Permaculture - Growing Sustainably

READ THE LESSON FIRST THEN WATCH THE VIDEO

Now we will take a closer look at some of the Permaculture Principles.

The first being To Observe (and Accept Feedback)

Part One

Many people, when they are in charge of a piece of land, whether it is a garden, a yard or a farm begin the design process with a catalogue or an idea in their head... they say;

"I want it to look like this."

It's a bit like going into the hairdressers with a photo of Beyonce and saying to the stylist, "I want to look like this". I think most hair stylists at some point each day think, 'ok, I can only work with what I have got'.

When it comes to landscape design, I call this 'catalogue-down gardening', people get an idea of what they want, based on what they have seen elsewhere, then when they try to implement that onto their plot, it doesn't work. Things die because they get too wet, too dry, or get blown over and the person feels miserable and defeated; that they are not good gardeners, and haven't got green fingers. When in reality the only thing they failed at was being patient enough to observe and understand what is there and to learn to work with that first.

Have you ever been guilty of this?

It's not our fault, no-one has ever taught us in our culture, to observe land and to understand its' messages. Until now that is, with the concerted efforts of the Permaculture movement.

Traditional nature-based cultures had to learn to observe the landscape. It was 'do or die', they needed to know where best to hunt, where was safe, where would flood, so they learned to become tuned in to 'reading the landscape'. We have 'evolved' away from this need now, but it's time for the sake of developing a more reciprocal relationship with nature, to re-learn these skills.

One of my favourite books by my mentor Patrick Whitefield is 'Reading the Landscape', it gives you new eyes with which to view your plot, and the land all around us.

Ok, so, now you have your first observation exercise:

Exercise One

Grab a pen and paper and go outside to the plot you want to work with, set your timer to ten minutes. Walk around your plot, observing it and making notes. Don't worry about not knowing 'what to write' or 'how to observe', this is totally subjective exercise, the instruction comes later, for now, I just want you to connect with your land and really look at it. It's vital that you do this before reading on. When you come back in, in ten minutes, with your notepad of observations, you can continue reading again. OK? Promise?

DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER UNTIL YOU HAVE DONE EXERCISE ONE, ABOVE!

So, what did you observe? I deliberately didn't give you any idea of what, or how to observe your plot. Now, in the next section of this lesson, I will give you a list of tools that you can use to observe land, after reading them I want you to go back out and observe the same plot again, but using these observation tools.

Part Two Of Learning To Observe.

How To Truly Observe a Piece of Land.

So, the data that you want to obtain from your observations are functional pieces of data, that will serve a purpose going forward. Yes, the door may be red, and a blue car may be parked on the drive, but going forward we will look at what the land is telling you.

Here is your tool kit for doing this. Observe:

1. Indicator Plants

2. Wind Direction

3. Water flows

4. Sun rise and set (or just which way is North)

5. Soil types

6. Features and their degree of Permenance

7. Any microclimates such as sun traps/frost pockets

8. Measurement

There are more ways to observe land but this is a great bunch of tools to start with. Let us expand on each.

Indicator plants

Learning to identify a few wild plants (weeds) is a great tool for the permaculturist because mother nature only plants things that will grow in that area. So, if you see something growing well or in abundance, that means that the condition there is suitable for it.

If you see a collection of plants that thrive in compacted soil, such as plaintain and pineapple weed, what is that telling you about an area?

If you see an area full of water loving plants, what does that tell you about that part of your plot? (such as juncus (rush grass), cattail, willowherb, willow, marsh marigold, meadowsweet)

If you see a fertile soil loving plant such as nettle in abundance in one area, what does that tell you about the soil there?

If you see a couple of drought tolerant plants in another area, what does that tell you about that area?

Same for shade loving and sun loving plants.

Now, if I try to plant something that likes loose free draining soil, without the need for much nutrition such as lavender, in a boggy area, amongst the juncus grass and willow herb, or try to plant it in the area of compacted soil as indicated by the plaintain and the silverweed and pineapple weed, what will happen?

As a quick aside, mole hills are also indicators of soil in an area. You may notice one area has mole hills but another doesn't. Moles eat worms, worms make good soil. Grow where the mole hills are :)

Wind Direction

The predominant wind direction in our country is from south west ish (west south west). So across most of the country, if a plot is not protected by a windbreak, buildings or valley, the main way that the wind will blow across your land will be from west to east.

If you have buildings or are in a valley the wind will be funnelled and even concentrated. Get to grips with spotting which way the wind blows across your property the majority of the time.

Why observe wind direction? Because if you don't and plant a solid fence 90 degrees to a strong west wind, then it will blow down, or if you are thinking of planting fruit trees; any tender trees you accidentally plant in a wind tunnel will struggle. Traditional orchards would be in protected areas then the outer trees would be of a more wind tolerant type than the inner orchard trees. On the moors you will see shelter belts of tree plantations. In the past, folk understood about planting according to the wind. Learn to work with the wind, after all you can't really stop it. We can learn to soften it with poplar or willow wind breaks that dapple its affects across your plot. There is more about planting wind breaks in your e-book down load.

Water Flows

Water is essential for a garden, yet we are rarely in tune with it as humans. Learn to observe where water enters your plot, where it collects, and where it exits.

Water coming into your plot could be off a roof, or downpipe, a gutter, a tap, a stream, the end of a hosepipe.

Water may then collect in: rain buts, a boggy part of the ground, a pond, a puddle on the drive... then

Water may exit your plot via a stream, soaking away to a certain exit point, an underground drain or pipe, run off down the concrete drive.

Try to follow the water flow through your property and make a note of this in your observations.

Why should you observe water flow? If you can plant along this water flow, or learn to passively re-direct it to where it's needed, then you can save yourself some inputs of time (watering) and water in your garden maintainance.

Sun rise/set

If you can't see where the sun rises and sets in your plot don't worry, just find North.

The direction of sun rise actually changes throughout the year any way, the sun only rises due East, twice a year (at the Equinoxes). The rest of the time it can rise anywhere in a 90 degree arc. from East South East at the winter solstice to East North East at the Summer Solstice.

Therefore the light and the sunny bits of your garden will change throughout the year, it's not as easy as saying, 'this is where the morning sun is'. Though on the whole we can say the sun rises Easterly and sets in the Westerly sky, it is an error to say it rises in the East and sets in the West (well, it is an error about 363 days of the year).

Why should we observe where the is East and West, North and South in our landscape? So that we can plot the sun and where it shines at what part of the year and plant accordingly, to ensure greater success.

Soil Types

We have already said that indicator plants can tell us about the soil on your plot, but in addition or in their absence, how can we observe what soil we have? Furthermore, why does soil type even matter?

It is very easy to do your own soil sampling as part of your overall observing of 'what is'.

There are two ways you can do this both are simple. Make sure that whichever test you do, you do it in at least three areas of your plot even if you only have a regular sized garden as soil type can be different even in the same lawn or field. Choose three places on your plot and either:

a) With a spade, dig a 1foot deep (30cm) square out of the soil and look at the 'slab' of what you bring up, there may be layers in the cross section, eg, friable sandy loam on the top, with a clay layer underneath. Look into the hole, what is there, even deeper, rubble, clay, sand?

b) With your hands scoop up a handful of soil and spit in it or add a little water, to try to make it stick together. If it clumps together, is grey and shiny when you rub your finger over it, you have clay, if it won't stick together in a ball, but crumbles apart you have more sandy soil. Ideally it should be somewhere in between, with enough bigger particles but also enough organic matter.

c) You can also add a handful of soil to a glass jar of water, shake it vigourously and leave the contents to settle into layers. What can you see?

Why observe to see what soil you have? Again, like we said in the indicator plants, this will tell you what will or won't work in an area. Some plants will grow in clay soil, some prefer sandy loamy free draining soil. Also if you are having an area as a pathway, then clay area may not be great to walk across as you will get clumps of your plot stuck to your wellies, as you cross that path.

Soil type does'nt always matter. If you are NOT planning on planting into the ground but instead are planning to put raised beds in, or containers to grow in then a soil test is not necessary. You only need to observe what you have got 'soil-wise', if you want to plant in the ground, or plan to create a structure that you need to know what base it will have.

Features and their Degree of Permanence

'Observing' degrees of permanence involves looking at all the features in your landscape, as if you wanted to move them. If you can't move them at all, like a rock face or house wall, or oak tree, then give them a permanence rating of five (or letter H) whatever you want to 'grade' the degree of permanence and include it in your observations. You don't need to include something like a wheelbarrow, or even a falling-down hut, in your observations as they can easily be moved. If it's something in-between like a row of shrubs or a patio, then you can observe their presence and note the degree of permanence. When you come to design you will know how much labour you want to give to the project and what you are /are not willing to remove based on the degree of permanence.

Microclimates

We have already considered the sun and where it will rise and set, so in your observations note the areas of your plot that will be predominantly sunny, or the opposite, predominantly damp and cold and shaded. When we get to the design stage it is possible to utilise microclimate to your advantage, by planting accordingly or avoiding planting eg. in a frost pocket altogether.

Equally you can enhance a beneficial microclimate with some clever design tricks, so, its worth observing micro climates in the different parts of your landscape.

Finally on the subject of observing the natural phenomena like microclimate, frost, sun, shade, and water... ideally you want to observe over the course of a year before you make any design decisions. This is so you can see these natural phenomena at work on your plot in all four seasons.

THE BIGGEST REASON MOST PEOPLE THINK THEY CAN'T GROW ANYTHING - THEY SIMPLY HAVE NOT LEARN TO OBSERVE THE EXISTING CONDITIONS AND PLANT ACCORDINGLY. HAVING GREEN FINGERS COMES WITH HAVING OBSERVING EYES.

The final tool for observing land I would like to introduce you to is ...

Measurement.

This way of observing land needs its own category as it's quite a chunky knowledge section. Measurement is quantifying information about your land. So its':

1. length

2. width

3. area

4. perimeter

5. height above sea level

6. climate zone

7. slope as measured in contours.

Measurement is all the numbers to do with your land. Measurement is a form of numerical observation and one that comes into it's own later, once you start designing.

At the most basic it's useful to know the size of your plot. Unfortunately land isn't often a nice measurable square or rectangle. If yours is, you are lucky, a rectangle garden size plot is measurable with a tape measure, you can buy a 50m tape measure or you can just move a standard tape measure up the side and across the width to find the length and width of your garden. From this you can find out the perimeter (which is useful eg. for designing fencing and borders where you need to know how much of something you will need), and from the length and the width you can find the area.

If L=20m

and W=10m

Area is 200m sq

Perimeter is 20+20+10+10 = 60m

If you have an odd shaped area to measure, then you can use a long rope or string, laid out along the edge, you can bend the string as much as you need to allow it to follow the outline of your plot on the ground, then measure your string to find the perimeter.

If you have an odd-shaped large area, like a field and don't fancy walking around it measuring with string don't worry, there are still ways you can size up your plot that don't see you walking miles with a ball of twine. This is what O.S maps are really for, haha, if ever you thought they were for walkers?! Ordanance Survey maps are to scale, if you can find your field or woodland on it, you can measure the map as above.

You can see the scale on your OS map. See the above example of my farm, you can see from the black scale box what 100m of ground looks like. The large blue boxes above all represent 1km square, the 100 m scale falls within that at one tenth the length of the km box line.

The other benefit of finding your plot on OS maps, other than being able to size it, is to see how it orientates North. On a map, the grid lines (top to bottom) are North to South.

Sign up to OS maps online and find your plot HERE

To learn how to Pace land in order to measure it watch this video...

So, sticking with a similar analogy at the top of this lesson, unless you observe the measurements of your land; starting to design it is like going clothes shopping with absolutely no idea what size to buy.

Finding out the other numbers above can also be useful. Eg. Climate Zone, this can be found online in map forms. Then you can choose plants of a hardiness rating that match your climate zone (remember the micro climates in your garden though too). This way you avoid bringing in plants just to kill them, because its the wrong plant for the place anyway.

Start with finding out what you have already, and work with this. You do this by learning how to observe.

Now, with all the above information go back out and 'OBSERVE AND SEE WHAT YOUR LAND IS TELLING YOU'. I have added a download for you to print off and fill in (look to the right). Its a blank page for drawing with some tips of what to look for when you go back out. Not all the things to observe are written on it (not enough room) so please double-check you have noted as much as possible from the above observations as possible. Right, go draw your garden!

When you come back in... Tell us below in the comments what you see now!

Let me explain about the importance of the principle; 'always do an input:output analysis'.

Inputs and outputs.

Outputs

We have already established that, if you are developing a reciprocal relationship with your land, that you have a right to obtain a useful, valuable yield from that (in return, of course, for ensuring the needs of the land are met soil nutrition, diversity, biological encouragement, earth care)

So, this yield can be seen as 'the outputs' from your land and we have already looked at what kind of outputs (yields) land can possibly give you.

BUT outputs can also be waste. Any system has inputs and outputs, the human body, a car, a central heating system, they all have inputs such as food/fuel, air, fluids for lubrication, labour, but they also also give waste products as outputs don't they? Poop, wee, gas, fumes, heat, old oil disposal... This is natural and unavoidable, we can aim to reduce waste outputs by creating more efficient systems. Trying to maximise the effectiveness of every input and also learning to make use of the waste outputs by keeping them on-site and useful for something else. Outputs only become a problem if we don't learn to re-use them, then its not waste, if we can't re-use them, then its waste.

What are your current outputs? Positive and Negative? Try to be specific with quantities too.

• Fruit

• Veg

• Nuts

• Waste

• Eggs

• Honey

• Old animal bedding

• Poo

• Wee

• Leaf litter

• Old plant material

• Animal carcasses

• Kitchen waste

• Craft waste

• Heat

• Pollution

Inputs

What do I mean by inputs in land management?

The labour, the money, the time, the resources that you 'spend' on the land, the products you buy, the plants you buy for your garden.

Here is a list of some inputs into you may be inputting into your plot currently? What are you bringing in? Be specific with quantities.

• Lawn Mower fuel?

• Time?

• Labour?

• Bottles of Stuff

• Tools

• Compost

• Poultry

• Plants

• Seeds

• Structures and furnishings

The aim of Permaculture is to model natures methods and nature gardens efficiently by having a low input:high output system, so we need to pay attention to where we may have resource leaks in our system. What are we doing with our plot that is inefficient in terms of what we put in and what we get out? How can we tweak this to get greater outputs (higher yield) for less inputs?

In this section therefore we will look at learning to analyse the inputs:outputs.

But before you do this input:output survey on yourself, here is an example of the Permaculture Chicken

Chicken: inputs: feed, bedding, warmth and light, grit, shelter, love.

Outputs: pleasure; eggs; meat; fertiilser, pest control, feathers, love.

If you look at the workings of a huge battery farm you will see trucks go in with feed, birds, boxes, a lot of energy is used in the housing - human labour and electric for power inside the production system then fuel for trucks shipping the eggs out. Outputs of this system are eggs, yes, but what have been the inputs just to get that single output?

• Fuel

• Electricity

• Wages/Human Labour

Economically this may be viable, but it is not sustainable over time ecologically. Especially when we then add all the unwanted outputs...

• Carcasses to be transported away

• Waste bedding to be transported away

• Heat output from poorly insulated buildings

• Pollution from wagons

So, a sustainable system needs to have balanced inputs and outputs. A system that is 'all inputs and few beneficial outputs' and lots of adverse outputs will not last over time before something is depleted. Whether this is your energy, your money or time.

In this we try to reduce inputs and increase beneficial outputs. We can do this by moving away from the above linear system and creating instead a closed loop system.

If you 'did' permaculture consultancy for other people, you would ask them this as you would want them to articulate what their dream for their plot, in output terms, was but also what their capacity for inputs was. This way you can get the perfect balance of inputs:outputs for them 'designed into' their landscape.

After you have understood the idea of 'what inputs are' and 'what outputs you currently get', you need to learn how to balance them.

This is usually done by creating a closed loop system.

A closed loop system reduces inputs by re-using waste from other parts of the system as inputs, saving you doing/buying it and also reducing the waste output.

1. Waste poo, wee, weeds, leaf litter, household waste - add a few worms, becomes soil (no need to bring it into the system from B and Q)

2. Burning woody trimmings creates ash that can be used to increase the ph of soil, where needed as well as getting rid of stuff you may normally take to the tip or put in brown bins for council collection. This wood ash can also be used to keep stored rain water clean (not with fish in) as raising the ph of your stored rain water will prevent it going slimey with algaeal overgrowth.

3. Soil goes onto plants, watered by the rain water captured in butts and a pond, the pond fish add their own nitrogen via their gills and poo, to the water, so reducing the need to bring in fertilisier. (yes you can put gold fish into rain butts too, if you don't want a pond). This pond water can be further enriched by standing some with nettles or comfrey plants grown on site in a fertility patch, soaked into them for a few weeks (using weeds as fertiliser)

4. The plants grow well with their home made home watered nutrient rich soil

5. This is a closed loop system, you haven't had to bring in water, fertiliser or soil into your garden, you haven't had to find the money to do that, nor once the system is set up to be automated; not much labour either. You have reduced your inputs but increased your main output (fertility) whilst also bi cropping some seriously big goldfish (replace this with koi carp and you have an even greater value added system all for free and in-house).

TWEAK YOUR INPUTS AND OUTPUTS TO REDUCE INPUTS FROM OFF-SITE and INCREASE THE NUMBER OF OUTPUTS THAT ARE re-USED ONSITE.

IE. TURN YOUR SYSTEM FROM A LINEAR SYSTEM TO A CLOSED LOOP SELF-MAINTAINING SYSTEM. (more on closed loop systems in the next lesson).

Exercise.

Try to think of ways to reduce those brought-in inputs by res-using some outputs from a different part of your house or garden. Or trying a different method to fulfil that input need.

• Eg. Want hens? Rescue ex battery, rehome a friends hens, or breed on site by choosing a trio of broody breeds to start you off, or start egg incubation. (Rescue and Rehome is the obvious choice).

• Need soil? Make compost with the waste outputs from the house and garden.

• Need a fruit net to keep the birds off? Re use old net curtains that would other wise go in the bin.

• Have large areas of lawn to mow, rescue a sheep and use its poo and wool for garden fertiliser and thermafleece or insulation or craft products. Move it around using hurdle fencing as a continuous grass cutter.

To summarise : if we can expect a yield from our land as per the last chapter, then to obtain this yield we need to do an input output analysis and tweak our system to reduce inputs in comparison to outputs.

Turn A HIGH COST, HIGH LABOUR POINTLESS GARDEN on its head with an input:output analysis.

The E-book that comes with this course gives another example of a linear system of input/output moving to a circular one, (closed loop system).

A good book to read is Surviving and Thriving on the Land, by Rebecca Laughton. The book takes a look at the human energy requirements of land-based living (tip. remember the 'fair shares ethic'?, this concerns labour input too, fair shares in labour, which is why communities can often successfully cope with large areas of sustainable land management). Rebecca lived on one of the communities I stayed at Tinkers Bubble and observed and noted the input:output balancing challenges of living off the land.

Once you start monitoring your inputs and how you can allow waste items from one part of your system to replace brought in 'inputs', then you have moved your gardening system from an inefficient linear one, to a closed loop system.

You are modelling mother nature herself, caring for your land in the same way that she cares for the land.

In this lesson I would like you to draw on a piece of paper, the various inputs you need and the outputs you would like, and try to make the arrows go around in circles, so that ALL of your outputs have an input into another part of your land/human system.

So, you may draw 'fertiliser' herbicide, soil, digging, mowing, plants, eggs, veg, fruit, water.

a linear version of a gardening process would look like this:

buy fertiliser and herbicide, add to bought in soil, mow the lawn, buy fruit and eggs from a supplier or hen food and bedding as an input, carry heavy cans of tap water to the seedlings at the bottom of the garden.

A closed loop system would be:

Grow a fertility patch that the hens can also forage under, make own fertiliser in rain water butt with the plants from the fertility patch, dispense directly into a watering can, don't dig, instead cover the soil with some worms, add the some homemade compost and a mulch of cut plants from the fertility patch, after it's rotted down add some fruit shrubs you have grown from hardwood cuttings from a friend or elsewhere (inc the wild), bed the hens on dried grass, use the hen muck to go into compost... these are just a few examples of how you can reduce the need for external inputs with resources grown and foraged from your own plot. Water it with water on site from a pond or butts, capturing any spill-off water onto another plant underneath, or placing/watering hanging baskets over the pond or buts so water goes back in.

Right, put pen to paper and draw yourself a closed loop system, noting inputs and outputs ensuring that some outputs become inputs.

If you want, you can read the rest of the course and come back to this.

The video looks at the reasons to mulch and what we can use as a mulch.

Not mentioned in the video but in my book How To Be More Self-Reliant, Naturally, is that seaweed is a fantastic mulch too.

I learned about this 18 years ago when I was on a community in Scotland, and my job, with toddler strapped to me, was adding the seaweed from the beach to the garden beds, due to there not being much else on the barren Scottish Island to use for fertility. This was just before winter, in November, and the covering was to be left on the raised beds for the winter season. What didn't rot down could be left and planted through as a mulch.

BUT sea weed is not only a last resort when there is nothing else for mulch... seaweed is one of the few plants that contains almost ALL of the fifty or so trace elements and minerals.

Slugs, who often love to hang out under a mulch, don't like seaweed mulches due to the salt.

Furthermore it contains no plant diseases or seeds that can infect your plant beds or plants.

The only issue is one of salt, not all plants like salt, so don't over-do seaweed mulching. If you live near the coast and this is an option for you, maybe do it once each winter for a couple of years, then leave it for a couple of years. Or alternate it. However even folk who have used it yearly haven't reported problems, but if you were worried about the salt burden you could rinse it off first in fresh water.

Exercise:

Are you already Mulching? If so what do you use as soil cover? If not, which of the methods in this lesson appeal for your situation the most? Answer in the comments below:

The video above looks at what are perennial plants and self-seeding plants and why we should look to choose to grow them in a Permaculture garden.

Even mainstream gardening organisations such as the RHS and Gardeners World acknowledge the benefits of choosing perennials and self-seeding annuals.

See the article in Gardeners World Magazine 'How to Grow Perennials'.

Most of what I have to say on this method is said in the video. I just have a couple of things to add in the written content.

Try Demeter Seeds for biodynamic heritage seeds.

Before you go shopping for your ethical seeds please remember to ensure you are remembering the 'right plant right place' idea; that what you are going to try to grow, will only work with what you have got... in the way of soil, climate zone and micro climate.

Check those first before buying seeds and plants to ensure best fit.

Seed Saving and Seed Swapping

This is a way of getting free seeds (reducing input), employing the fair shares ethic and increasing the diversity in your garden at the same time.

Seed Saving

With plants that give off seeds, even lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, as well as flowers, remember to allow some to 'go to seed' if you eat ALL your gains and don't allow a few to get to the seed stage then you will not have seeds to grow purposefully again next year.

Allowing some of your seeding plants to go to seed is a good way of ensuring some come back next year, in the soil around, but if you are anything like me and the hens rule the roost, they will peck up these seeds and the new babies won't get chance to re-grow. Or even wild birds will compete with your for your seeds in the soil. SO grab a few envelopes and go around the plants you have let self-seed, before they shed their seeds and collect the seed heads, allowing them to dry inside the envelope, or shaking the seeds out into the envelopes. One envelope per plant type. Label the envelope, eg calendula, nasturtium, little gem, with the year. Store the envelopes in a cool dry dark area of your home. Next year you can if you want sew them in a new place or give them a chance and start them indoors and plant them out as plug plants.

Seed Swapping

When you buy seeds they often come in packets of 120 seeds - that's a lot of tomato plants or spinach so why not work together with a local friend and let them give you some of their seeds and you swap some of yours. Tell your friend that s/he needs to get good quality heritage, non self-terminating seeds for this deal though.

You will soon of course have a collection of envelopes of home grown seed to swap too.

Seed swapping doesn't need to be limited to seeds, you can of course swap plug plants, split perennials and share them, gift and receive hard wood cuttings and any thing else you can fairly share with a neighbour.

There is more about this in the e-book, including how to do a seed germination test to find out the germinating viability of your stored seed, a year or more later after harvesting.

Exercise:

What will you do to ensure you plant and share more heritage perennials and self-seeding annuals?

Now is time to transfer your rough base map/observations onto squared paper. I have attached some in the download section to the right for you again to print off, in case you didn't get chance in the last lesson.

The squares on this paper are 1cm squared. So, they are 1cm long and 1cm tall! :)

How do I transfer my rough base map to the squared paper?

Draw your plot to scale from the base map onto the squared paper. Depending on the size of your garden; 1cm could represent 1meter of real land, or if you have a larger plot, 1cm on the paper could represent 10meters of real land.

So if your garden is 20m long, and 10m wide you will draw your garden 20cm x 10cm on the paper. Or...

If you have a field, and it is eg. 300m x 160m then measure 30cm x 16cm, with each cm on the paper being 10m of real land.

In addition to the measurements. Add on the new base plan on the squared paper the observations you noted:

• boggy area

• slope

• frost pocket

• wind direction

• sunniest spot

• permanent features

• water flow (where does it enter/collect/exit)

• soil types

• North

• Indicator plants

• etc.

See the video in this section for my example.

Now, have fun creating your own base map. In the next lesson, we have one more step to do with information gathering to inform design, then we move on to starting to design your perfect Permaculture Plot!

READ THIS CHAPTER BEFORE WATCHING THE VIDEO.

You have a base plan neatly drawn out, showing what is THERE already. In other words you know what you are working with, what natural phenomena is going-on in your plot.

You have an idea of what you hope to get from your plot. Now it's time to marry it all up and create the perfect design.

We call the items you want to include into your design; 'elements' of the design. So eg. pizza oven is an element, a structure for dining for six guests is another element, hen pen for five hens is a third element, herb spiral for ten types of herbs is another element... do you get it? In some books you may see them called 'functions'.

What do I mean by 'choosing elements to add to your design'?

An element is a thing you want to add to your design.

Other elements could be:

• Wormery

• Solar panels

• Wind Turbine

• Bee Hive

• Cabin office

• Rental Accommodation

• Homeschool classroom

• Craft workshop

• Wild flower meadow

• Pizza Oven

What else may you want to put onto your plot? You should by now have some ideas already of what you want to design in?

The list above is not exhaustive, it's to give you an idea of what I mean elements;

Let me know if there is anything not on the list above that you are thinking of and I can add it.

To decide whether placing a certain element in your design is 'Permaculture', here is how to decide:

Step One:

The ethics - we already covered that one so I won't go into detail here other than to remind you to check the 'thing' you want to do/implement accords with at least two ethics from Earth Care, People Care or Fair Shares. If it does proceed to step two ;)

Step Two:

Can the desired element be used in more than one way? Every element of a Permaculture Design should have at least two purposes. So for eg. a fire can be used to gather people, warm them, and also to cook over.

A fire circle vs an electric toaster - the toaster has very limited application, it can literally only toast bread, the fire circle can gather people, bbq over it, warm drinks, light the space, etc.

So, think about your list of desired elements from above and the early chapter on ethics and decide if what you want to add, accords to the ethics AND serves at least two functions.

There is one last bit of information to gather to use, along with your Base Map, and list of elements to help inform the new design.

That is the questionnaire we talked about in the lesson on 'Always obtain a yield'.

We've already chatted vaguely about what you would like to do with your land, but now is the time to get this nailed down and quantified. In turn this information will tell you HOW many of this element, how BIG do you need THAT element.

We need to know EXACTLY what you want to get out of your land. In other words you need to quantify, what you hope the yield will be from the element, so that you can add them to the design at the right size.

Here is what happens if you don't get specific.

Eg.1. ' I want a veggie patch' this vague statement translates on your 'uninformed design' into a small circle. Over time you realise this is only large enough to grow seven lettuce and a few chives. Or ...

Eg. 2. You wanted to be self-sufficent in eggs but only created space enough for two hens on your design, then realised actually you needed four eggs and day and a couple of duck eggs for grandma.

Eg. 3. You stated as a desired yield somewhere to sit and eat, but didn't consider numbers and the exact space that your family plus a few friends would actually take and you create a patio area that is too small to accommodate the likely number of guests.

Eg. 4. You stated somewhere to sit out and read, but you didn't mention if you wanted to sit in the sun or the shade.

All these things matter when you come to adding the elements to your paper design and to the real life plot.

So, now you need to quantify your desired yields so that the elements can be drawn onto your drawing at the correct size to be useful.

As well as quantify them; so that they are exactly right to meet your desired design. This means being very, very specific about what you want.

In the download to the right, there are some questions to help you quantify and qualify the elements that you have chosen (elements that have already passed the Permaculture test and the 'at least two functions' test)

Remember try to be specific about your hoped for yields, rather than just a veggie patch say what and how much you like, add in needs for non traditional uses such as people gathering for x number of people, fuel or energy needs, animal husbandry etc. herb growing for medicines etc. as you like.

Exercise:

Complete the download PDF with the answers to the questions then in the comments tell your fellow student what elements you wish to add to your design, and for one of these elements explain how much/many that needs to be, and how it passes the ethics and two functions test.

Next Lesson:

You will learn HOW to successfully place the elements you have now very carefully chosen onto your base map, to ensure the greatest success!

READ THE LESSON FIRST THEN WATCH THE VIDEO

When designing or redesigning your landscape you have already considered what elements you would like to place there and chosen those only that accord with the principles and ethics … a pond? a veggie patch? a greenhouse? a compost heap? a fertility patch? a patio? fruit trees? raised beds? annuals? perennials? herb spiral? a fire pit? a wood pile? Now, this section will focus on how to place these onto your plan using the phenomena of relative location. Considering relative location will ensure all elements are located not only relative to their own needs, something many gardeners already do, but relative to their relationship with other elements on the plan and also factors outside your own space (incoming wind, sun etc.) and relative to you!

The Following Tools help you correctly place the elements that you have chosen onto your design, to ensure greater success for less effort.

Ask: "How do I make my design work, by placing the elements I've chosen in the most common sense positions on my design by making them best accord with nature and human nature?".

The design tools to do this are:

• Zoning

• Networking

• Elevation

Zoning

Zones in design are areas in your plot numbered from 0-5 according to how close they are to you if you are 0.

Some elements in a design require lots of attention. Gardens fail when such elements are placed too far away from the human that needs to do them.

• Zone 0 Is you or the home.

• Zone 1 is the closest to the home where it would be pragmatic to keep things that need most attention, water and weeding regularly or harvesting daily… tender annuals, kitchen herbs.

• Zone 2 could be perennial vegetables, potato’s and onions, fruit shrubs and things that can be gathered less frequently and kept stored in the kitchen, plants that don’t need so much attention. Hens, compost and orchard could be here or Zone 3.

• Zone 3 Productive pasture or meadow, managed timber for logs or woodwork plus maybe bee hives.

• Zone 4 Rough grazing or woodland that is low yielding land for humans but over which you still have some influence and obtain some small yield from eg. wild foods, twigs for kindling, the bee hives could go here too.

• Zone 5 Is given over to wildlife - a zone of no human influence. Even small gardens can have a zone 5 - perhaps an unweeded corner with a bird feeder and bug house.

The tradition of the green house and veggie plot and compost at the bottom of the garden, due to the aesthetics of having them 'seen' near the house has died. Instead, in permaculture we teach people that, if it needs your attention it should be as close to 0 as possible, if it needs water, it should be close to water. An example of a design that doesnt' zone efficiently is having to carry 80litres of water down a path to water seedlings at the bottom of a garden, walking past raspberry canes and trees that require little input. Then worse still going in a different direction with water to see to hens, then walking past them with the compost having had to first come back to the house to get it as you couldn't carry it will all the water. Bad zoning means things get left and neglected much easier.

Good zoning makes your site and the tasks on it, more manageable and you are likely to achieve the care needed to make things work.

Bad zoning results in a high input:lower yield ratio.

On your draft of your rough base plan, draw five concentric rings going from where you are mostly (in the house) to the outer perimeter of your plot. This will give you an idea of the furthest away areas and those closest to you. At present can you see anything in Zone five that could do with being in Zone 1, and vice versa?

Networking

Each element in your design will have its own ideal placement on the plan according to eg. soil type, shade, space etc. but you should also consider its need to network with other elements. For example, the input requirements (eg food/care/water) and outputs (eg. waste/yields) of one element in relation to another that should be inherently linked by a closed loop system.

Think about how each element of your design could be functionally related to another…. could the outputs of one element be usefully employed as the inputs of another to save you time and money fulfilling it? If so, surely they need to be next to each other?

What would the relationship between the following elements be? Draw lines with your fingers, can you marry up any obvious relationships?

Wood pile. Compost pile. Fire Circle. Saw Horse. Garden Tool Shed

Fire circle Herb Garden. Veggie patch. Kitchen Door. Pond.

Hen Pen. Water Butts. Washing Line. Green House. Fruit trees.

Please remember in Permaculture there are no wrong or right answers, it just has to make sense to you and efficient use for you and the resources in your garden. My own example of the above would be this:

A veggie patch would require inputs of eg. compost and pest control so how about having it near the compost heap and the hen pen so that you could allow the hens to periodically clean it of bugs and fertilise it, the hens would also benefit from being allowed at the compost heap occasionally especially if you had thrown in a handful of worms earlier to multiply into hen food and the occasional handful of worms thrown from the compost onto the veggie patch to increase fertility and drainage. The worms combined with growing a small patch of forage feed for the hens could reduce the need to buy in so much hen food. A garden shed for storing tools and hen food would want to then be close to this set-up to reduce time and labour rather than outside the back doors. A greenhouse and a hen house can keep each other warm if part of the same unit - the body heat of the hens could be enough to keep a green house warmer in a lean-to greenhouse on the side of the hen hut, any greenhouse plantings that are discarded can be thrown directly to the hens. A veggie patch and greenhouse would also require lots of human input so they would want to be relatively close to the backdoor of your house but not as close as say annual beds. A pond could benefit by some shrubs over it, for shade plus a little leaf fall could feed the fish in it and if these fish were edible all the better, water from the pond could be pumped into a veg bed or any netted pond weed around the roots of the shrubs occasionally when it is cleaned out. Washing line needs to be near the kitchen door but ideally somewhere windy and sunny, and can I feed the hens while putting the laundry out? Fruit trees can be further away from the kitchen door as they need less attention but a couple could be usefully employed to provide partial shade in summer for a greenhouse that may otherwise get too hot and a row of willow as a wind break in winter to stop a poly-tunnel tearing.

What inter relationships are there, between your elements?

You are learning now not just to zone them efficiently but to network the elements with each other to further increase your efficient management of the plot.

Sectoring

So, we have considered how the various elements of your landscape design such as a greenhouse, compost heap or annual bed are best placed according to their own specific needs AND their relationships with the other elements in the plan AND your own needs for human time/energy input, but there is a fourth factor to consider.

The elements of your design and indeed the success of your overall landscape design may also be dependent on the influence of off site factors such as wind, sunshine/shade, flows of water, noise and air pollution, neighbours and views .

A lot of the ‘knowledge’ in the topic of sectoring could be said to be common sense but sense is sometimes not that common and hindsight is more costly to implement than foresight so it is worth mentioning! In placing a new element you should therefore consider: ‘Will it need to withstand prevailing wind in that position or be sheltered?’, “Will it get too much or too little sun there?’ ‘Will it spoil a view - mine or my neighbours? ‘Will it cause or be subject to pollution?’ eg. if you build your patio next to your neighbours cockerel shed you may have noise or smells when you want to relax. ‘Will smoke from my chiminea blow over their rotary clothes drier?’ ‘Will water run off from their roof cause my veggies to drown if I place my veggie patch over there?’ It is easy to avoid things from the start than to try to remedy them after. So, elements need to be placed in the best relationship to each other but also, not negatively influenced by any off-site factors or be placed where it may cause an issue to other land users off-site.

Here is a quote about human nature in relation to effort.

Simplify Your Solution

In his bestselling book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, says “A general ‘law of least effort’ applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature.”

We always migrate to the easiest option to achieve a desired result, so if you want a productive plot, design this fact in. Great intentions are admirable but reality is better. In the design stage we can glorify pottering about the garden in the summer and forget the cold dark nights. Try to place everything as if you were cold and hungry, it's getting dark, and just need to get it done. This efficient design will mean that in summer when you do have more time/desire to be outside, you will simply get more done with that time.

The information in this lesson will help you, soon, to begin to add your chosen elements (drawn to scale), to your paper plan and move them around until you are happy that they are placed in the right location to be most efficiently used.

Exercise:

Is there anything in your garden/plot currently that you think would work better by taking into account the information in this section?

Next Lesson:

Paths - joining elements together with walkways.

So, you have your base map, and an idea now about how to choose and place elements as part of designing your own permaculture project.

After all the theory, this is where the creativity and fun starts!

In this lesson, you are going to draw the elements you want to add, onto squared paper, to the same scale as your base plan, cut them out, and play with where they should best go, on your base map.

You will play around with sliding your patio here, your orchard there, bee hive here, all the while using the design tools of zoning, networking, elevation, and sectoring from the previous lesson.

For this task you will need:

• Your base map

• A piece of plain paper.

• Your list of desired elements (that have passed the Permaculture test of ethical and multi-use)

• Pencil

• Scissors

• 30cm/1ft Ruler

• Ideally if you can tracing paper.

• The grid paper in the download section to your right. Print it off.

Gather them now .

Ready?

Now; Draw on the squared paper, the images of your desired elements from above. Eg.

• shapes for raised beds (rectangle, spiral, round)

• circles for each tree (diameter of the circle = diameter of tree at max width)

• smaller circles for fruit shrubs

• A rectangle for a picnic bench, or hen pen

• a square for a beehive

• patio shape

• fire circle shape with seating

BUT DRAW THEM ALL TO SCALE!

So the picnic bench rectangle may be 1.5cm long x .8cm wide on your drawing (if your scale is 1cm:1m)

A tree crown from above, depending on the ultimate size of the tree species you are thinking could be a circle of .5cm for a shrub, to a 5cm diameter circle, for a big full grown tree.

Once you have drawn images of all the elements you listed, to the same scale as your base plan, you can cut them out.

You now have

1. base plan to rough scale and shape, with observations noted.

2. Icons, cut out, of your elements.

Now, remembering how to place elements onto your design to ensure you consider:

1. efficient zoning (how far from you, 0-5?)

2. networking (how the elements relate to each other, should something be near water, or compost pile?)

3. sectoring (think about effects off and onto your land, can you put your fire pit there or will smoke blow across the main road? etc.)

4. elevation (think about slope, should I put something that needs to be used up a hill at the bottom?)

Place your cut-outs on your base plan, and slide about your cut-outs until you are happy with a design. This is very pleasurable. Don't worry about getting a final design yet, you are experimenting. Treat it like a game of chess, lay it out and make a move, leave it and come back to it. Re-check the board with new eyes. Move something somewhere better. Leave it out for the family or other users to comment and move things around. You can photo each 'possibility' so that you can come back to it if you don't like a subsequent idea.

Exercise:

Watch the video first, take a look at the diagram (you can download a copy from the downloads box to the right).

Where are you in the SADIME process now would you say, and how is the above concept useful to inform your next steps? You can answer in the comments below and see where your course colleagues are in the process too!