A Brief Intro into Permaculture
I have a little change in genre coming up for The Roving Root. While I will maintain the shop, albeit in a smaller scale, I am shifting focus to my true passion, gardening. I am a huge advocate for the very best stewardship of the earth, and I want to help people create beautiful and productive gardens. As such, I delved into researching and dabbling in Permaculture practices in my own garden, with the intent to share my findings with the broader public in a tangible, design-related way, soon.
You may have heard the terms Permaculture, Food Forest, and/or Agroforestry floating around the ether lately. These are not new terms: Permaculture was officially labeled in the 1970’s by two Aussies (Bill Mollison and David Holmgren) as a small-scale, integrative farming system with focuses on sustainability and social justice. (Companion planting is a relative under the umbrella of these juggernauts.)
While the term was only coined in the 1970’s, permaculture as a human-driven farming practice has existed for thousands of years, and food forests have existed in nature since before recorded history.
When food forests are human-planned, the goal is to be as self-sustaining a system as the natural ones; to copy nature’s existing designs, with an added focus of meeting human needs. Nature uses every ounce of space, both horizontally and vertically. Permaculture and food forests seek to do the same, integrating plant and animal species that are useful to humankind.
Permaculture is essentially a human dissection and labeling of naturally occurring designs and practices so that they can be recreated within the human context. There are commonly seven described layers of canopy in food forests (up to nine if you count the fungi and microbiome in the soil): 1. the overstory tree; 2. the understory tree; 3. the shrub; 4. the herbaceous layer; 5. the root; 6. the groundcover; and 7. the vine.
The above information sort of makes it sounds like one would need a lot of property to implement these practices, but some form of permaculture can exist in spaces as small as a few pots on a balcony. Picture the tiny self-sustaining terrariums with mosses and lichens and the like inside a sealed glass environment. While that particular system does not provide tangible harvests for humans (I am not including mental health benefits, which are to be lauded), it encapsulates the idea: a self-sustaining system does not require massive square footage, and permaculture will meet you wherever you are and with whatever you have to give.
The most important need of the permaculture system is some outdoor space. Permaculture is not meant to be indoor gardening: it demands interaction with wildlife populations: insects, birds, micro-organisms in the soil. It is also meant to be a socially engaging process, at least in part: neighbors walking by may be interested in knowing more about what you are doing in your garden; communities can get involved in public permaculture gardens.
The best way to get started on your permaculture journey is to get started! Check out books from the library, hop on the interwebs and ask your Buy Nothing groups for divisions of indigenous plants like native grasses, asters, milkweed, goldenrod; ask, too, for a few strawberry divisions and some comfrey. Drop by your local nursery and check the sale bin (especially around the fall) for fruiting shrubs like blueberries, cranberries, and gooseberries; splurge on a young apple or cherry tree.
If you are design-driven, consider the colors and textures when picking out your plants, in addition to the heights filled above and below ground.
And if you are simply overwhelmed, but would like to join the permaculture echelon, drop me a line, I can help you get started!
Do stay tuned for more information about how I can help you create a pocket of permaculture in your own garden, no matter how big or small.
Sources for some of the fact-y tidbits:
https://holmgren.com.au/permaculture/about-permaculture/
https://schoolofpermaculture.com/permaculture-tip-day-7-layers-forest/