Ryan Nassichuk, Certified Horticulturist

• Email: nassichuk@gmail.com
• Dormant Twitter (Lots of Plant Pics)
• Some of Ryan's Writing on Medium.com
• call or text: 250-202-2326

SKILLED HORTICULTURIST FOR HIRE

Hiring certified horticulturist Ryan Nassichuk is a rare opportunity to bring a mind filled with decades of accumulated and diverse garden and farm experiences to your project.

The current scope of Ryan’s professional horticulture practice is fourfold, with significant overlap:1 - Individual and small-group consultations and workshops focused on food and ornamental (and mixed) gardens, fruit plants, and soil health. Ryan is hired to discuss, assess, troubleshoot and optimize a wide variety of garden and orchard situations; to ask and field questions, to teach skills, to inventory plants, to sketch designs, and to generously share from the knowledge and insights cultivated over decades of practical and inquisitive horticultural experiences,and:2 - Soil analysis and the interpretation of soil test results. Ryan is hired to gather soil samples from existing or future gardens, to have them analyzed by a professional soil laboratory, to receive and interpret the results, and to use the results to formulate customized soil health and soil amendment strategies for healthy and productive gardens,and:3 - Winter and summer pruning of fruit trees, shrubs, vines and certain woody ornamental plants. Ryan is hired to prune fruit and ornamental plants, coupling years of learning and questioning appropriate timing and strategy with graceful, decisive technique and very sharp tools,and:4 (limited availability) - Skilled maintenance and physical improvements of existing gardens; ornamental, food, and mixed.Ryan is very open to working in unusual and complex contexts and locales. Serving clients nearby, nationally, and internationally. Ryan works both in-person and online/on Zoom.

ABOUT RYAN

Ryan Nassichuk was born in North Vancouver into a family of enthusiastic gardeners and farmers. On both his mother’s and his father’s sides, care for plants and soils stretches back through the generations to their familial homelands in Brittany and in the Carpathian Mountains. Ryan currently lives and gardens on the unceded territory of the Kwakwaka’wakw nations, near the east coast of Quadra Island, in the far west of Canada.

Ryan has been gardening continually and enthusiastically since age 11, both for hire (since age 12), and in his own garden and orchard and mushroom patches, seeking to satisfy and embrace a deep curiosity-about and reverence-for the world of soils, plants, and fungi.

Ryan has worked extensively in both vegetable and ornamental gardens, as well as on farms and in orchards, and is intimately familiar with the ways and care of a very wide variety of plants and fungi. His knowledge of botanical taxonomy stretches well into the thousands of plants, in both Latin and in English. Ryan loves to be in conversation, and revels in the challenges and rewards of communicating horticultural skills and concepts in a manner that is clear and practical, while also cultivating a lighthearted and warm atmosphere.

Ryan has given many presentations and has facilitated many workshops over the years, and has helped hundreds of satisfied clients improve their gardens and orchards. He is a creative and unusual person, and in the right situations can also be funny and charming. He is always keen to visit gardens and farms near and far and to meet new people. Ryan loves few things more in life than helping others experience some of the same sorts of joy that he feels when immersed in lush, thriving, delicious, surprising, productive gardens.

RYAN'S HOME GARDEN AND ORCHARD

The present focus of Ryan’s current home garden is the production of a steady supply of nutritious vegetables over the entirety of each year, with emphasis placed on soil health and on growing winter vegetables under simple low polytunnels. Ryan also tends 27 fruit trees and an indeterminate number of small fruit bushes growing around his barn-home: apple, pear, quince, medlar, plum, and a smattering of others. The cast of edible mushrooms Ryan is cultivating is expanding, on both hardwood logs and woodchips. Ryan has a wide variety of other interests, both horticultural and non-, and a keen sense of adventure and intrigue.

A Changeable Handful of Vignettes from Ryan's Life with Plants and Mushrooms:

Crocus sativus, saffron, basking in the September sun

Cucurbita pepo, 'Rugosa Friulana' summer squash, at their peak