From "Gardener with a Passion" to "Ecological Designer with a Mission": Meet Monika Rekola

For Monika Rekola, her path into studying with U of G OpenEd started with a move to her family’s homestead in Victoria Harbour, and resulted in a journey that in her words, “quite literally changed my life”, altering her perspectives of the world around her and launching her professional path in landscape design.

When Monika first moved back to her family’s homestead, she began revamping the mature gardens. As she began, she noticed changes all around, including declines in pollinator species, more flooding, and greater ecological stress.

“I wasn’t content just to observe anymore. I needed to respond. I enrolled in the Horticulture Studies program at the University of Guelph. That’s where the real transformation began. Suddenly, my instincts had structure. The program didn’t just teach me how to design beautiful spaces, it showed me how to how to build with resilience and how to create systems that support life.”

Monika started taking Horticulture Studies courses in Fall 2022 and just recently completed the Landscape Design Diploma. With the knowledge from her courses, she was able to begin rebuilding the gardens by bringing in compost, amending the soil, restoring neglected spaces, experimenting with hügelkultur beds, rainwater catchment, and native plantings. “Every course, even the technical ones like AutoCAD and construction detailing, wove ecological thinking into the framework. It wasn’t just about plants; it was about stewardship. That thread of environmental responsibility was exactly what I needed to shift from ‘gardener with a passion’ to ‘ecological designer with a mission’.”

Her pathway to professional landscape design started by once again using the knowledge from her courses to create living soil systems in her “once barren and overlooked” corner lot property in Sudbury. From there, she incorporated “smart design, rich biology, and plants that thrive when you work with nature instead of against it,” and by the third year, her garden flourished. Many neighbours noticed the difference and became curious, opening conversation and knowledge transfer within the community.

“I wasn’t just applying what I’d learned in courses like Ecological Design and Naturalizing and Restoring Landscapes—I was living it. Testing ideas in real time, seeing the results firsthand, and watching that impact ripple through my community.”

As part of her project at home, Monika faced a challenge of runoff from a nearby pond threatening to wash out her long, sloped driveway. “Rather than reaching for a mechanical or expensive fix, I designed and built a rain garden paired with a dry riverbed and perforated drainage pipe. Now, the water is captured and filtered through layers of river rock and native plants, and slowly released back into the landscape. Not only did it solve the erosion issue, but it became a regenerative feature that supports pollinators, improves soil health, and stabilizes the surrounding slope. That’s energy conservation on a landscape scale.”

She noted how well that project at home paired with her learnings in class on how naturalizing a degraded slope can do more than just prevent erosion. “So yes, the course gave me technical knowledge, but more importantly, it reshaped how I think about energy. Renewable energy doesn’t just come from wind turbines and solar panels—it comes from living systems that regenerate and restore.”

After being so inspired by the Landscape Design Diploma courses, Monika’s continuing studies journey is far from being over. In true lifelong learning fashion, she plans on taking a course in the Creative Writing Certificate program, Writing Creative Non-Fiction. She hopes this course will help strengthen her journalism voice, to continue writing environmental advocacy pieces. She is also taking a next step to finish the Horticulture Diploma: “both paths feel like they’re coming together in a really meaningful way."