I'm extremely proud to announce that we're running this beautiful program again this year, which we created with our dear friend, student, teacher, and inspiration, Hanna Read of Art of Health Massage. This year, we even have a few new tricks and ideas in store!
When you apply good Permaculture design to the garden, you get a garden that nurtures you back holistically, that's easier, makes sense in your life, and also cares for the world around you.
So what we wanted to find out was: What do you get when you apply that same design process to home herbalism?
The answer: This program, a course of learning adventures to build knowledge, build your own valuable home apothecary, start a collection of medicinal plants that work for your own situation, and establish a real meaningingful practice of things you will actually USE.
Adventures? Each interactive class is organized around a series of of them. Every session, we'll go foraging for the best locally-available herbs, do a tea tastings, learn about seasonal herb-gardening in our diverse herb garden, and create some herbal remedies, which you'll take home.
Swag? Of course! In Permaculture terms, our goal is always to go beyond education to help you invest in "regenerative assets," actual items of value. In this program, you'll take home seeds from many medicinal species (when you need to plant them,) medicinal plants, and remedies including herbal teas, oils, vinegars, salves, bitters, recpies, and even our own herb-infused lotion we're very proud of.
(Well, *cool apothecary cabinet not included)
Each class will contain a component on research-based plant knowledge, foraging, gardening, sourcing, and processing. We'll start with strong basic foundations, break down the material into accessible chunks, and build up over time, with each class building on what we learned the previous session. For example, over the course we'll dry herbs that will go into an oil, that we'll use for a salve, that we'll use to make a lotion, so you'll practice the basic skills that build up to more advanced processing!
Here's a basic schedule of our curriculum, including notes on he processing topics, which leads you through what we consider the most common and important uses:
May: Introduction, Foundations and Spring Cleaning (Tonics, pestos, drying, teas, infusions and decoctions.)
June: "Let food by thy medicine." Cooking with herbs, oils, vinegars, bitters, foraged superfoods.
July: Wounds and Healing: Electuaries, salves, poultices, etc.
August: Skin, hair, beauty. Balms, butters, creams, lotions, etc.
Sept: Winter wellness. Fermenting, more tincturing.
And of course, the whole adventure takes place in our garden, with hundres of species of plants, inspired by the medieval Jardin de Cure, a traditional form of holistic herb garden or physic garden, which we think is a pretty cool place to learn about herbalism.
"You can solve all the world's problems in a garden."
- Geoff Lawton, The Permaculture Research Institute
RELATED VIDEO: Permaculture ideas for positive direct action!
Hot enough for ya? If not, just wait: According to NASA 2014, 2015, and 2016 were each consecutively the hottest years on record globally, and 2017 was the hottest year on record without an El Nino, coming in second after 2016. Already, 2018 is looking like it will be a contender.
This next couple of paragraphs are the bummer part, so first: LOOK! A BUNNY!
Of course, it would be nice if heat was the only problem. But no, the real problems caused by climate change will be ecosystem collapse, breakdown of the farming and food systems, increased disease and human health impacts, larger storms, more wildfires, potentially increased earthquakes and volcanic activity from ice melts, sea-level rise, refugee migrations caused by famine, drought, and flooding, and a whole host of secondary and tertiary affects that will be felt first and most profoundly by the globally disadvantaged. And, as researchers get a better picture of what our climate future will look like, they're increasingly predicting the most dire scenarios, unless bold dramatic action is taken immediately. Many researchers are now talking seriously of predictions of dire civilization-shaking consequences as early as 2030.
But for those of us who garden, we don't need NASA to tell us climate change is in full swing. In my biome of S.W. Michigan, an unusually brutal winter of temperature fluctuations between hot and cold left plants and ecologies reeling, then record flooding, followed by Spring starting a month late, and then going straight into more 90 degree days here than we typically average in a whole summer - and it's not yet June! Meanwhile, gardening and farming fora are filled with posts about increased pest problems, and scientific journals and extensions are noting climate-related spread of new pests each season. Others are widely reporting plagues of mosquitos and ticks. While it's hard to directly blame the whole of this on climate change, all of this is exactly the sort of thing predicted to result from climate change.
Meanwhile, political solutions don't seem forthcoming. The best chance we have is the Paris accord, which doesn't remotely go far enough to prevent the worst-case scenarios from still occurring, and places what even this environmentalist has to acknowledge are unrealistic and likely impossible burdens on the US.
However, there is good news. We each have the potential to respond in a way that is powerful and life-enhancing.
And there is still hope - if we stop waiting for politicians and start taking direct action.
While many poo poo the possibility of direct action, hoping instead to channel energy into their political candidate or cause, we know a few things for certain:
1. The consumer economy is driving the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
2. When the consumer economy falters, greenhouse gasses go down.
And 3, as "industry murdering" Millennials have proven time and time again, consumption choices are powerful and can have a direct effect on stunting and crashing corporations and industries.
And to the extent that it is itself sustainable, and it effects our spending and the spending of others, what we do in the garden can be a truly powerful, multi-pronged way to meaningfully address climate change.
As a mode of climate resistance, gardening offers two main benefits:
Resistance & Resilience
First, a garden offers us a meaningful way to act against climate change and the host of other negatives associated with "public/private" fascism. We'll start by talking about the mechanisms, then we'll get into the methods we can each use to make our home gardens, farms and public landscapes more effective tools in fighting climate change!
Resistance
1. Starve the beast. As stated above, the 1 million articles about Millenials killing industries proves that our consumer choices DO have a powerful impact. And Permaculture co-founder David Holmgren dug into the numbers to demonstrate that it is indeed possible to mitigate or even reverse climate change via consumption changes alone. But let's be clear, not every garden is a climate-fighting endeavor. Some gardens are demonstrably worse than driving a Hummer! The change we need to make to be effective is to replace consumption of corporate food and materials with those grown sustainably closer to home.
2. Reduce, reuse recycle. These are still powerful modes of reducing consumption and thus greenhouse gas emissions. Gardens give us a chance to do all three, through growing food, providing recreation at home, repurposing household items into garden-wares, and mulching and composting.
3. Protect wildlife habitat and biodiversity. One of the biggest problems with climate change is that it will further contribute to the ongoing mass extinction event underway. It's extremely powerful for us to use our landscapes to provide a sanctuary for wildlife, insects, and endangered plants. Again, not every garden does this. In fact, many gardens are war zones against biodiversity!
4, Sequestering carbon. A garden can be designed to actually directly fight climate change by sequestering carbon in the soil and in plant tissues.
5. Catching and infiltrating water. Another indirect effect of climate change is that it will contribute to further depleting our aquifers. While many gardens waste water for irrigation and fancy ornamental water features, gardens CAN be designed to catch water and get it back into the aquifer.
6. A garden CAN reduce our burden on the food system, which will be increasingly fragile as climate change continues.
7. Decrease suffering for as many as possible, and increase happiness for as many as possible, for as long as possible. Even if we can't stop climate change, we can use our gardens as a sanctuary habitat for humans and non-humans alike, and model for others how to better thrive in challenging times, because gardens can be important sources of resilience.
Resilience
1. Moderate climate around the home, providing cool in summer, warmth in the winter, and shelter in increasingly harsh storms.
2. Help us withstand shocks to the food and water system.
3. Provide recreation and stress relief during times of stress and disruption.
4. Help us to grow social capital and community cohesiveness.
Tips and Techniques:
But in these regards, not all gardens are created equal. In fact, some may actually achieve quite the opposite effect. So here are some tips and techniques we've used and recommend to make our gardens into powerhouses of climate change resistance and resilience:
1. Grow food. Even in ornamental landscapes. Because our food system is arguably the #1 cause of climate change, and our traditional landscapes (especially lawns) are another major driver, using food plants to reform our landscape strikes to the core of climate change. While any garden that reduces lawn is likely a step in the right direction, and native plant gardens may provide increased biodiversity, a food garden reduces our consumption and reliance on the systems that are the leading cause of climate change. This does not necessarily mean having a traditional "food garden," which may actually deplete soil carbon, waste fertilizer and fossil fuels, and reduce biodiversity, but a well designed garden that integrates food plants can be especially powerful. Perennial edibles and no-till systems are two great ways to improve garden sustainability and performance. Perennial systems like edible hedgerows, edible prairies, coppices, and forest gardens may be the easiest and most climate-positive forms of garden we can grow. Every landscape should include some of these!
2. Grow fertility, healthy soil, and simultaneously sequester carbon. If we want to get serious about sequestering carbon, we need to have a plan to stop importing fertility and start growing it on site. When we import fertilizers, we're depleting non-renewable resources, and when we import compost, we're depleting carbon from someplace else, while adding to greenhouse gas pollution via shipping. Growing our own fertility ensures that we're actually sequestering carbon, reducing our overall greenhouse gas footprint, and our healthy soils will help take better care of our crops. A few key ways to grow fertility include: deep mulch gardening with home-grown mulch-maker plants, perennial fertility strips, edible hedgerows and other agroforestry systems, nitrogen fixing plants, and wetland or water gardens. Everyone should be composting, and some of the easiest methods for home-owners include sheet-composting, and trench composting, which do not require maintaining a pile or carting compost around the yard. Grow Bio-intensive is a method based on growing fertility using annual crops in the garden.
3. Grow some native plants. Native plants may provide better wildlife habitat and protect biodiversity, which research shows will increase the health of your garden and crop plants. This does not mean that your grandpa's daylilies or your aunt Petunia's petunias have to go, or that you've got to ditch the tomatoes. There's no proven benefit to growing ONLY native plants, but there are proven benefits to including them. In fact, because climates and soils have changed, in many regions "native" plants may be more difficult to grow in our modern non-native soils and climates, which may require measures that waste resources, pollute carbon and harm ecosystem biodiversity. Many native-only gardens also leave the human inhabitants reliant on the destructive food system. Meanwhile, some of the best native plants to grow are edible, and some of the best fruits and vegetables are natives! In my region, that includes paw paws, persimmons, currants, jersusalem artichokes, varieties of alliums, and many, many others.
4. Include wildlife habitat like rockeries, wood piles, unmown grasses, and messy garden areas. These will increase biodiversity, protect climate-threated wildlife, and attract beneficial organisms that help keep the garden healthy.
5. Have a design to catch and store the water on your site and use it wisely. Permaculture design is a great resources, since it starts with treating water as a "mainframe element" and teaches that we have an ethical obligation to constructively treat the water that falls on our properties. This also includes a plan for water-wise gardening, so that we can be responsible in how we use water, too. I recommend Toby Hemenway's 5-fold water wise gardening plan, as described in Gaia's Garden.
(Water designs at L.H.)
6. Use recycled materials in the garden whenever possible, instead of buying new.
7. Avoid manufactured concrete, cement, and faux brick landscaping products, as the concrete industry is one of the leading causes of carbon pollution, and shipping further contributes to the footprint. In fact, concrete is so unsustainable, that it needed its own number. Recycled concrete, or "urbanite," can be both aesthetically and ethically beautiful.
8. Avoid the use of plastic materials and plastic landscape fabrics. Not only do these contribute to climate change in their manufacture and shipping process, they also are quickly becoming the leading cause of plastic pollution of water and soil. Plastic in food production systems has been found to contaminate food at unhealthy levels.
9. Start exploring no-till gardening. This won't necessarily work for every crop, or every ornamental in every garden or landscape. However, there ARE plenty of crops that will actually grow better and with less labor and cost, when grown in no-till systems. You might not be able to replace the entire farm or garden with no-till right away, but you might be able to start saving time, and soil carbon, by figuring out how and where no-till will work for you.
10. Utilize the power of biodiversity, Biodiversity will increase the health and resilience of your plants, while also assisting wildlife and threatened plants. Having a variety of crops will mean you're protected against crop losses, pest issues and extreme weather events in a changing climate. Again, perennial edibles and perennial systems like hedgerows and forest gardens may be the superstars of a climate resilient garden, as they build up energy and store it over many years, and have deep roots to pump water, they may be less susceptible to all forms of extreme weather.
So, that is our checklist of tips and techniques to make the most of the climate-resistance garden. Am I missing anything? What steps are you taking? Leave a comment below, or share on social media by visiting us on Facebook.
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If you would like to learn more about climate resistance gardening, water harvesting, no-till gardening, growing fertility, perennial vegetables and growing systems, or see these techniques in action, consider joining us for this special event. We'll be offering this event twice this summer, on June 7th, from 2:30 pm - 5, and again on August 11th from 9:00am - noon.
(Edible Forest Garden at Lillie House, filled with food, flowers and medicinal and culinary herbs.)
Nature is calling us home, and people all over the world feel it, the urge to reconnect with their landscapes in a more meaningful way than the endless struggle against lawn and weeds. And the forest garden - a designed ecosystem filled with ripe fruits, lush vegetables, craft materials and medicine that integrates native plants and wildlife habitat - is the ideal representation of our rightful human relationship with the world, cultivating the wild, working with ecosystems to meet our needs instead of reaping them for profit or spraying them with poisons: nurturing all the beings around us while rewarding ourselves and our families.
Building on the improvements of the "native plants movement," the "wild" landscaping, and then post-wild landscaping paradigms, permaculture-designed forest gardening not only preserves and increases biodiversity, but it also maximizes the potential to create habitat for pressured wildlife, catches, cleans and infiltrates water, dramatically reduces (if not eliminates) our dependence on finite petrochemicals, and sequesters more carbon! Most importantly, it reduces our negative ecological, climate and social impact by helping us grow some of our own food, in the easiest way possible. Moreover, scientists tell us we need to maximize forests if we want to reduce the impacts of climate change. And so the "food forest" has arrived as the new model for the ideal eco-friendly, conscientious landscape design.
(London Glades forest garden, which won top honors for future-friendly gardening at the prestigious Hampton Court Flower Show.)
Forest gardening is now widely being called "the oldest human landuse" by academics across many disciplines, with traditional systems across Europe being recognized as important elements of national culture and heritage. But while the western world had largely forgotten these systems, Indigenous communities around the world, especially in the tropics, have kept these systems alive as vital lifelines and important resources. In fact, modern researchers are documenting how these systems allow human societies to harvest the energy of "ecosystem services" in ways that decrease poverty, lessen oppression, mitigate the human impact on wildlife and biodiversity, provide community resilience and autonomy, reduce work hours, and enhance public health (McConnel, Goutum, United Nations, etc.). It was these systems that inspired the first modern Western forest gardens, especially that of Robert Hart.
Slowly at first, starting with the earliest visitors to Robert Hart's forest garden in Shropshire, this most modern/most ancient form of landscape captured people's imaginations: to live surrounded by a landscape of bountiful food, regulated by natural ecosystem services. And then they began to spread like wildfire, with models springing up in cities throughout the western world.
(The famous Pensioner's Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, top honors, modelled after a traditional English form of forest garden.)
Their influence began to be felt in the world of high landscape design as post-wild, naturalistic landscapers began including more edibles into their work, creating little edible ecosystems that were - in a sense - already forest gardens.
(Food, medicine, comfort, nature...)
Quickly, the idiom became a dominant force in aesthetic garden design with the famous Pensioner's garden at the Chelsea flower show. This now-famous garden, modelled after the traditional "cottage garden" cultural icon - recognized as a form of forest garden integrating food, flowers, teas, medicines together in a half-wild natruralistic planting - stoked the fires of the public imagination world wide.
(Kate Frey, ornamental agro-ecology with fruits like polarded grapes, vegetables, herbs, and flowers.)
The forest gardens kept coming as designers like Kate Frey also took top honors the Chelsea Flower Show, perhaps the world's most prestigious garden competition, with a naturalistic ecosystem of edible plants, wild medicines, and wildlife habitat in a low-maintenance assembly that has been described as an unofficial forest garden. The edible ecological gardens she's gone on to design have been excellent models for what post-wild edible landscaping could achieve in terms of beauty and comfort.
(London Glades, photo via the Telegraph)
And now, the London Glades, an official forest garden, designed with the Permaculture system, has won a gold medal at the Hampton Court Palace flower show, another of the world's most prestigous competitions! And, at first glance, they nailed it! This is a beautiful example of the form. Of course, there's more to a forest garden than beauty, and I would need to look over goals, production objectives, required inputs, desired uses, plant selections and so on, to really know if this is a great forest garden. But, since forest gardens are really about meeting specific needs, and I beleive the primary objective here was beauty, then I think this is a wonderful example. To find out more, view plans and see some mock-ups, visit: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/london-glades.
(London Glades, Telegraph.)
The time of forest gardens as an aesthetic medium has come, for any community-minded, conscientous people who want to reconnect with nature while doing one of the single most important things they can do to reduce their negative climate, ecological and social impact. In a world where political solutions seem hard-won and often ephemeral, this is a source of hope, a form of direct cultural transformation we can take action on right outside our door, at our place of work, at an empty lot or bike-trail near our homes....
(Aesthetic home forest garden at Lillie House.)
And finally, a small community of aesthetic-minded gardeners have been working to refine the aesthetics, functionality and comfort of these gardens to move them beyond mere low-maintenance food gardens, but to make models for truly attractive, viable gardens for the home, business or public landscape. Indeed, at Lillie House, we take pride in matching forest garden designs to the architecture, community character and "genii loci" of each place, such as our front yard Jardin de Cure modelled after a historically-acurate style of garden that was popular when our house was built!
(Jardin de Cure, another traditional European forest garden with ancient origins.)
If you would like to visit us here and experience a few different models for what a home forest garden can be like, feel free to send us an email at lillie.house.kzoo@gmail.com or connect with us on Facebook. We have an Introduction to Forest Gardening class coming up on Sunday, August 20th, and may schedule another session for a weeknight around that time.
(Our neighbors - Lillie House is nearby the A.M. Todd Mint flavoring facility in Kalamazoo, and we sometimes enjoy the aroma of "stepping into a York peppermint patty" from our garden.)
Did you know that 90% of the world's mint used to come from a small area around Kalamazoo?
That's right! We were once the mint capital of the world! Farmers here used to grow mint right out in the ground like maniacs, first in burr oak openings and later as an alternating perennial crop in farm fields, especially in our Kalamazoo mucky soils, often in the same fields as our famous celery (Kalamazoo was also famously once the celery capital of the world, and is still sometimes called "Celery City.")
But wait - how could we possibly have grown anything BUT mint, I mean, once that "ultra-invasive rampant jerk of a plant" mint got established?!
(MSU - A mint field in early stage of estblishing root cuttings.)
That's right, I'm on about "weeds" and "invasives" again, one of my favorite topics. Listening to the quivering fear in people's voices as they talk about the dangers of The Herb That Shall Not Be Named, or the stern disapproval of gardeners who say it is simpy "wrong" to plant any mints in any garden - EVER - I'm left wondering how we managed to grow celery or anything else ever since around here, if we had this "impossible-to-get-rid-of" bully of an invader growing in all the fields all around us.
What's even stranger is that as an avid forager and hiker who's spent the last 5 years trucking through the region's thickets, old fields, deep woods, open trails, and every other possible ecology - including old mint fields - I've never once seen this "invasive" growing as an escapee in our region in the wild! If the conventional wisdom I often hear about this plant were even half true, then how could this possibly be?!
We'll get back to mint in a minute, but first: Have you ever noticed that in Asia, there are plants other than bamboo? Again, considering the utter scornful condemnation of any gardener who'd dare to plant any bamboo in their Michigan garden, I'm left wondering how any other plants manage to exist anywhere in asia. In fact, as pointed out by Toby Hemenway in Gaia's Garden, people in many folk or indigenous communties in Asia would be surprised to hear that there's anything wrong with the plant at all.... The same goes for other "Verboten" plants in their home regions, where they're arguably most adapted to thrive: culinary mints, oregano and thyme in the Mediterranean region, sumac, poke and brambles in North America, garlic mustard in the British Isles, and so on.
Now, before a gaggle of gardeners hunt me down and force me to wear the scarlet "W," let me emphasize that caution is called for. While I'm the kind of guy who plants mints as part of a rotation in my garden beds, I'm also quick to caution people against planting specimens (like seedling hardy kiwi and vinca minor) that could become a management nuisance, could escape into nearby woods, or get them in trouble with their neighbors. And when I create landscapes for clients, I always assess how much time they have and how much they will be able to spend gardening and I never plant anything that I think could get out of their control. I do NOT adise most people to plant mint or bamboo in their gardens without a thick soil barrier preventing their spread.
But the point I'm trying to make is about our mindset on "weeds" and "invasives," which isn't really helpful to gardeners or to the supposedly "wild" ecosystems we often spray into oblivion in a tissy over "weeds."
There are of course plants that were imported to North America that really did become widespread, to the detriment of native ecologies and plants. The most obvious cases are the non-native grasses we use in our lawns, and the dandelions that go with them. And in this case, it is now commonly believed that is the change in land management systems (from grazing and burning to mowing) that is responsible for the domination of non-native grasses - in other words, the plant spreading wasn't the problem, Europeans spreading was. But most often, like mint, these plants have more bark than bite.
In this fascinating MSU article on historic mint farms in S.W. Michigan they discuss the need to either replant the field every few years, alternate crops or let the field fallow, because every few years the populations would decline. Culinary mint plants are cultivated by root cuttings, are largely sterile and rarely set seed, so when a plant spreads in your garden it is all the same plant, with the same root system, and - such is life - everything eventually gets sick and declines, everything dies. Even mint.
(My standard summer beverage, mint water with a splash of orange bitters.)
Like any other biological organism on this planet, mint, bamboo, and probably most other plants fingered as "invaders" all have their evolved niche, their roles in the process of "ecological succession," the process whereby nature transforms lawn gradually into an old growth forest. Each species may have its day as king, but it will be replaced as other tougher plants move in and the system naturally grows towards its "climax" as a mature forest, with greater diversity. Then, even the dominant climax ecology, the forest, is no longer deemed permanent, but just another ephemeral community, taking its time in the light until lightning, fire, humans or some other "disturbance" inevitably removes the woods and restarts the process of succession. This gives us an opportunity to solve weed problems by working with this natural process. We can "weed" our garden with our minds.
So it seems to me that the problem very often is not with the plants, but in our thinking and interactions with them. The problem isn't in our gardens, but in our heads, where the thought of a single plant getting "out of place" is an affront to our sense of control. Change is painful. We want our gardens to be "perfect," locked in time, never growing or changing, or getting old. But nature wants the system to mature....
One of the most rewarding things I've learned from Permaculture is to let go of that control, and hand over the steering wheel to mother nature. She knows where she wants to go (ecological succession, greater diversity, more energy) but she's quite happy to take suggestions about how to get there (like which species to include, how much to "produce") so long as we're moving in her direction. What I've come to recognize is that often, my preconceived ideas about what's productive or aesthetic (like what "belongs" in a garden, or what's "native") don't really serve me or the ecosystem. And it feels particularly awe-inspiring to sit as just another individual co-creator in a dynamic evolving space that is "our garden," instead of a strange, sterile incarnation of my own neurosis imposed on the landscape. And it feels nice to look around my garden and see beautiful, helpful plants, each filling exactly the niche it evolved to fill, and doing exactly the job that I should expect it to, instead of seeing hated invaders and enemies.
If you're looking to recover from your own weed-neurosis, here are a few Lillie House articles that might help you learn to seek a functional balance with your weeds, a perspective that I've learned from studying Permaculture and ecology.
Look: this is a picture of a vegetable at war with the lawn.
Given all the attention around the "food not lawns" movement, you might think I'm being metaphorical. But an experienced gardener will understand that the veggie patch is ALWAYS fighting a war for survival against lawn and "quack grass" greedily trying to take over any bit of land it can get access to.
"I've lost my garden completely to quack grass!!!"is one of the most common tales of garden woe, and usually the only recourse is to completely start over.
But LOOK AGAIN: Here, it is the grass that's on the run! This spunky veg, with no help from the gardener, is actually winning the war. More importantly, this hardy specimen is holding the line, protecting the more easily overrun vegetables behind it. This is what some Permaculturists call a "fortress plant." Best of all, it's perennial vegetable, sorrel, meaning that once it is established it will come back each year, working to keep weeds out of the garden for years to come. This is one of several tools derived from the study of ecology and natural succession that clever gardeners can use to keep grasses and other weeds at bay. But you can't just plant sorrel in your garden and expect not to have any weeds. To work well, we need to understand and apply the ecological principle behind how it works and design with that in mind.
(Another combo of fortress plants that has the grass on the run.)
It wasn't hard to convince myself that pouring a glass of home-grown elderberry-wine sangria and plopping a couple ice cubes in it would be the only possible way to visualize this. Now, staring at that ice cube it's still hard for me to imagine a wall of ice a mile high. But 10,000 years ago, that's what we had right here in parts of Michigan. In fact, as recently as 9,000 years ago most - if not all- of Michigan was under ice. When the ice melted and the water cleared what was left was a blank slate, in ecological terms a "disturbance," ready for mother nature to go to work repairing.
But she couldn't just jump in with the ramps, morels and and solomon's seal that characterize mature woodlands, because they need the rich, deep fungal duff found in the mature forests of Michigan. She had to start with plants that could get a toehold into this "blank slate, with little organic matter or fertility to help out. This gradual process of transformation that occurs after disturbance is called "succession," and that's what we're interested in when it comes to weeds.
Depending on the soil, the ecological history of the site, and other factors, a typical process of succession starts with the small, quick plants that evolved to cover poor "new" soils with little organic matter or easily digestible nutrition, like mosses and lichens. As these die back they enrich the soil with carbon and other nutrients, essentially adding "compost" to the soil and making it accessible to an increasing diversity of organisms. After a while of this composting, grasses and other "pioneer" weeds come in covering the land and playing their role in repairing the disturbance, creating a grassland. Over time, broadleaf plants like dandelions outcompete the grasses, making room for woody perennials to move in, creating a shrub field, then a savannah, then an open woodland, and finally coming to "climax" at a dark, dense mature forest.
(A forest edge imitates this process, gradually advancing on the grassland.)
So, to nature, "weeds" grasses, and even non-native grasses have a role in ecosystems and a place in the process of ecological succession. In a natural system, their time is fleeting, doing their job, then slowly phasing out of dominance, eventually becoming rare in landscapes they had once dominated as they are replaced by the species that evolved to succeed them. This is why there are rarely many grasses or dandelions in a mature forest, and when they're present they are in balance, not dominating the other plants.
But in a conventional garden we're constantly setting the ecological clock back every time we till or weed the garden, recreating the "disturbance" that is the promised land of the very grasses and pioneer "weeds" we're trying to get rid of! This is a system designed to fail!
From a Permaculture approach, a better way to keep grasses and other "weeds" from taking over the garden is imitate the process of succession. Author Toby Hemenway called this "fast forwarding to a later stage of succession" beyond the stage where these "weeds" necessarily reign.
As it turns out, this "mid-succession" state, where grasses and early pioneers have started to naturally cede territory to a greater diversity of herbaceous plants, woody shrubs and early pioneer trees, is the ideal natural habitat for most of our favorite food plants. The soil is rich with organic matter and fertility. A variety of sun-shade habitats provides niches for many plants. Most (but not all) of our veggies can easily find a home in such an ecosystem, and most of our fruit trees are mid pioneers, happiest in such a situation. In nature, this situation is found at the forest edge, where the forest is spreading out converting grassland, and in old-fields and savannah systems.
This is one reason why a well-designed forest garden works so well: it creates a variety of habitats all hovering somewhere around this mid-succession sweet spot.
(An agro-ecosystem that imitates the mid-succession sweet spot.)
And Fortress Plants are just one great hack that food and ornamental gardeners alike can use to tap into this process.
The term "Fortress Plant" is not an ecological term, but rather a handy catch phrase for the various mid-succession pioneers that are adapted to reach out into grassland and begin converting it to forest, through competition, shade and allelopathy (chemicals secreted by one plant to poison its competition.)
So one fortress specimen alone will almost certainly be overrun. But if we can plant these perennial pioneers together with enough density to mimic the spreading pattern of succession, we have a chance at making a garden that is fairly resistant to grass and weed pressures, yet provides ideal habitat to our favorite fruits and veggies.
(An edible hedgerow on the march, converting grassland just like a natural forest edge.)
A final caveat is that different soils require different fortress plant communities, so this strategy takes some experimentation. My recommendation is to use high diversity and high density, giving nature the tools she needs to solve the problem on the soils at hand.
Starter List of Recommended Potential Fortress Plants
Relatively Low Herbaceous Perennials Idea for the Garden Edges
Most woody perennial herbs, depending on soil (better on sandy soil.)
comfrey, pretty much everywhere
sorrel and blood-veined sorrel
turkish rocket
cardoon
most spring ephemeral bulbs including daffodils and alliums (though the effect is stronger at greater densities and with other plants)
over-wintering annual ephemerals like chickweed, dead-nettle, wild mustards and wild cresses
the monardas
fennel (again, this is probably a weeker effect on most sites, but it has good research proving its allelopathic influence.)
Taller Fortress Plants Often Observed at the Edges of a Forest
And this is just one of many tools that gardeners and farmers can use to put the process of ecological succession to work for them. The strategy gets even better when combined with other succession-mimicking hacks, like "nurse logs," another research-based approach to fast-forwarding succession. At Lillie House, these three factors are often seen working together.
To get a fuller understanding of what these ecological mechanisms are and how they can easily be applied in the garden, we hope you'll join us for this year's Complete Forest Gardening Course, where you can see how these patterns are applied and managed over the course of a growing season, here at lillie House.
These days, the "new" wisdom is that - 100, 400, 1,000 - "you can't plant too many fruit trees!"
Not surprisingly, this advice most often gets repeated by nursery businesses that sell fruit trees. And as a guy with a small nursery business, sure, I agree with it, but I add a HUGE caveat: it depends on what kind of tree you're planting.
The problem is fruit trees are work.
Work, work, work!
If you buy a bunch of fruit trees, you're buying yourself a bunch of work!
So I break down trees into how much work -time, energy and care - they require to produce a yield: "Intensive" trees, that require a lot of work, "Extensive," which produce fruit with almost no care, and "Semi-Intensive" that are somewhere in the middle.
The important thing here is the "Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility." Up to a point, having more fruit is GREAT!
But after that point, the value of each fruit diminishes as you add more. One apple tree can provide a family with most of the fresh apples they'll eat, plus some for gifts, trade with neighbors and cooking or storing. Having a few apple trees means the family will have to spend some serious time doing orchard work, and probably have to use chemical means to maintain their fruit, but if they work hard they can be completely self-sufficient on fruit. Beyond that, they'll have to put time and energy into an orchard business, or else they'll have a massive mess of rotting apples and wasps, create disease and pest problems for their neighbors. Still more trees? Now you HAVE to use chemicals, manage a labor force, advertise and market your apples, find shipping, purchase insurance for crop failures.... Still MORE? Now there's a glut in the market and each new apple - and the time you spent growing it - is worth less and less.
Looking at historic sources, old-time homesteaders understood this very well! It was the standard recommendation that - unless you wanted to run a full-time orchard - each family had a few fruit trees, depending on what worked best in the region. Beyond that, more fruit meant more work with less and less to show for it! In our region it was common for each family to have a workhorse apple, usually a cooker/keeper, possibly a pear, or maybe a cherry or two. A few berry bushes rounded out the homestead fruit selection. This was the standard in England, too, where allotments and cottage gardens typically had a plum or cooking apple like the Bramley. Actually, this pattern looks very similar world wide.
But not all fruit and nut trees are equal in this regard. Some take more work than others. So, while a few too many "INTENSIVE" trees, like apples, can become a menace, it really is almost impossible to have too many "EXTENSIVE" trees like service berries. They produce wonderful fruit that's rarely buggy with almost no work. And if you don't harvest them, the birds will, so you won't end up with a stinky rotting mound of wasp food making the neighbors mad.
Keeping this in mind, a well-planned homestead will "bulk up" on "extensive" trees that will provide great benefits but won't become a burden, and have just a few, well-chosen "intensive" trees.
After reviewing historic and modern recommendations, here's how I'd break these down:
Intensive Fruit Trees (my recommendation, 0 - 2 per family, unless you're operating a pro orchard.)
First, you'll notice that I expanded beyond trees to include all fruiting woody perennials, because they'll give you fruit and add to your work, just like a tree! So, it's good to consider them together.
Only plant these if you really love the fruit and you're going to make a commitment to work for it. Not to be dogmatic or anything, but for most homes and home-owners they're more trouble than they're worth. If you really love them, go for it!
But let's face it, there are probably over a dozen apples and half dozen pear trees within a mile of your home that never get picked.
Since forest gardens rely on a no-spray regimen for their health and pest prevention, in the Great Lakes region, plan on bagging fruit from these trees to protect them from pests, by putting paper bags or "wedding favor" bags on the young fruit after pollination. They will also require pruning and other maintenance and may experience disease issues. Generally, I look for varieties selected for "no spray" or organic treatment. I also recommend dwarf varieties to make bagging and picking fruit easier. Apples European pears Plums Peaches Apricots Cherries
Semi-intensive (1- 4)
These options provide big, sweet, valuable fruit without such a problem with bugs. It's possible to get good, clean fruit without spraying or bagging. The biggest work problem with these after establishment is harvesting, and storage, which can become a burden. Asian pears Jujube (zone 7 and up) Persimmon (zone 7 and up) Nakita's gift persimmon (the only persimmon I can currently recommend for home owners in lower zones or areas further from the equator.) Cider and cooking apples and perry pears. (if you don't mind buggy fruit.) Quince (A known fireblight host, Aromatnaya's the only variety I recommend.)
High-value Extensive (Feel free to plant lots of these.) You almost can't plant too many of these. Where it seemed appropriate, I made recommendations to feed a family of 4. Having extra could provide the opportunity for trade, sales, or value-added products without creating a burden. These have almost 0 maintenance requirements and if they're not harvested they won't create a huge mess. Blackberry (Plant in an "island" where it can be maintained by mowing.) Raspberries (same as above.) Goumi ( 4 bushes) Elderberry (edible flowers and fruit.) Serviceberry Hardy kiwi (Issai only variety I recommend, 2 vines) Paw paws (3 - 4 trees) Honeyberry (5-10 bushes) Strawberries (25 plants) Aronia berries Nanking cherry (4-5 bushes) Medlar (1. Beautiful tree!) Mulberry (Illinois Everbearing. 1 tree.) Cornelian Cherry (2 bushes) Hazelnut bushes (look for selected varieties that are blight resistant and have large nuts.
Lower value extensive
These add diversity to a system, but are not highly recommended. Blueberry (valuable fruit, but yields suffer without spraying) Passionfruit Kousa dogwood (selected fruit varieties only, 1-2 trees. Beautiful.) Sasafras Linden (edible leaves) Toon tree (edible leaves) Staghorn sumac (edible "berries" for tea.) Wild cherries
Recommended Nut trees I made nuts their own category. Again, they are generally problem-free, but usually take work to process and store. They're also generally very large and only appropriate for the largest forest gardens. Gardens under an half-acre could look into duel-purpose trees, like Chinese Apricot, which produces an apricot and an almond all in one. Larger that an acre, large nut trees should probably part of your planting. I consider chestnuts particularly valuable for homesteaders and forest gardeners, not to mention cooks!
Black walnut. Valuable tree, difficult nuts to crack. Select easy-to-crack varieties. Carpathian walnuts. Pecans. Butternut. Heartnut. Hickory nuts. My favorites. Chestnuts. Staple carb crop highly recommended for larger gardens or forest systems. Korean pine. Monkey puzzle tree. Generally too large and slow-to-mature to recommend for forest gardens. But very valuable future crop.
What does it all mean?!?!
Well, putting that altogether, what would my recommendations for a tree planting look like? Let's start with a typical suburban lot between 1/10th of an acre and 1/4 of an acre. 1 clump of 3 paw paws. 2 Asian pears. 1 mulberry, Nakita's gift persimmon or medlar MAYBE 1 dwarf multi-graft apple or other intensive fruit tree. 5 or 6 "extensive" fruit bushes.
That collection would look very much like the 1/10th acre Holyoke Edible Forest Garden, one of the most famous forest gardens in America. It's interesting to note that a few years ago they blogged about removing all their "Intensive" fruits like apples and cherries, saying "it's not worth it!" and replaced them with asian pears, paw paws and persimmons.
(www.foodforestfarm.com)
With more land, I might add a few more "intensive" or "semi-intensive" trees, but mostly, I'd look to add more "extensives." Over a half-acre I would probably add large nut tree or two, and I'd fill in the understory with appropriate shade tolerant "extensives" like paw paw, elder and serviceberry.
Much beyond an acre, or possibly a few acres, we've really outgrown the idea of a "forest garden" and into the concepts of "managed forest," "agriforest systems" or Permaculture orchards. At that scale, keeping in mind the Permaculture concept of "zones," I would create a small garden just as above, and then for the rest of the land, I'd look to create a commercial orchard of some kind or an extensive forest of "extensive" fruit and nut trees with high-value wood.
Again, this arrangement describes and reflects much of the historical practices of land management prior to the age where fossil energy transformed our landscapes by making environmentally degrading practices cheap and easy. What worked well for people in the days prior to cheap energy is likely to work well for those of us who wish to lower our environmental impact, save money, and grow our food organically.
And remember, Permaculture starts with the ethic "people care," so if your planting creates a bunch of work for you, it's' not "people care," and it's not Permaculture!
If you've ever thought of starting a forest garden or food forest, we've got 2 days left to get the early registration price for our Community Supported Forest Gardening program for 2016. This program gives you everything you need to design, plan and implement your own forest garden project, including plants, design consultation, a complete course and a community of like-minded gardeners to learn with: https://lilliehousekzoo.wordpress.com/the-basic-home-garde…/
It also comes with complete access to our entire HUGE collection of perennial edibles, self-sowing vegetables and ideal forest garden plants. I'm especially proud of the course we put together for this program - it's going to be a great time, a great learning experience, and we're going to create some great forest gardens in the process.
A friend recently wrote to me, asking that question. I responded:
What would a sustainable city look like?
What would a healthy city look like, one that doesn't suffer from high rates of cancer, heart disease, digestive disorders, obesity and the other so called "diseases of civilization?"
What would a city look like without hunger? Pollution? Urban decay? War?
It's impossible to know, because in all of human history there has never been such a city. We have exactly 0 models to draw on in 10,000 years.
This can be a shocking realization for those of us who do our best to try to solve problems and make the world a better place.
In fact, all of those things, unsustainability, collapse, oppression and even slavery, social injustice, ecological collapse, pollution, war, exploitive relationship with nature... are part of the common definition of "agrarian civilization," the type of society that produces cities. Look it up on wikipedia, or elsewhere, and that's what you'll find as part of the basic definition.
You may also learn from a click or two on that wikipedia article that the scientists who study such things class human societies by their "intensivity," the input/output ratio (EROEI) of their most basic energy transaction, the production of their food. How much energy does it cost people to produce their energy? If you spend a LITTLE energy and get a LOT back, that's a good situation. If you spend a LOT and only get a LITTLE back, that situation isn't going to last long. And these researchers have documented a direct correlation between this ratio and all those things we see as "problems." From this perspective, they're not really issolated "problems," they're are "design trade-offs" or symptoms of the larger problem, which is the low EROEI of the way civilizations meet their needs.
(A Horticultural settlement, build with 1 year's sun energy from one small area.)
Hunter-gatherers have a very high EROEI, since they put very little energy IN to their system. So it's no coincidence that they also have the most egalitarian societies, and the lowest ecological impact, and the fewest "problems". Horticultural (forest gardeners) and Pastoral societies, are next on the list, putting in a little energy and getting a big return on that investment. They generally have fairly equitable cultures, few wars, great health, and very low environmental impact. Finally there's agrarian civilization, the farmers and city builders, which are called "intensive cultures." They put a lot of energy into their food production to get a small amount back, and this is where all these "problems" explode.
We're the most energy intensive society in the history of the planet, probably by 400 times. And so it may be that we're 400 times more destructive....
(How many years of sun energy did this take to build?)
I mean that literally. According to USDA research, American agriculture is approaching an EROEI of where we spend 400 calories for every 1 calorie of food we produce.
This high input problem creates an energy deficit which must be paid in some way, by something or someone. We "pay" with the "problems" above. We're literally just converting one form of energy to another.
And this is why all the attempts we've made for 10,000 years to "solve" the symptoms above without changing the underlying EROEI problem must be paid for by making another symptom worse. (meanwhile, there's general consensus based on historical evidence that changes in this basic EROEI have always automatically improved all of these "problems," but that's for a future blog.)
This is the basic question of our politics, choosing who will pay for our civilized society, the civilization tax.
For example, say we want to address social injustice at home. So, following the common logic used by Kalamazoo's elected officials, we use more fossil fuels to produce more economic growth and hence wealth, so there's more available for the underprivileged. Of course, we pay for this increased justice with faster climate change, ecosystem collapse and pollution.
Or perhaps we use slave energy from other countries to pay for increased social justice at home and pay with war, environmental degradation, etc.
Or we try to decrease climate change by using less fossil energy and we end up creating slower economic growth and thus increased social injustice, worse health, more hunger, etc. at home.
Or we attempt to replace fossil energy with nuclear, knowing that this will be paid for by some number of children getting cancer, and tolerating occasional catastrophic disaster.
Or we try to address hunger by intensifying the caloric output of our economy. We convert low calorie vegetable production to corn and beef, and we exacerbate the "diseases of civilization," destroy habitat and worsen ecosystem collapse and climate change.
Or we try to address all these problems domestically by oppressing people and ecosystems elsewhere.
Or we try to be more "sustainable," and pay for it like the fairly sustainable cities of ancient China did, through extreme injustice, oppression and poor health.
Worse still, when we spend energy to solve one of these symptoms as isolated problems, we add to the Energy Invested side of our society's operating budget, making all the problems worse.
So one conclusion we can draw is that we need to "go deep" with our efforts, cut to the true cause of the problems, this EROEI issue. This EROEI factor needs to be part of the discussion of all our attempts to create positive change.
But this is just one reason why all of our attempts to "solve" these "problems" for the last 10,000 years have failed. Another aspect of civilization's built-in conundrum is the design "trade-off" of hierarchy. Afterall, hierarchy, or the ability for some individuals to "outsource" the production of their basic necessities to allow for specialization, is the very point of agrarian civilization. The reality of that basic situation is that somebody is made to toil to meet everyone's needs, so that others get to spend their time making art, sitting at the heads of prestigious foundations, practicing "law," working in local government, or other such things that make cities happen. Notice that no farmer in history has ever had a statue made to honor him or her.
This situation is fundamentally inequitable and unjust, no matter how you choose who will pay that price.
But this means there's a built-in dis-incentive for those who are favored with privilege in such a system to change things. Those wealthy whites with power may complain about racism, the most dominant means of "choosing" the losers in American society, but replacing racism and plutocracy with meritocracy means condemning their children, their descendants to live without their privilege.
It's important for us to remember that the modern-day institution of the Foundation was not created to fix problems or right wrongs, but to establish a mechanism of protecting and conserving the "social order" that benefited the families of the wealthy. This was at a time of social uprising, when the wealthy had to convert just enough of their financial wealth into "social capital" to keep their own heads from rolling. They were created by the basic EROEI dynamic, are fed and rewarded by it - and the first goal of their foundations is to maintain that dynamic.
Or as musician, philanthropist and social critic Peter Buffett (who also happens to be the son of Warren Buffett) bravely puts it:
Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left.
If solving problems was really the goal, shouldn't the obvious solution be to just stop causing the problems? (By the way, I'll be writing more about Mr. Buffett's insightful Op Ed in the future.)
We have to recognize that we privileged Americans are no different than Peter and other wealthy folks. Virtually all of us "Liberal White Do-gooders" in what Peter calls the Charitable Industrial Complex have this same built-in conflict of interest. We all reap the privileges of a destructive oil economy, social injustice, cheap shoes made in Indonesian sweat shops.
So a second lesson is that we need to analyze where the benefits of our actions accrue, who our actions truly serve, and how we can ensure that we're really helping what we say we're helping, so that we're not just helping ourselves get our picture in the paper, a "Green-trepeneur of the year" statue for our mantle.
Good Permaculture design offers tools and solutions to help us design actions that are mindful of these two lessons: It always seeks to address this "Return on Energy Investment" issue of institutions, and it helps communities being served "Catch and Store" energy and income streams from aid projects.
Most importantly, it helps to create a new, lower EROEI system for meeting our needs, a system that will necessarily have fewer "problems," right underneath the failing existing system.
So, how should we spend our time? What kind of efforts should we invest in? What kind of actions should we support and how should we fund them?
Permaculture offers some very unexpected and interesting answers to these questions.
Very soon, I'll be sharing more about the practical specifics of using Permaculture to design effective actions that can help us create the true, effective social change we want to see.
And how this "good work" can make our lives more joyful, secure and resilient at the same time.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned....
For part 2 in this series, click here: http://www.lilliehouse.blogspot.com/2015/11/healing-ourselves-healing-world.html
