🌿 How do I get started? 🌿
Whether you live in an apartment with a balcony, tend a small backyard or have more land to work with, this is where we share what we’ve tried ourselves – from beds and container plants to living soil, wild herbs and simple pantry projects. It’s a practical starting point for permaculture and homesteading that can fit into real life.
For anyone who wants to move towards permaculture and homesteading with head, heart and hands – slowly, imperfectly and with real meaning.
A New Clipart Library for My Content
I’ve discovered CraftNest as a large clipart and design library that I plan to use for future blog posts, recipes,
Haunting Season on the Island
A personal take on Halloween on Cape Breton: why the island glows by September, how events and shared venues connect
Bittersweet Nightshade: identify and act
Bittersweet Nightshade is poisonous but ecologically active: it can feed pollinating bees via buzz pollination, add cover/structure, and provide bird
🌿 Who’s behind AlpineRoots MapleBranches🌿
We’re Tanja and Gernot. We’re trying to figure out what a good life looks like when you take soil, water, climate and the people around you into account. Instead of forcing land into a shape, we try to work with what is already there – slope, rain, wind, existing plants and the story of a place.
Permaculture and homesteading are the tools we use to build systems step by step that are meant to last over the long term.
On this blog we share what we learn along the way – from small everyday tweaks to larger projects, detours included.
Our aim is to give you a clear picture of how we work and help you make more informed decisions for your own situation.
🌿Soil health – where everything starts🌿
Before beds, containers or fruit trees can really thrive, the soil has to work. Structure, aeration and soil life determine how well water is stored, how nutrients become available and how resilient plants are throughout the season.
Over the years we’ve focused on reading soils, improving them gently and keeping them alive in the long term. In our articles you’ll find basic principles, practical examples and lessons from our own site – meant to be useful, not polished.
🌿 Identify, use, and understand plants.🌿
Our plant profiles go beyond traditional herb books. You’ll find clear ID features, habitat information and notes on properties – plus simple ideas for food, storage and everyday use.
Whether it’s a wild herb, shrub or tree, the focus is on three things: recognising plants safely, using them in a meaningful way and understanding their place in the ecosystem. Many profiles are complemented by recipes, personal notes and practical tips from our own experience.
Over time this helps you build practical plant knowledge you can actually use.
🌿 Support our work 🌿
This blog is created by hand – no ads, no sponsored content. If our articles are useful to you, there are several ways you can support what we do.
You can help us grow by sharing our posts, commenting, and telling others about AlpineRoots MapleBranches. Every interaction and bit of feedback helps us improve our content and focus on the topics that matter most to you.
If you’d like, you can also support us financially: with a one-time donation, a monthly membership, or through our long-term projects on bras-dor.com. This gives us the stability to keep working on soil health, plant knowledge, and practical, real-life content.
🌿 Our passion project: Bras d’Or – touch wood 🌿
Bras d’Or – touch wood is our long-term project on the coast of Cape Breton Island. On a previously depleted site we’re planning a diverse mix of fruit trees, native shrubs and habitat strips that combine yield, biodiversity and soil protection.
This is where we put much of what we write about on the blog into practice: slowing water down, building soil, choosing species that fit the site and creating structures that are meant to work over decades – for people as well as for wildlife.
Step by step, Bras d’Or is intended to become a place that shows how productive use, landscape care and respect for a piece of land can go hand in hand.
🌿 Stay in touch 🌿
Want to follow along a bit more closely?
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If you’d like updates about new articles, seasonal topics and occasional offers around our projects, feel free to subscribe to the newsletter. It goes out only when there’s something worth sharing – no daily emails.