roofs, driveways, walkways, and compacted lawn areas - water that would otherwise carry pollutants directly to our streams. A Rain Garden planted with Native Perennial Wildflowers, shrubs, and small trees can soak up to 30 percent or more water than an equivalent patch of lawn and provide beautiful and ecological habitat for pollinators and birds.
Have a flooded area on your land where water tends to sit making it hard to cut the grass? A well constructed Rain Garden can be the answer to soak up this stagnant puddling water and also contain and redirect it from flooding your basement or your neighbors. As a bonus to helping with flood issues, a rain garden planted with Native Perennial Wildflowers doubles as a Pollinator Garden bringing beautiful 3 season color and 4 season habitat for birds, butterflies, bees, and beneficial insects to a place in your yard that was otherwise unutilized and hard to maintain.
4. Riparian Buffers
Are 15 to 35 ft wide corridors of Native plant vegetation along creeks and rivers that provide a variety of benefits to water quality and our communities.
Why have a Riparian Buffer?
Riparian buffers in urban areas serve multiple purposes, including filtering pollutants and regulating runoff, creating wildlife habitats, cooling streams for aquatic species, preventing erosion, boosting property values, reducing flooding, offering recreational spaces, supporting local economies, fostering edible and medicinal plant growth, sequestering carbon, and enhancing water purification through beneficial bacteria and fungi.
5. Medicine Garden
Our herbalist JennaRose offers her knowledge to you and your land by helping you create a medicine garden that suits your needs. With a selection of annual medicinal plants like Ashwagandha, Tulsi, Calendula, etc. suited for an elegant space saving herb spiral bed, and/or a selection of Native perennial medicine plants like Echinacea, Blue Vervain, Wild Rose, etc. suited to be planted directly into your sites original soil whether along borders, in wet areas, or mass plantings dependent on upon what your landscape naturally has to offer for an ecological design. When it comes to harvest time, JennaRose also offers a service of processing and alchemizing the herb, root, or fruit into medicine for your needs through WildRose Herbal Apothecary. Please contact us for Medicine Garden services before April 1st.
This is a call to Action. As EarthCare Stewards we see the everyday importance of deep connections within an Ecosystem. Hand in hand we see the importance of a deeper Connection within our Local Community. With Altoona Area's infrastructure being almost solely focused on Automobiles getting from point A to point B, our connection with people and nature has suffered. Of course vehicles have their substantial role in hauling heavy loads and traveling great distances, but when over utilized they block us from having healthy interactions with people in our community, the waterways, the trees, birds and bees, and the fresh oxygen we like to breathe.
With the development of GreenWays Trail system through Blair County, an alternate way of commuting through town can exist. Navigating the trails along waterways, secondary alley ways, and designated bike lanes supports the potential to get a cyclist and especially those on an E-Bike to the destination just as quickly as a car can. And for those that like to stop and smell the Roses, Edible Forest Parks/Community Gardens can be grounded in every neighborhood as hubs for the GreenWays. To help Ecology and Economy compliment one another, we would also like to direct the GreenWays through local businesses, promoting an alternative commerce experience to the busy vehicle strip of franchised big box stores. From the personal benefits of nurturing physical and mental health, to the local economic benefits of attracting cycling tourism as a desirable hub for the National 9/11 trail that connects Pittsburgh with New York City, making Altoona Area a bikeable and walkable place has so many benefits.
Connecting our community together by an alternative nature based way to commute through Altoona Area.
“Greenways are corridors of open space that can connect people, parks, natural areas and community Gardens, scenic cultural historic and recreational sites, networking through urban, suburban, and rural communities. They vary greatly in scale, from narrow ribbons of green to wide corridors encompassing unique landscapes. DCNR’s Bureau of Recreation and Conservation and its many partners are developing an outstanding network of greenways across the state, creating an asset that is highly valued by Pennsylvanians and enhancing the quality of life for all. Greenways are becoming one of the commonwealth’s most powerful tools to achieve sustainable growth and livable communities.D.C.N.R’s Community Conservation Partnership Program Grants can assist in planning, building and maintaining greenways.” - Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
GreenWay Trail System
Also known as an Edible Park is a beautiful place where people come together to collaboratively grow low maintenance perennial food using a design that mimics a young forest ecosystem.
The communities of plants or (perennial guilds) in a Food Forest are intentionally placed together to optimize space, nutrient exchange, pollination, productivity, and biodiversity. The Edible forest park is designed with patches of Perennial Guilds that have multiple layers - The Canopy or Woodland layer nut species like (Northern Pecan, Chestnut, Cultivar Walnut) The medium sized tree or Sub-Woodland layer - Persimmons, Red Mulberry. The low tree or thicket layer like (PawPaw, Native Plum, Hazelnut, Serviceberry) - The low shrub or sub thicket layer like (Elderberry, Blue Berry, Black Raspberries) - The herbaceous layer of edible perennial leafy greens - (Ohio Spiderwort, Cutleaf Coneflower) The Rhizosphere (Roots) - (Sunchokes, Wild Potato Vine, Ground Nut, etc.) Ground Cover - (Strawberries, Dewberries.) Vines like (Passion Fruit, Riverbank Grape.). These patches of layered plant communities are agriculture in 3D teamed up to compliment one another in symbiotic relation; in other words, the plant guilds are set up to work as a team. The way for this Edible Forest to become a ‘Park’ or blended in with an already established park, is to create a network of pathways that guides people through the Plant Guilds. This creates the opportunity for people to reconnect directly to an abundant and bio diverse ecosystem full of food and medicine, to regain a healthy attachment to Creation.
Community Food Forest
Replacing Invasive plants with low ecological function from a site with Native Plants that will play a vital role in the ecosystem. Invasive plants are foreign plants that were brought across seas to be sold in Plant Nurseries. These plants have entered our Woodlands, fields, forest edges, road sides, and river buffers by birds, wind, or people dumping them. The major issue with some of these foreign nursery plants is that they are extremely aggressive and out-compete our native plants' in their own habitat. Why is this a problem? Well, foreign plants tend to be unrecognizable to our native butterfly and moth population and most of our native bees and other insects. Some butterflies and Moths are so particular that they will only lay their eggs on one type of Native plant. For example, the Endangered Zebra SwallowTail Butterfly will only host on the PawPaw tree, and the Endangered Monarch Butterfly will only host on Milkweed; no other plant in the world can host these butterflies. This Affects butterflies and moths and it trickles down the food chain as 95% of Birds rely on caterpillars to feed their babies. We have lost 2.9 billion birds 29% since 1970 and more than 40% of our insect species. Let’s not let that trend continue.
Invasive Plant Removal
The longevity and beauty of a Living Willow Fence surpasses that of one made from dead material.Willow's super power is that a cutting of any size of its branch will attempt to root when planted in or near the soil. Willow branches can easily be harvested without killing the plant because once the branches are pruned, new growth will grow out 10x fold and grow 4-12 ft in one year!!! This technique is called Coppicing or pollarding! We will begin with an example Willow fence in our yard and a public space in the community late winter of 2024 as this is the time to harvest cuttings of willow branches. After honing our skills with the fence we will offer our services to plant and structurally take care of them in January/February of 2025. The new growth from the top of the willow fence can easily be pruned back. If you would like to harvest the new growth for structural material, like basket weaving, simply wait until the winter to prune/harvest. Willows leaves that would grow out of the fence are edible to Horses, Cows, Deer, etc. Willows fences sequester carbon. Willow roots soak up and filter toxins like heavy metals, chemicals, feces out of water/soil and are great for stream bank stability preventing erosion.
Living Willow Fence
“To rewild & restore our sense of Self, we need to remove & compost the handed down habits, beliefs & stories that become like concrete & weedkillers to our soul.”
— Bridgit Anna McNeill