Beautiful fruit tree guild/community from Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway
Permaculture is more than growing food; it includes how we live with each other, how we live with the land. It’s living sustainably, a way of life!
It started in the modern sense with Australian Bill Mollison, researcher, author, scientist, teacher and biologist. His legacy was carried on by his student David Holmgren. Bill’s most famous book is the 1991 Introduction to Permaculture, still a great read today!
Geoff Lawton has taken Permaculture to over thirty countries around the world, to teach, to restore deserts. Permaculture uses nature’s ways of bringing land back to life. It has been done on many continents. The UK and China recently announced ambitious projects to plant millions of trees in an effort to create new forests. Feb 13, 2018 – China has reportedly reassigned over 60,000 soldiers, and some of their police force, to plant trees in a bid to combat pollution by increasing the country’s forest coverage.
High altitudes Austrian Sepp Holzer is another hero. His book is Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening. One admirer says: ‘Sepp’s approaches to horticulture and agriculture generally sound CRAZY! And then you hear the logic behind it and see the amazing results. The dude is a genius!’ He’s great to hear in person. It is said he was doing permaculture before he ever heard the word! And I’ll bet some of you are too!
Gaia’s Garden, the best-selling permaculture book in the world, by Toby Hemenway brought permaculture to the average American veggie gardener, urban and suburban growers. His chapter on living SOIL changed my life! It woke me to how gardening is a 100% living adventure!
His book explains how ‘many people mistakenly think that ecological gardening—which involves growing a wide range of edible and other useful plants—can take place only on a large, multiacre scale. As Hemenway demonstrates, it’s fun and easy to create a “backyard ecosystem” by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions, including:
- Building and maintaining soil fertility and structure
- Catching and conserving water in the landscape
- Providing habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and animals
- Growing an edible “forest” that yields seasonal fruits, nuts, and other foods’
‘[The] revised and updated edition features a new chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. Best of all, once it’s established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that’s needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.’ That’s quite a claim, but it’s true!
How I got to know permaculture was the large scale version, first selecting the land – ideally choosing an area that has higher land that drains to a lower area, a creek is lovely. You can have hillside terracing, your veggies are watered, and you have fish ponds below that water and fertilize veggies there! Food forests can be a part of this setup with the seven levels of plants. First you plant core trees, install shrubs as undergrowth, on down to ground covers and lowest level veggies. Trees, like other plants and us, get along with some plants, not others. Tree guilds, communities, are important to establish. Depending on how much land you have, select your trees wisely.
Here are three basic diagrams to help your decision making:
1) Wind protection, keeping your garden warm in a cool climate or dryer in a moist shore area climate, or conversely, more sheltered from drying winds in a dry climate! This U shaped keyhole garden lets the warmest southern sunshine in. Adjust it to your needs.
2) Food Forests – Guilds/Communities!
There are variations! Every gardener’s situation and wants are different. This is a guide to stir your thinking. If you have a lot of wind, the shrub layer can be super important to the veggies. Adjust as makes sense. IE # 3, the shrub layer height depends on what you choose. I like blueberries, and blackberries are a lot taller!!!
A remarkable feature of Forest Gardens is when many who have never seen such a thing before see them for the first time, not being familiar with the food plants of an area, they don’t know it is a garden! Indigenous peoples ‘gardens’ blend so perfectly with nature, unknowing visitors think that area is simply the nearby perimeter undergrowth surrounding the village!
3) Here is an Apple Tree guild/community example. Look how much can happen there! If you don’t do that, put in a legume and oats cover crop to feed and condition the soil. Maybe you would do that the first year. Here’s a more extensive post Living Mulch! When, Which and Why?!
Another permie principle is to be as self sufficient as possible. Select soil enhancing legume trees, trees for quick growing firewood, trees with nuts for protein. Have fish and chicken for protein and manures! Raise bunnies, goats and sheep for fur/wool for clothing, and poop and meat. Make your own energy.
However, if you are gardening at a community garden in a 10X20′ plot like I am, you scale down to the most simple applications of the principles. You take sun/shade, high/low areas, wind direction, into account, plant cover crops when the soil needs refurbishing. You might install a small water pool or plant water loving plants in a low area near the hose. Plant companions to enhance growth, protect from pests and diseases. Intentionally include habitat for beneficial insects, birds and animals in your space or nearby. Install wild bee homes and owl houses.
Row or monoculture planting, like farm plantings, are ‘unnatural,’ not as useful as biodiversity like in nature. Research has shown home gardeners efficiently produce more per square foot than farms do! We don’t need tractor or harvest machinery space. Plants can be grown side by side, trellised above and grown under the biggers, around and among! Even in rows, ie lettuce, carrots, onion, kale can grow all together, from tall to short, harvesting is no problem! If you plant along the sun’s path of the day, you can grow on both sides of the tallest plants!
Organic growers are combining strips of bright flowers and legumes among their plantings to bring bees, enhance their soil, interrupt pest patterns, eliminate the need for pesticides! We can do that on a smaller scale, and not necessarily in rows! In drought areas savvy farmers are using land differently, following the contours of hillsides, along canyon walls, like farmers all over the world have done for centuries. They are resurrecting old tricks like cultivating after a rain to prevent evaporation.
Seed Saving is clearly a vital part of permaculture. In the old days, isolated people’s lives depended on it. Saving our local seeds, from our best plants, each year, yields super plants with improved production. Those plants love that location, that soil. They love you and how you garden! Seed Saving is still a very vital ritual.
Getting a Permaculture Design Certificate, PDC, is most admirable, recognized around the world. In Santa Barbara CA area Santa Barbara City College offers a right smart course by two savvy instructors! Nearby Quail Springs Permaculture Farm offers a 2 week intensive taught by well-known instructors. You live-on-the-land, applying the principles as you learn them. It is a treasured experience. Getting your certificate with the world renowned Larry Santoyo, water specialist, is much coveted.
There are many permaculture publications, including ecopsychology!
There are events worldwide! This site lists events important to those of us interested in permaculture. This page by Oregon State University lists permaculture organizations worldwide!
The idea is to get maximum return per the land’s ability to support it in harmony with nature and each other.
Permaculture applies to all facets of your life. Being thoughtful about growing fruitful relationships with people is part of permaculture. We are all part of the greater ecosystem. Humans need specific care. Special kindnesses, sharing, to be able to secure our needs in times of stress – illnesses, injury, losing a loved one, crop failure, hard seasons or years. Collaborating like companion plants certainly enhances our chances. Plants can’t go walkabout, but we can. We can do good for many other humans and spread the good word. We can share our abundance. At times we can trade one thing for another.
Stand way back. Get a good look at the big picture. Take time to be thoughtful. The earliest facets of your Permaculture choices, like the selection of trees, are the most permanent, that shape the long term plan, the backdrop for years to come. Let go of artificial time limits. Wait. Have patience, learn more. If you don’t feel quite sure yet, talk with more others. ‘Mistakes,’ like growing the ‘wrong’ tree, could have 20 or 30 year consequences. Ask others why and how they got started, what mistakes they made, how, if they could be, repaired. What were their successes that have done well for them. Search online for the pros and cons of your ideas. If you are on totally new ground you may just have to fly by the seat of your pants! Take images to document your experiences. Make a few reminder notes as to why you made that decision at that time.
The most natural times to establish a new permaculture garden in southern climates are at season changes, but, of course, there are variables for many reasons. Start when you can. In northern areas we’re looking at spring. Well before that time, be researching and designing – notice nature’s ways with your land and let that be part of what shapes your plans. Smaller shrubs, veggies, can be adjusted along the way all year every year.
Permaculture isn’t really something new. It is way more complicated than these few words. I hope you look into it further for yourself. We are each so different, no two situations quite the same, each are making our own unique contribution. It takes a village. Please make comments, leave a trail of knowledge for others to follow. Blog your experiments and experiences. That is like fertile soil to our minds that translates to our gardens.
Live in as good a way as possible in ultimate harmony with nature!
Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!
The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. In 2018 they lasted into September and October! Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.
Extremely useful information which you have shared here. This is a great way to enhance knowledge for us, and also helpful for us. Thankful to you for sharing an article like this.Permaculture Principles
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Thank you for your words, and thank you for the terrific link! I see the author is living the experience, so can give great examples of the 12 principles stated! I have scheduled to repost this! Blessings always…
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