What is Permaculture?

For all of our evolutionary history, feast or famine has mostly been the "luck of the draw." While one family found themselves well-fed and wealthy in the environment of an oasis, the next had to make due in the desert. One valley was green and fertile while the next was a barrens and we human inhabitants simply accepted our lot.

Or we fought to take someone else's. 

The primary insight of Permaculture is that this does not have to be so. We can design our human habitats to meet our needs by emulating and working with nature instead of wasting energy struggling against it. The family in the barrens can analyze what makes the other valley fertile, how it catches and accumulates life enhancing elements like water, sun, bio-diversity, and shelter. And if they can design their own valley to do the same, then they will have the same abundant result. 

While this approach seems utterly obvious, it is revolutionary, and very real. Take the example of the Loess Plateau in China.

 

Looking at this landscape, it's no surprise that the residents here are the poorest in China. And besides poverty, they have a myriad of other problems stemming from their ecology: frequent natural disasters, poor health, malnutrition, poor academic achievement, crime, disease.... 

But scientists have found this was not always so. What you see above is a man-made landscape, degraded by thoughtless human use, and a degraded situation followed for the inhabitants that they could never escape - until they repaired their ecology. They studied how healthy ecosystems caught and stored life-enhancing resources like water and fertility and they transformed their environment:

Just 15 years later, the median income has risen 4 times! People are returning to the area and measures such as health and education are on the rise, too. And the environmental effects of carbon sequestration and water quality can be felt across the country and even globally. 

But it doesn't stop there. 

We can use the same approach to our cities. Permaculturists are analyzing the elements that make great neighborhoods, with vibrant community, security and livability, and they're applying those to broken neighborhoods. The results are stunning. It works.

And why stop there? We can all design our homes, neighborhoods and cities so that they better provide for us and meet all of our needs while reducing our negative impacts on the environment and other human communities. And we can do this good work for the world while improving our own quality of life, building a better connection with nature, surrounding ourselves with beauty and feeding ourselves with delicious and nutritious food from our own communities. 

And let's take it further still:

What is it about the great "destinations" the places we go on vacations, that makes us feel rested, renewed, alive? We can analyze the factors that make those places thrive and we can design them into our own habitats. Instead of spending all our time, money and effort on our dreams of going some place else, we can design homes so beautiful, communities so beloved, and lives so meaningful that we kiss the earth and thank the stars each day that we get to wake up in such a paradise. 

That's what Permaculture is all about. It is a system for designing "human habitats," our homes, neighborhoods, cities and beyond, so that they meet all of our needs by working with nature, rather than against it. It's a way we can build more secure, joyful, wealthy lives without burdening others or causing more problems. 

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For people new to Permaculture, my two top recommended resources are:

1.  The book "Gaia's Garden" by Toby Hemenway. For me, this has become the classic Permaculture resource. 

2. The Permaculture Principles site, compiled by Permaculture co-originator David Holmgren: http://permacultureprinciples.com/ These are often called the "Holmgren Principles." Consideration of these principles, the three ethics and a system of "zone" and "sector" site analysis (covered in Gaia's Garden) are the core of the Permaculture Design System.  

Creative Language

Creative artists often speak a strange other-worldly language--the mother tongue of a land where anything's possible, the laws of physics aren't enforced and nobody's paid their syntax in years.

John Frusciante speaking of ghosts in my previous post isn't too unusual in the world of artists. Captain Beefheart also described songs as ghosts and spirits. And sculptors often say they just reveal what's already there waiting in the stone, chipping away the stuff covering it up. Almost universally, creative artists feel their works come from somewhere else and that too much rational thought only gets in the way.

To be truly creative, the mind has to be free of the dull limitations of the daily grind, boring reality, the pedantic same-old thinking that has created the too-often dysfunctional and conformist world around us. It's that world that has formed our thinking, our rules, our habits, our conditioning, so when we come to creative work stuck in that mindset, we're unable to break free and find anything new. 

So it's only with this artist's language that one can speak of solutions that don't yet exist and bring dreams into the the waking world as art, music, sculpture, dance, literature... 

But gardens? Architecture? Neighborhoods? 

It's quite unusual to hear modern professionals in these realms to speak of the mystery of the creative process. Too often, these "arts" are reduced to being just another "product" for our "consumption." Our gardens are just "landscaping" and even landscaping is little more than a sort of advertising we use to "improve the curb appeal" of our "biggest investment." We speak of our HOMES as though they were just an inconveniently 4-dimensional 401k! 

But the greatest Permaculture Designers, like David Holmgren and Geoff Lawton, speak the language! The first "Holmgren Principle" is "Observe and Interact." Both Lawton and Holmgren describe this part of the process in a way that would probably sound familiar to John Frusciante. They both invoke a "zen" state of observing without thinking, taking in the landscape in an intuitive way free from conditioning and preconceived notions. And this is just the begining of a creative process that finds many ways to keep the designer open to what nature, the ecosystem and human communities have to say about it. 

And finally, what strikes me most about them is the obvious passion  that they bring to design work. Geoff Lawton doesn't just install somebody's "landscaping!" He changes their lives! 

One of my voice teachers used to say, "never sing a single note until you feel like you'd die if you didn't." This is another common saying throughout the arts. Kurt Vonnegut used to say it "respect the readers time, never write a word that the reader doesn't have to read." 

Imagine the world we'd create if we brought that urgent passion to our human habitats? Never a house built for ease and profit, never a subdivision of boring dime-a-dozen designs, but instead, neighborhoods where every home was a statement about life and how to live it--so important to the designer that she felt she'd die if she didn't scream it out to the world! 

What would that world look like? Can you see it? Perhaps it's already there, like the sculptor's art, just waiting for us to chip away the dysfunctional system we've carelessly built overtop of it...

Ghosts

There's a story that the Red Hot Chilli Pepper's second guitarist, John Frusciante, used to tell that I just love. When john was recording his first album with the Chillis, they'd play pieces back, and he'd start yelling "listen to that! Do you hear the ghosts there?" John said that he heard ghosts and spirits all over their records. Of course, at this time, John was looking deeply ravaged by drug addiction, so people started giving him some worried looks when he'd mention ghosts. Understanding the danger here, Flea, their bassist, took John aside and said "buddy, not everybody can hear the ghosts, only we can." And so john stopped talking about ghosts... for a while.

Years later, a healthy, sober and drug-free Frusciante started talking about ghosts in his interviews again. There's some footage of him sitting in a beautiful victorian hotel lobby where the band was recording and in it he explains why he always insisted that the Chillis record in such places. He points to all the fine craftsmanship of the crown molding, and to the obvious signs of age and wear, and he says "all these little things, these spaces, they hold ghosts and spirits. So when we record in a place like this, we get those energies inside us, too." 

"How else could we get them onto the records?" 

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That's one of the most beautiful descriptions of the idea of an "emergent property" that I've ever heard. 

At some level of "complexity" the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. We call that an "emergent property." A human being seems something more than a big heap of cells, tissues and organs. A forest feels like more than a collection of trees. And when a song becomes more than a collection of notes, we say it's got "soul." 

To some, John might sound crazy, but he's just speaking the language of "magic," "spirits" and "energies" that the human intuition has always used to speak of "emergent properties." 

When we walk into an old house, we see the amazing craftsmanship--work that few can replicate these days. We see the signs of age, and wear and living. There's a large gash by the back door. And signs of care and love, too. The human brain is sophisticated pattern-recognition software--of course all of these things will speak to us, they'll tell us all their bitter-sweet stories. 

Artists in most every culture work in "movements" such as "Romanticism" and "Modernism." The emergence of these movements are always a response to what proceded them, and in turn, what had preceded those movements, too. Each generation works together, developing and exchanging ideas and perfecting techniques... and because of this, they put so much more into their work than any individual ever could. A painting might be the work of a single painter, but if she was any good, she didn't just put her own soul into it--she got all the stink of her generation in there, too: their history, their struggles, their ideas, their philosophies of life, and what they thought of those who came before them. She knows her paint brush is a divining rod, with it, she can coax the ancestors into that canvas. 

If we can allow ourselves to be open to it, we can intuitively "get" those layers of meaning, something that seems alive, that moves, speaks and sings to our very souls: an emergent property. 

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Every couple of years, I try to visit Iargo Springs up on the Au Sable river. 

This place was considered sacred by the Ojibwa, who brought the sick here to heal in the curative waters. Since I was a kid, I have always felt the healing energies of this place. In the pilgrimage down the long flights of stairs the temperature can drop 15 degrees on a hot day. I felt envoloped by this coolness and the soft light through the high forest canopy. It was like entering into... some tangible and real force much larger than myself. The clear pools of water seemed to radiate with a deep stillness and the energy of the hills behind seemed comforting and safe. 

I can come to this place and sit all day, and its energies get inside me and still my own. when I leave I am changed. 

People of all cultures have recognized the "Genii Loci," the "Spirit of the Place." Virtually every hill, valley, and settlement--any ecosystem with enough complexity--had one. These anthropomorphized versions of place were the first gods and spirits that we humans worshipped. It was often the shaman, the one who knew how to relate with these spirits, who sited new settlements, told where to plant the orchard or sew the grain crop, or planned the temple. In his designs, he'd bake brownies for ghosts, whisper to the ancestors, crack jokes to the genii loci...

How else would he get them in there? 

And this has never gone away. In more intuitive cultures, people still speak of fairies and spirits in the woods, in the waters. This language is the tool they use to understand that there are some places that are curative, and some that are best avoided. People still build little nooks and crannies for elf-folk, gnomes and dhakinis hoping that if they attract the right energies, they can recreate the sacred feeling of a place like Iargo Springs. 

Even in our culture, urban ghost tours remain incredibly popular. 

As a maker, gardener and Permaculture designer, I have a deep desire to get as many ghosts as I can into the human habitats I co-create with communities, ecosystems, ancestors and the Genii Loci around me. While it's important to have our designs grounded in research-based approaches, it's equally important to find ways of translating the strange language of intuition. 

Despite all our technology, in this regard we moderns are no different than the thousand thousand generations before us. 

There's only one door to this place, 

you must find it in moonlight,
find a sincere desire,

put on the shaman's cloak, 

beat the drum, 

carve the antler, 

seek the fae, 

speak to ghosts.... 

Designing a Permaculture Hedgerow

Last night, I had the opportunity to join in a permaculture discussion where hedgerows came up, and people who know me know that I'm crazy about hedges. As modern agricultural research turns towards perennial crops, and polyculture plantings, the hedgerow stands out as a traditional and uniquely adapted system for utilizing both. Better still, these woody perennial polyculture systems can do extra work by providing building and craft materials, ample carbonaceous material for composting, providing windbreaks, wildlife shelter, fences for wildlife, create fire and erosion barriers, provide forage, protect livestock or humans, and greatly increase the biodiversity that has a positive benefit on pest and disease problems and system health and resilience. 

Far more than mere shrubbery, hedgerows represent the original "food forest" technology of cold temperate climates, with their linear nature being a perfect adaptation of forest gardening to northern latitudes where light penetration becomes key. And since forest gardening has been called "the world's oldest land use" by anthropologists, it's no wonder that where you find hedgerows they're fundamental to cuisine, medicine, magic, shelter... and life in general.

If the hedge-bug bites you, you can delve deeply into our cultural heritage with a Google quest across the the rich topic of the Hedge, by exploring:

Hedgemedicine

Hedge-laying 

Hedge-witchery/Hedge-wizardry

Hedgerow foraging

Tapestry Hedges

French Hedgerows in WWII

The Hortus Conclusus

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At Lillie House, our research into hedge-tech has focused on adapting the traditional systems of British and French hedgerows, especially the English "cut and lay hedge" and the French "woven hedge" to the Great Lakes region by using bio-mimicry of the spontaneous, natural hedge-like systems that arise throughout the region. Some of our favorite foraging areas have been these natural hedgerows and we've aimed to study and recreate them at our home.

A generalized European planting would typically use:

A "thorny" main structural planting of 60% Hawthorn or Blackthorn (wild plum) or 30% of each of those. In addition to thorns, these species spread by sucker to fill in dead sections, and take very well to "coppicing," and creating tight woven hedges. 

10-20% Hazel. Hazel was sometimes used as the "main planting," especially in more urban areas where nuts were desirable and 

And a mix of: roses, brambles, elder, crab-apples, damsons, sloes, and wild apples and pears.

Hedgerows intended as wind breaks might include 10-30% evergreens, including yew. Science has verified the wisdom of this traditional approach, finding that a greater density of evergreens increases the turbulance of winter winds, actually increasing the problem instead of reducing it.

To get an idea of these plantings, try looking at some of the offerings of the many British companies selling traditional Hedgerow plants:

http://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/hedging/hedging-packs/elspeths-edible-hedging?ver=3

For the Great Lakes region, many of these plants could be adapted at least in function, though Blackthorn may experience problems with black rot. Good substitutes for the primary planting could include Sea Buckthorn or Goumi, which both fix nitrogen and coppice well. 

Our US wild plums do not generally coppice well, so they aren't good choices, however other prunus species like Nanking Cherry make good substitutes. 

Rugosa roses make an excellent choice for the US, as do our native elders. Blackberries  or wild black raspberries would also be quite at home in such a planting. Mulberries are commonly found in natural hedgerows here, and I suspect that after some extra work to get it established, Paw Paw would be very happy with life in a hedgerow, too, as it suckers, tolerates shade and takes to coppicing well.  

Through your next drive through the country, a quick look out the window and you're likely to see exactly this kind of plant community growing wild in the ditches. One even happens to be growing along the bike trail down the street for us, which is the one we copied for our planting. There are probably several near your home that could serve as the basis for your hedgerow. 

But not all trees will work well. French and British models typically excluded trees that would be allelopathic (toxic to other plants) or those that quickly sucker and are very tolerant of shade, as they become weedy in a hedgerow. Norway maple, willows, certain dogwoods, and even English elder (a stereotypical Hedgerow tree) were often avoided, depending on the site. Tall trees such as oak, linden and maple were often included, but spaced at least 2 or 3 times mature orcahrd spacing, perhaps 200' apart. These rules typically aimed to keep hedge maintenance low by reducing pruning and weeding. 

Once you have your trees chosen, you'll have a wide variety of perennial vegetables and fruits that are ideally suited to the conditions of a hedgerow. At LillieHouse, these include: strawberries, sea kale, asparagus, good king henry, sorrel, endive (chicory) nettles, poke, comfrey, stinky bob, perennial alliums (we have over a dozen varieties) cleavers, milkweed, turkish rocket, sweet rocket, jerusalem artichokes, japanese yam, grapes, kiwi, ground nut, ground pea, ladies thumb, clover, salad burnet, spring beauty, mints, and many others! Hedgerows naturally take advantage of "edge effect" making them an ideal place for a huge variety of species. 

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Once you have an idea about what plants you want in your hedgerow, you'll need to make a plan for establishing it. Like all things in appropriate technology, traditional technology and Permaculture, the trick here is finding the right balance of "intensive" and "extensive" tools for the job. Traditional European hedge systems provide us with a wide range of options here, from the careful and deliberate plantings of urban French Tapestry Hedges to the nature-assisted systems of "dead hedging." 

Any one hedge is likely to use a mix of hedging approaches, but arranging them in order of intensive to extensive, they might look like this:

1. Intensively planted urban or "zone 1 or 2" hedges close to the home: Hand planted at high density around 1-2' apart, relying on selected short tree species chosen to give a yield of fruit, nuts, berries beautiful folliage and flowers. Shorter species make the hedgerow less labor to maintain.  

2. Semi-intensive: hand-plants pioneer species like elder, prunus species, and hazel at a greater distance of 3-5' or more. Birds, mamals, and suckering fill in the hedge. Oftentimes, hedge-layers would encourage the process by throwing fruit cores and seeds into the hedgerow. 

3. Sacrificial planting: very fast growing trees are planted at a useful density 2-3' and quickly woven into a hedge. Later, these trees are selected out as more desirable species fill in. Trees especially suited to this might include empress tree, toon tree, and hybrid poplar.

4. Dead hedging: using available materials, pruinings and fallen wood to build a temporary fence to meet your needs. Over time, perching birds, and mammals help fill in the planting, reliably creating a hedgerow of useful mast and fruit species. The hedge-layer can help the process by occasionally planting in a few desirable species and selecting for the best plants. 

One of my favorite gardening blogs has a great post on how this mix of procedures is covered in the French literature here: 

http://www.frenchgardening.com/tech.html?pid=32052735493654

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And finally, if you've come this far into hedge-geekery, thanks for your time! You can find even more info on our hedgerows by searching this blog, if you like. Better yet, take a minute to look at some pictures of these traditional French and British systems:

1. Google search for British "hedge laying."

https://www.google.com/search?q=hedgelaying&biw=1024&bih=600&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=noH0VLeoIoHnggTRtYSYDA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAg&dpr=2

2. French tapestry hedges:

https://www.google.com/search?q=la+haie+champetre&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=3IH0VK32KcKxggSrjIOADw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAg&biw=1024&bih=644

And finally, if you're planning a hedgerow, please drop me a comment and let me know about it. As a certifiable hedge-geek, I'd love to hear about your project. 

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Edited to add a section of recommended hedge-related resources:

http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/plants-for-food-hedges-fedges a piece on food hedges, with a good understanding of traditional hedge systems. 

Gee, that's Swale! Resources for Permaculture Swales in Michigan

"Swales" are one of the most common water-harvesting devices used by Permaculturists. 

Like most Permaculture techniques, the use of swales is extremely site-specific, so I'd like to give a few tips and thoughts about using them in my biome, the Great Lakes region. If you aren't already familar with swales, here's a great "basic" introdcution from PRI: http://permaculturenews.org/2012/05/16/swales-the-permaculture-element-that-really-holds-water/

(Water-harvesting micro-swale/ditch system at Lillie House)

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The impact of swales can be nearly miraculous, especially in dry, wet tropical or Mediterranean climates where rain comes infrequently in large events and run-off is a big problem. But, as respected Permaculture teacher Patrick Whitefield points out, they might not always be appropriate: 

http://patrickwhitefield.co.uk/one-permacultures-holy-cows-death-swale/

In the Great Lakes region, we get most of our precipitation in the Fall and Spring, though we're lucky to get ample water through most of our growing seasons. Our relatively short growing season means there's a large advantage to having well-drained garden beds that warm up quicky and can be planted early in the season. Some areas in our biome may also have mucky clay soils that get easily water-logged. So a few indicators you might want to include swales in your design would be:

1. You have to deal with excess water from hardscape features such as a roof. 

2. You're on a slope and you know you have a problem with erosion or losing water to run-off. 

3. You want to establish a tree-based system like a food forest or orchard. 

4. You have a lot of land to deal with and you need to collect water from a large area using "extensive" methods that are easy to implement. 

Some counter-indications might be: 

1. You already have trees where you want swales. 

2. You have mucky soils and already expereince problems with draining. (Though in some special cases swales could actually improve drainage.)

3. You have a very steep slope or no slope. 

4. You only have a small area to work with (as we'll see when we do the math below, a swale will be a better tool if you have a collection area of least 20 feet or more.) 

If swales don't seem to make sense, there are other means of water collection and infiltration, such as ponds, "passive swales" (wood debris gabions layed on controur,) infiltration basins, keyline plowing, wicking beds, etc. For example, at Lillie House we use a network of a wide variety of tools to intensively manage water on our urban site. 

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Once you've decided to use swales, put some thought and planning into their design. Poorly designed swales do more harm than good. Make sure you get the size right. I have seen swales "blow out" because they were too small for the water they're meant to handle. These "swales" do the opposite of the Permaculture water mantra: slow it down, spread it out, infilltrate it--they actually concentrate water and direct it, possibly right towards your basement or favorite crop! 

On the other hand, I've seen swales that were too large, completely destroying the landscape hydrology and infiltrating water so deeply that no plant will ever have a chance at getting to it. Over-sized swales can also be a trip hazard and a danger to humans and wildlife passing through the garden. I know of a whole set of swales right next to sidewalks where kids live and play, that look like 3-foot deep death pits. These were installed by a "professional landscaper," positioned where they'll only ever get about a gallon of water in a major rain, but are super-sized to hold hundreds of gallons at once! I've even seen some "swales" dug below the water table, becoming permanent ponds. 

Worst of all, I've seen a few projects (in person, and AT LEAST a dozen more online) where folks dug deep swales right through established forest they intended to keep, needlessly wasting energy and harming the forest floor and roots of their trees to no benefit at all, as established forests in our region are reliably as good at harvesting and infiltrating water and stopping erosion as a swale!    

To size your swales, there are several tools that can help you out. University extentions often have recommendations specific to their regions on sizing rain gardens, which essentially perform the same function of catching water and infiltrating it. 

For most people, the rain-garden alliance is a good place to start: http://raingardenalliance.org/right/slope

Their tools will let you play around with your soil type, slope and catchment area. For example, assuming a clay loam soil, and a spacing of 20' between swales, it suggested a volume of 7.2 cubic feet per linear foot, or about 1,5' deep and 4' wide. On sandy soil, it recommended much smaller swales, just 3 cubic feet of volume.

(The basic math is pretty simple to figure out if you want to do it yourself. You need to know the size of your catchment area (in square feet) multipled by .6 will tell you how many gallons of water you'll collect for each inch of rain you receive. Next you'll need to test the infilltration rate of your soil. These two pieces of information will tell you how much water your swale needs to hold. Finally, 1.3 cubic feet will hold 10 gallons of water.) 

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This set of rotted wood swales is fed by our downspout and is planted with water-loving plants including Marshmallow and Valerian. In heavy rains, water cascades down the side of this system and into another set of swales. 

In our small-sale urban environment, with sandy soils, these little swales are hardly noticeable during the growing season, yet they're just the right size for the job. Though they looked small at first, I have never seen them be over-burdened, even in the heaviest rains.