Projects

Homegarden

Location Apollo Beach, Florida
Growing since 2013
Installation performed by Third Insight Design and nursery

This is where all the experiments started!

It is one thing having a piece of land to experiment on, and an entirely different one when you are fortunate enough to create that space for the two people who brought you into this world.

In 2013, Raleigh watched his father plant three avocado trees from seed in the backyard and soon after followed his footsteps. Having been heavily involved in orchids, bromeliads, and ferns it was inevitable that he graduated to fruit trees, natives, vegetables, and vines.

Raleigh and Annie have now been extensively working and modifying the homegarden. Many changes have taken place as the analysis of the space and its users evolved.

Raleigh’s initial cultivation process followed the guidelines of a foodforest including all its layers: pines and oaks as upper canopy; undersotry avocados, mangos, starfruit, longans, peaches guavas; surinam cherries, mysore raspberries, moujean tea, basils, sages as bushes and shrubs; bananas as large herbs; cassava and yams as rootcrops; sweetpotato, longevity spinach and spiderwort as groundcover; and passionfruit, beans, black pepper and vanilla as vines.

Today the homegarden has transitioned into a different model of a foodforest because its main users have changed and so have its management needs. Not as many different species cover each of the layers and the fruit bearing plants have become the protagonists succeeding the support species planted in the early stages.

Apollo Beach Community Forest Garden

Location Apollo Beach, Florida
Growing since June 2019
Installation performed by Apollo Beach Garden Club members, volunteers, Third Insight Design and nursery

In 2017, Raleigh, the then manager of the Apollo Beach Recreation Center created a free program for gardeners of all ages, skill levels and those interested in edible plants, epiphytes, and natives to exchange information and continue learning.

This free program turned into a non-profit entity, the Apollo Beach Garden Club, Inc. with over 50 members and functions with a board and officers. The Club meets at the Apollo Beach Recreation Center on the third Tuesday of the month and through arduous work and negotiation received the permission in 2019 to create a Community Forest Garden in a vacant green space at the Recreation Center.

In the early stage of Third Insight Design, we developed a design and site map and donated several fruit trees, perennial edibles and pollinator attractant plants for the creation of the garden. The Community Forest Garden was started in late 2019. It was built with help of many community members and is to this day growing and evolving thanks to the work of many people.

Raleigh’s vision for the Community Forest Garden is to inspire, educate and create awareness of the importance of growing food in a sustainable, ethical and productive manner. Community engagement and involvement are crucial to help better redefine cultural agriculture norms and create edible and native landscapes that mimic the natural systems of West Central Florida. This vision is reflected in what the Community Forest Garden has become today.

After only a year of heavy planting the garden grew more than most expected. It is bursting out the fences and has brought life, food and support to the ecosystem of the Apollo Beach Recreation Center. This as we know is only the beginning, much growth is still to come!

TID Nursery

Location Apollo Beach, Florida
Growing since 2020

Raleigh started collecting seeds and plants, growing them and caring for them in 2016 while he was working a full time job as a Hillsborough County Parks and Recreation manager. At the time he kept all kinds of rare and tropical plants potted under the trees of the homegarden.

It was only in 2020, with a considerable amount of stock, that we opened a brick and mortar nursery location: Third Insight Design Nursery in Apollo Beach, Florida. We have been open since then every Saturday and Sunday from 9am-3pm.

We firmly believe in leaving whichever land we walk on better than what we found it and so, we have started to transform the landscape we encountered at the current nursery location to rehabilitate the bank of a brackish canal and provide support for one of the only stormwater runoff ditches onsite.

We enjoy our work and time at the nursery the most, it is a precious place for us and the plants we grow.

The type of planting found at the nursery is very dense, it is an intense polyculture raised on a mound and covers a small area. It provides a good example of how a small space can provide a lot and also how microclimates offer many possibilities.

Since the plants have established we have counted an increase in skinks, snakes, herons, mockingbirds, anoles, native bees, bumblebees, hummingbirds, bluejays and butterflies.

Before the installation of the nursery in that corner of the property, the space felt empty and just hanging on. Today we feel at home with all the buzzing and moving of the plants and animals growing with us.