Forget the traditional flower bed; 2026 is the year of the “nourishment garden.” As the BC Home + Garden Show prepares to take over BC Place from March 12-15, we’re sitting down with one of the most buzzed-about local green thumbs, Carissa Kasper. As the founder of Seed & Nourish, the Vancouver-based entrepreneur has made it her mission to prove that you don’t need a sprawling backyard to cultivate a meaningful connection with nature—you just need a plan.
Whether she’s designing bespoke rooftop vegetable patches or teaching the ancient art of fermentation to make your harvest last through the winter, Carissa’s approach to ecological landscaping is as practical as it is beautiful. We caught up with her to talk garden design, year-round crops, and how to pick the perfect plants for your unique urban microclimate. —Noa Nichol
You’ve previously teamed up with professional chefs to create “garden-to-table” presentations. If you were designing a “Signature Dish” garden for a beginner, which three “must-have” crops would you include for maximum flavor with minimum effort?
My absolute favourite dish to make in summer is tomato confit, which is slow roasted cherry tomatoes, garlic, and basil. It’s delicious to spoon onto sourdough with burrata, as a topping for sablefish, or makes a perfect pairing with pasta. It keeps in the fridge for up to a month, so every time I pick a large harvest of tomatoes, into the oven they go.
The best part about tomato confit is as easy as it is to make, the ingredients are to grow. Cherry tomatoes are generally more forgiving than romas or beefsteak and mature quicker and yield more. They come in all types so every gardener can find the right variety for their situation, from compact Tiny Tims for the balcony grower to bush varieties like Principe Borghese which grow to a fixed height or Sungold, the sweetest vine tomatoes of all, for backyard growers who can provide trellis supports.
Tomatoes and basil are natural companions in the garden, and when you plant basil at the feet of tomatoes, it increases the essential oil of both crops for maximum flavour, as well as helps conserve moisture and reduce weeds by shading tomato’s roots.
Garlic is also an easy crop to grow requiring minimal maintenance. The key is to plant it in the fall as it requires overwintering.
You believe that with “constraint comes creativity” when gardening in small urban spaces. What is the wildest or most surprising place in Vancouver you’ve helped someone transform into a thriving edible landscape?
I think gardening on rooftops and balconies always comes with surprises, from the logistics of getting soil and plants up from a busy city street through a building, to the interesting ecosystem that is found on a rooftop, there is always something to learn.
One of the most unique experiences we’ve encountered was our first season working with the Fairmont Waterfront pollinator potager. A family of crows decided to nest in one of the bay trees and proceeded to dive bomb anyone who entered the garden. We quickly had to learn how to befriend crows – they remember faces and can hold friendships or grudges towards humans for years. Luckily, we gained their acceptance and they allowed us to work peacefully alongside them until their baby flew from the nest.
You are known for your “garden to glass” cocktail and mocktail recipes using herb-infused simple syrups. What is your go-to botanical garnish that always makes a drink look—and taste—like an “Everyday Luxury”?
One of my favourite simple syrups to work with is rosemary. It provides an aromatic complexity that works well with citrus in a drink like the paloma or with the herbal complexities of gin. As such, a sprig of rosemary as a garnish signifies this is a ‘garden-to-glass’ cocktail, provides a simple elegance, and can add to the imbibing experience with fragrance.
Speaking of the Fairmont Waterfront, I’ve even seen them light a rosemary garnish on fire to intensify this aroma further in their Waterfront Gin & Tonic at their rooftop garden series which highlights the food we grow in the pollinator potager.
Many people think gardening ends in September, but you advocate for gardens that last all year long. What is the “holy grail” winter vegetable that every Vancouverite should be harvesting from their beds right now in February?
Maybe it is a Vancouver cliche, but kale in the garden is the gift that keeps on giving. You plant it once in the spring and it provides continuous leaves through spring, summer, fall and winter, and then – the pièce-de-resistance – come early spring it begins to grow little shoots which resemble and taste like small broccolini. If left on the stem, those shoots eventually flower and provide much-needed nourishment for early season pollinators.
You’ve shared a tactile “second knuckle” finger test for watering plants. What is another “secret” sensory tip you use to tell if a garden is truly happy and nourished?
I think the more we engage all five senses in the garden, the more we become present in the garden, which nourishes both us and the garden. One way to do this is as we enter the garden, to spend a moment naming five things we can smell, hear, touch, taste and see. This will bring us into the moment, then it’s amazing how quickly we will start to observe both the micro and macro level of life in the garden, which gives us information all the time.
For your bespoke seasonal containers, do you follow the traditional “thriller, filler, spiller” rule, or is there a “Seed & Nourish” secret formula for making a pot look magazine-ready?
Like the food gardens I design, I believe seasonal containers should also reflect the taste and the environment to which they belong. A penthouse rooftop in Coal Harbour should have a very different look and feel than a backyard garden in Edgemont, and feel unique to the person. We want them to feel like the distilled essence of the season and space.
Instead of drawing inspiration from the garden centre as a first stop, spend a moment drawing inspiration from the palette your home and landscape provides. If you know what colours you would like to utilize and whether you would like more of a refined planting or a wild one, that will guide your creation.
You talk about attracting “beneficial insects” like parasitoid wasps and ladybugs rather than using pesticides. Which flower is the ultimate “welcome mat” for these tiny garden guardians?
Umbelliforous flowers, which are clusters of small nectar-rich flowers in an upside-down umbrella shape (think dill!), are the best attractants for beneficial insects. Along with dill, allowing cilantro to flower, or planting ammi or yarrow in and amongst your garden will provide natural pest protection. While not an umbellifer, I also love incorporating alyssum at the edges of raised beds to spill over with its abundance of tiny white flowers to soften edges and feed beneficials.
Beyond canning, you are an expert in fermentation. What is the most unusual garden crop you’ve ever successfully fermented, and was it a “total win” or a “learning experience”?
While I wouldn’t call myself a fermentation expert, I do happen to know a very talented chef! Chef Harris Sakalis, Executive Chef of Fairmont Waterfront, who I’m appearing with at the BC Home & Garden Show Cooking Stage on March 12th for a garden-to-table demo, has taught me the potential of fermentation with peppers to create hot sauce.
Chef Harris takes thin-fleshed peppers like the scotch bonnets and habaneros we grow in the rooftop garden and ferments them along with onion and garlic. He’s shared that the fermentation process creates more depth in flavour and with the ingredients combined for longer, a certain type of alchemy is achieved. This provides the basis for the best chicken wings you will ever have (I swear!) soon available at ARC restaurant and bar.
You’ve described the garden as a “medium for transformation” that brings peace and presence. When you’re having a stressful week, is there a specific gardening task you find most therapeutic—is it weeding, pruning, or just “puttering”?
Once you step into the garden, everything transforms. In a period of stress, I tell myself, just go see what’s ready to harvest, or let’s water for a bit. And then once in the garden, I lose myself in the garden until my worries dissipate. This is the power of the garden. It slows us down and roots us in the rhythms of the natural world. It brings things into perspective. Once we enter a state of flow, when our hands are busy and our minds have time to wander, we often encounter creative flashes of inspiration or solutions to problems that we just couldn’t work out.
If you could give every visitor at this year’s show one packet of “magic seeds” to start their journey toward reconnecting with nature, what would be inside?
Let’s go back to childhood for this one with Jack and the Beanstalk. Bush beans truly are magic to grow. One large seed produces one compact plant that produces loads and loads of green beans that are simple to prepare and delicious.
Specifically, West Coast Seeds sells a variety called Dragon’s Tongue which is a purple-and-cream-striped flat Romano type which is very tender and soaks up whatever marinade you cook it with. I love a simple soy and garlic preparation or braised with a tomato sauce.
Plus! They are a fantastic companion plant in the garden and grow happily at the feet of tomatoes and cucumbers, adding nitrogen back into the soil that these heavy feeders use up. See, magic!
And if you come to our cooking stage demo, you might just find a packet of magic waiting for you there.
Carissa Kasper is the founder of Seed & Nourish which creates vibrant gardens for beautiful food in backyards, balconies and rooftops. She tends with care the pollinator potager on the Fairmont Waterfront rooftop along with the culinary team at ARC. https://seedandnourish.com/ @seedandnourish
share:
Be the first to comment