Anna Monaldi knows well what we have suspected all along: the gardens of our parents’ generation – tidy flower beds full of roses, lavender, lupins and foxglove, known as horticultural plantings, surrounded by manicured lawns – are not sustainable. And she is doing something about it.
“There is movement away from controlled beds full of foreign species to native or pollinator gardens (habitat gardens) bursting with indigenous varieties of flowers and ornamental grasses; this new attitude reflects a paradigm shift,” says Anna. “On the ground, though, and in practical terms it’s an incremental shift, a slow process which starts with committing to the change at home and choosing plants wisely.” She points out that societally we value healthy ecosystems and so “logically we should embrace a garden with a wild aesthetic – one created with intention.”
Since 2020 when Anna started her own landscape design business, Anna Monaldi Designs, she’s been transforming Leaside, one garden at a time.
Born and raised in South Leaside, Anna studied physics at Dalhousie University. “My summer jobs during university were with landscape and gardening companies that serviced Leaside.” Those hands-on jobs were part of the reason she decided to swerve from the applied sciences and an engineering career to horticulture. After Dalhousie, she enrolled at Ryerson (now TMU) in their landscape design program.
An epiphany
At 21 she had an epiphany. It wasn’t just her summer jobs that nudged her in the right direction. “Growing up, I camped at Algonquin Park with my family and spent many summers in a rural village in the mountains of central Italy with grandparents; from a young age I learned to love nature,” she says.
Anna is encouraged by the native plantings she now sees during her Leaside walks. She is also emboldened by the number of clients asking her to convert their gardens, filling them with rudbeckia, echinacea, Canada goldenrod and bottlebrush grass. “I have noticed that people have good intentions and start their habitat gardens only to give up because they find the design and maintenance to be hard work,” she confides. For this reason, she offers DIY garden guides on her website, many of which cost under $20. She is also happy to work with clients who would rather leave the digging to her.
She has recently teamed up with another young Leaside entrepreneur, Jason Hopkins, who specializes in landscape construction. His company, Resilient Earthscapes, complements well with Anna Monaldi Designs.
Anna’s career about-face even found international recognition. She explains that “during Covid lockdown I listened to the Wall Street Journal podcasts; one episode asked listeners to write in about their changing jobs during Covid, so I did.” Her story made the front page under the heading “Burned Out and Restless From the Pandemic, Women Redefine Their Career Ambitions.”
Using clear-eyed logic, Anna makes a strong case for creating native or pollinator gardens. “The benefits of habitat gardens are numerous,” she says. “They provide food and shelter for keystone species, helping to support healthy ecosystems. In simple terms, much of the food we eat depends on insects that pollinate plants – and those insects rely on native and pollinator plants to survive. Beyond their ecological function, these gardens are also beautiful and can create a sense of calm and connection to nature.”
Change is never easy; no one knows better than Anna. But she encourages all of us to be patient with our pollinators. And she is always happy to share her expertise in creating beautiful habitat gardens.
For more information: https://www.annamonaldidesigns.com/
