Permaculture:
Sustainable Gardening

Permaculture began in the l970's in Australia, created by Bill Mollison and David Holgrem, two naturalists who were concerned with preserving agriculture and nature.

The term means " permanent culture", and today we would call it sustainable living, a way of live that preserves valuable resources, does not pollute and works in harmony with nature.

With permaculture, we design gardens that mimic nature. By observing the soil, water, sunlight, bugs and more, we can identify how each part contributes to an ecosystem and work with the ecosystem to create an abundant, joyful garden. It's really co-creation with nature as your teacher.

In a permaculture designed garden, there is less work, less weeds, less pests! Music to my ears.

A wonderful book on permaculture is Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway. This book gives ideas for the home garden or the city deck. Here are some of the ideas:

Plant polyculture gardens. Polyculture means that many varieties of plants are placed together in the garden. Polyculture gardens confuses the bugs. These gardens have many textures, smells, colors and shapes, and bugs are unable to find the plants they want to munch on. You have few pests problems and thus no need for pesticides.

Imagine cucumbers, basil, marigolds, zinnias, comfrey, purslane, tomatoes all mixed up together. It is wild, beautiful organized chaos, like life itself.

Rainwater Harvesting. I saw a miracle on a you tube video. Permaculture experts took an barren dessert in the Middle East and with rainwater harvesting, created an oasis of olive and fruit trees. These permaculture experts are visionaires, and we need these ideas to re-green the planet.

In your garden, you can build swales, which are shallow depressions or basins in the earth followed by a berm, a small hill. When it rains, the water is caught in the basins and slowly sinks into the ground. Eventually you can build up the underground water table.

There is an permaculture expert on water harvesting living in Arizona, Brad Lancaster. His book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, teaches how to "plant the rain" with many techniques, including rain barrels, cisterns, and many other methods.

Plant more perennials. The idea is to not disturb the soil with seasonal tilling. When we pull up plants every season, we disturb the soil and this encourages certain weeds to spring up. But if we don't disturb the soil, there are fewer weeds. The ecosystem matures, like a forest. The soil builds up with rich hummus and earth worms.

There are perennial vegetables. Asparagus is the one I have in my garden. Asparagus produces for me in the spring and the rest of the year it has beautiful fern foilage.

Create habitats for bees, birds, lizards, frogs, butterflies, etc. We need bees to pollinate our food. Native, flowering bushes attract local bees. Lizards and frogs eat pests and they are fun to watch. Have small piles of stones, leave out some twigs and branches for them to hide in, leave out a pan of water or build a small pond for frogs.

Raise Chickens. Chicken give fertilizer and eat grasshoppers. And you get wonderful fresh eggs. Feed them the herb purslane and the eggs they give you will be high in Omega 3 oils.

Make compost and sheet mulch. Compost is made with piles of leaves and kitchen scraps that eventually break down into rich compost which builds soil fertility. Sheet mulching is composting right on the bed you want to plant. It is a lot of initial work to create, but then it's done.

to create a sheet mulch, you spread out layers of newspaper, manure, soil, bulk organic materials such as straw, compost and more over your bed. You need to have plenty of material on hand.

This is composting in place, and the soil organisms are not disturbed because you don't turn the compost pile. Earthworms come and other valuable microorganisms build up their own soil ecology.

Grow plants up and down in layers. This mimics a forest. You may have trees, vines, bushes, ground plants, ground cover and roots sharing a small space.

Trees are essential in a permaculture garden. Trees hold water in the landscape, build soil, create habitat for life, moderate heat and cold, provide shade and mulch from their leaves, and more. Fruit and nut trees provide food.

Guilds: group plants together that support each other. You may have heard of the three sisters guild. The Iroquois tribe planted corn, beans and squash together. The corn stalks serve as a bean pole, the squash provides shade cover and preserves soil moisture, the beans fix nitrogen in the soil and build fertility. The three sisters--corn, squash and beans-- make a great fall stew in the kitchen, too. There are other guilds outlined in the Gaia book.

Grow wild weeds. You may want to grow lambsquarters, purslane, nettles, burdock, and dandelion. Wild foods are super nutritious. you can eat the green weeds in salads and cook burdock root like a carrot.

Repurpose and use everything. In permaculture, we use anything on the property: old wood, stones, bottles, old tires, can become chairs, fences, ponds. Be creative! Think of what you have lying around and make your waste into resources before buying expensive landscape materials.

"If nature is your teacher, your soul will awaken"--Goethe

Whistle while you work! why not add your own happy energy to the ecosystem? after all, we are all connected. I like to sing to plants, talk to trees, encourage them and send them love.

There's a book called The Secret Life of Plants that proves how plants have feelings. People like Dr. Edward Bach, Luther Burbank, and George Washington Carver communed with plants.

Many herbalists hear or feel the plants and learn of their healing properties. I feel that whatever herbs grow well for you are the very herbs you need for personal healing. Herbs and plants want to help us heal.

Make your garden magical. Play with the elementals, the nature spirits! Create secret gardens, altars, ponds, paths, benches. Nature can teach us spiritual truths. She is life with no ego, just beauty and peace. Nature inspires artists and poets. Let her inspire you, too. She has divine joy and radiance.

Spend time in nature to heal your soul. There are even two sciences, horticulture therapy and eco psychology, that teach the healing powers of nature.

"All of nature is at the disposal of mankind. We are to work with it. Without it we cannot survive" --- Hildegard of Bingen

Food for thought:

"What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet. We don't know what the details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options. We need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturists are one of the critical groups that are doing that" --Dr David Suziki, geneticist and author