Permaculture is an interesting approach to both gardening and larger scale agriculture. It’s both old and new, established and cutting-edge, and it offers many advantages that are adaptable to garden spaces of all sizes. As big fans of sustainability and a natural approach to gardening, we’re always interested in learning more about permaculture and how to use it. We’re due for a refresher course and we’d like to share that information with you, so let’s dig in and learn more about permaculture gardening, what it is, and how we can use it in our gardens!
The Basics of Permaculture
While some of the technique of permaculture may be as old as agriculture itself, the system of permaculture originates in 1970s Australia. Agronomists at the time—chiefly P.A. Yeomans, Bill Mollison, and David Holmgren—blended traditional agricultural practices with the best science available to create an approach that works with natural systems to create sustainable farms, ranches, and gardens. Permaculture has expanded and evolved from there, and is now practiced all over the world in all sorts of places and climates and for all sorts of purposes. There are permaculture farms, ranches, orchards, and gardens growing and raising just about anything you can imagine.
Getting a bit deeper into the details, permaculture is a systemic approach to agriculture that works by observing and imitating natural systems in order to get productive yet non-polluting results. This approach adapts to the unique features of a given space or location in order to get the most out of rain, sun, and soil while reducing waste, runoff, and energy requirements. Composting, layered gardening, and rainwater collection are all features of a permaculture approach, and some of you may be practicing these already. If so, congratulations—you’re well on your way to having a permaculture garden!
Permaculture for Home Gardens
So how can you use permaculture in your garden or your landscaping? Well, as we indirectly address above, there are some features of permaculture you may already be using. That’s a great thing, as one of the nice parts of permaculture is that it’s a flexible approach based on the needs of an individual location. You can have permaculture landscaping, a permaculture flower bed, or a permaculture container garden depending on what you need.
The principles of permaculture are worth reviewing on their own (as is all the information found on that link) but we’ll recap a few here that we think are especially useful and important to home gardens. The first principle of permaculture is “observe and interact” and we absolutely agree. Every space has its own needs, as terrain and orientation create microclimates and differing amounts of sun throughout the day. Rainfall and runoff are both blessings and challenges. By observing how nature shapes your space, you can work with its demands and patterns to create a garden that thrives where it lies.
The permaculture principles of “storing and recycling energy” and “relative location” are also important in home gardens. We can harness energy in a permaculture way by making use of natural energy inputs in the form of sun, wind, water, and soil. Composting is a way of harnessing and recycling energy—you take food and garden waste, turn it into usable compost, and recycle it back into the garden where it feeds the next cycle. Rainwater harvesting is another, as is landscaping that incorporates swales and water-loving plants to both reduce runoff and make the best use of it. Making a sun map of your garden and planting appropriately is yet another example of harvesting energy, especially when combined with greenhouses, cold frames, or grow tunnels to extend the growing season.
Learning Permaculture As We Go
While there are other permaculture principles to learn and utilize, we’ll close with two that are near and dear to our hearts: “use small and slow solutions” and “creatively use and respond to change.” The first one—small and slow solutions—means experimenting with new ideas and then testing them on a small scale before expanding to a larger implementation. The second, creatively using and responding to change, means learning as we go and our garden spaces evolve. Landscaping matures, with shrubs and trees getting larger. Our gardens grow and evolve, particularly if we’ve planted perennials. All throughout we’re learning how to work with the weather, the climate, and the seasons as well as learning more about our own preferences. This fits perfectly with our Gardzen philosophy of gardening—we’re all learning, things are always changing, and that gardening is a journey not a destination.
We hope this helps you learn a bit more about permaculture and how you can use it in your own garden space. We’ll be incorporating it into ours this season and next, so stay tuned for more. We’d also love to hear from you if you have permaculture questions or experiences to share, so please get in touch!
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