Mr. McDonnell spends up to an hour and a half preparing a home for an open house, cutting fresh pine branches or picking fresh lavender and mint from his herb garden.
Lightner and a full-time forager provide Atera with wintergreen, nettles, other plants, and fungi, mainly from upstate New York, and one wall of its dining room has been transformed into a vertical herb garden, overflowing with aromatics like camphor, lavender, and mint.
"Putting in a herb garden would be one of the easiest things because they love lavender, chives, rosemary and mint and you've got the advantage that herb gardens don't take a lot of looking after and you can use them for food, " he added.