Permaculture: Design your Paradise

Permaculture Design Principles III

Relative Location

The principle of relative location is another important time and energy saver. It looks at the location of elements in relation to each other. The aim is to place the elements in your garden so that one fulfils the needs of the other. It's all about connections.

The easiest way to explain this is with examples:

I have a huge sprawling tree near my house that doesn't have a very dense canopy. It provides dappled shade underneath, which is perfect for raising seedlings. To place my propagation area there saved me building a shadehouse, which would have required lots of time and money.

Whenever I start a new compost pile I put it under one of my favorite fruit trees. Every time it rains, valuable nutrients get washed out of the pile, but instead of being lost in the ground, the tree will take them up and thrive, and I save myself the not very tempting task of shoveling compost.

Herbs that attract predatory insects ('good bugs'), like dill and coriander, are great for growing under fruit trees. They don't need to grow in rows there, so you can let them self seed. That's one less task for you. The good bugs, which love the flowers of these herbs, will save you spraying, and nobody likes spraying.

My kitchen garden is located between the house and the chicken pen. I collect garden refuse on one way (chickens love caterpillar riddled greens), and on the way back I pick the salad for dinner, (caterpillar free leaves, the chickens and me usually end up going halves that way).

Grow fruit trees inside the chicken yard. Pick what you want, and don't worry about the rest. Saves on feeding the chickens and there's no need to clean up fallen fruit.

I put my bird bath where I can see it from the kitchen sink. Doing the dishes is one task that I haven't managed to outsource to some garden creature yet, so anything that makes it more pleasant needs to be done!

If there is a task in your garden that is laborious, repetitive, or in any other way not much fun, there is probably a better way of doing it, or arranging for nature to do it for you. The list above gives examples for bigger gardens, but it should get you started thinking in the right direction. Make yourself a cup of tea, sit down in your favorite garden chair, (that's what gardening is all about) and brainstorm some outsourcing strategies.

Eat chocolate and live 100 years

Remember the definition of permaculture from the very first post? That's what today's post is about: Living to be 100.

I came across an article a few months back, long before I started this blog, otherwise I would be able to give you more details. The article spoke about a study in which a group of scientists examined whether certain foods extend our life span. The outcome was, lo and behold, if certain foods are consumed daily they do indeed prolong our life.

I don't remember the full list, I think it contained garlic and am pretty sure green tea was on it, but these two I remember clearly:

Red wine and - yipee - chocolate!

Yes! If you want to live 100 years, as I intend to, then you need to eat chocolate every day.

Now don't run to the supermarket straight away, there is a bit more to it.

Purple Mustard

This is one of my favorite salad greens, or would that be salad purples? There are slight variations, like the Red Giant (Brassica juncea) or Osaka Purple (Brassica juncea var.rugosa), but they all have one thing in common: They are a stunning addition to any garden.

Mustard is easy to grow and germinates readily. Seed packets contain hundreds of little seeds, so I never bother to start them in punnets. They can be shallowly seeded directly where they are to go, and thinned later. (Don't forget to eat the thinnings!).

Start picking the outside leaves at 40 days and the plant will continue to produce new leaves. With their peppery flavor the leaves add zest to your fresh garden salads. They also make it look so much more appealing then just boring green lettuce.

Last year I used purple mustard in a border on my driveway, with skyblue ageratum and salvias and orange cosmos. It seems a daring color scheme, but against my blue house, which is surrounded by terracotta colored concrete, it worked a treat.

So go and be daring! Add some spice to your borders and to your salad bowl!

Permaculture Design Principles II

Zone Planning or Zone Analysis, Part 2

We covered the purpose of zoning and zone 1 yesterday. So let's now look at the remaining zones:

Zone 2: This is still an area receiving a lot of attention. It's usually fully irrigated - if your climate requires it, that is - and mulched. It contains fruit trees, shrubs and trellised fruit, bramble berries, hedges, ponds or windbreaks.

It might also feature hardy perennial herbs that aren't used on a daily basis, and vegetables that take a long time to mature, and are only picked once or twice. Think potatoes or sweet corn, cauliflower and onions.

Other species I evict from zone 1 to zone 2 are unruly rambling vines that take up a lot of space and forever threaten to smother everything else around them (cucumbers!). Then there are the herbs that re-seed themselves every year without me doing anything (dill, coriander, borage), they happily grow under my fruit trees in zone 2.

There are no clearly defined borders between these zones, and they certainly aren't of a circular or any regular shape, I've already mentioned the frequently traveled paths, the edges of which belong to zone 1. The main questions to ask yourself is how often you visit certain areas, and how much your plants - or animals - need you or you need them.

Unless you live in a rural area and have acres to play with, you won't have much room to include the remaining zones, so we'll only cover them shortly:

Zone 3: Still managed, but neither mulched or irrigated, this area features your large fruit or nut trees. On farms this are your main crop areas and large pastures.

Zone 4: Only semi-managed, this is an area for gathering wild foods and for growing timber.

Zone 5: Unmanaged bush. Now I said that these zones are not relevant, unless you have a biiig block of land, but zone 5 is an exception. Even on a garden sized bit of land you can set aside a suitable area for native plants and wildlife only. This is especially the case if you're lucky enough to have your block adjacent to a wild area like a state forest or a nature reserve (I know, I know, realistically few of us are that lucky). You can then even have a strip of zone 5 cut through your zone 1 and 2, a wildlife corridor straight to your favorite deckchair!

If every garden had a strip of zone 5 and we could link them all together, can you imagine how much of a difference we would make? I'm dreaming again, I know, but the dream is always the first step to changing the reality. So what does your neighbour think?

Permaculture Design Principles I

Zone Planning or Zone Analysis, Part 1

In permaculture zoning means dividing your garden - or farm or a whole village - into different areas according to how often you need to visit these areas. Zoning saves time and energy by reducing necessary travel. Believe me, it makes a huge difference.

The zones are numbered from the inside out, with zone 0 being the house, well, in our case anyway. From here we move outwards:

Zone 1: This is usually the area closest to your house, but it also extends along frequently traveled paths. Everything that needs a lot of attention should be placed in zone 1. Examples would be seedlings that require daily watering, frequently used herbs, salad vegetables, a lemon tree, your favorite flowers or scented shrubs, but also the area where you collect compost or your clothes hoist.

Say you have chickens and you visit them daily to feed them and collect the eggs, then a propagation area along the path would make sure you don't forget to water your precious seedlings.

Or say you only have a tiny yard and a busy corporate lifestyle. Place your seedlings so you fall over them when you walk from your car to your house, and you'll notice any problems before it's too late.

Or another example: You're throwing a dinner party, it's raining and you started cooking late, because as usual you've been held up in the office. The guests have arrived, the soup is ready, and the fresh chives to add that extra zing are at the end of a muddy path right down the bottom of your garden. Are you going to venture out to get them? Things like parsley and chives should grow right on your doorstep, and you'll actually use them.

These are just a few examples, but I'm sure you get the drift. Forget that old fashioned idea that useful plants like herbs and vegetables should be separated from your 'ornamental' garden, in a vegetable patch in a far corner of your yard. Herbs and vegetables are very ornamental in their own right, some are outright spectacular. It's time we give them the place they deserve, which mostly happens to be in zone 1.

Permaculture: A short introduction

The term permaculture combines the words permanent and culture, or agriculture. The philosophy behind it was developed in Australia, by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. In 1978 they published Permaculture One, introducing a 'design system for creating sustainable human environments', based on close observation of natural systems.

In Introduction to Permaculture Bill Mollison writes: "The aim is to create systems that are ecologially-sound and economically viable, which provide for their own needs, do not exploit or pollute, and are therefore sustainable in the long term. Permaculture uses the inherent qualities of plants and animals combined with the natural characteristics of landscapes and stuctures to produce a life-supporting system for city and country, using the smallest practical area."

Now that's a mouthful. I prefer Linda Woodrow's definition in her beautiful book The Permaculture Home Garden:

Permaculture is about "...saving the planet and living to be a hundred, while throwing very impressive dinner parties and organising other creatures to do most of the work."

Or, for many more definitions, look at the site of the Permaculture Net.

What Bill Mollison describes in his books is a wholly integrated design system that's modelled on nature. The beauty of it is that the principles work everywhere, they can be applied to whole villages or to your backyard or balcony. I won't go too much into the details, but rather try and explain the basic principles as they are applied to an average garden (Well, is there such a thing as an average garden? Every garden is unique, but you know what I mean).

The main point is that by designing your garden to emulate a natural system, you can eliminate a lot of work for yourself. Nobody digs and sows, plants and weeds, or sprays bugs in a forest. Still, it grows and feeds its inhabitants.

Learn from nature. Nature has already developed a solution to every problem that you could possibly encounter in your garden. Respect that something that has evolved over millions of years probably makes more sense than what humans came up with during the last few centuries.

Work with nature rather than against it, and you will be repaid with abundance.

Why permaculture?

I fell in love with the ideas of permaculture for many reasons:
I love nature and believe it should be treated with respect. I love beautiful gardens, full of blossoms and intriguing scents. I love healthy, tasty, organic, home grown fruit and vegetables. I believe a garden should be a home to native wildlife, and - for us humans - it should be a place that calms our mind and restores our spirit.

Apart from that I fell in love with permaculture because, when I started my first garden, I knew nothing about growing plants, I had no money, and - above all - because I'm essentially lazy.

Permaculture is about "...saving the planet and living to be a hundred, while throwing very impressive dinner parties and organising other creatures to do most of the work." (Linda Woodrow, The Permaculture Home Garden).

I wish everybody would know how simple, and cheap, and little work it is to grow the most magnificent garden, put fresh food on the table, and attract birds and butterflies for you to watch as you do the dishes.

My aim is to get out the word: Gardening is as easy as it is fun. Everybody can have a piece of paradise in their backyard, and everybody can grow organic food, on five acres, or on the windowsill if necessary.
Yes, you can do it, too.