Permaculture: an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies. (Read more here.)

When we talk about sustainability, especially in the context of resourcefulness, permaculture is way of the future. For philosophical, practical and environmental reasons, my wife and I decided to attempt some of permaculture’s ideas in our backyard.

We currently have 3 raised beds in the backyard and each of them is equal in size – 4 x 4 x 8. Over the fall and through our (current) mild winter, we planted kale, chard, greens, cauliflower and a few other hearty crops. All the while we’ve had time to ponder over this year’s garden. We are excited to try something different.

Instead of following neat rows of plants, we tossed seeds all over the place. In what felt like Darwinian-guerilla gardening, we scattered 5 or so plant varieties all over the bed. The technique we used is called polyculture gardening. The goal is to combine two similar gardening practices and create a plant environment that maximizes the plant’s natural inclination, while also improving the quality of the soil. The two interwoven techniques are interplanting and companion planting.

• Interplanting – combines crops that minimize the competition for sun and nutrients.
• Companion planting – blends plant varieties that enhance one another.

Following the belief that plant ecologies are dynamic rather than static, polycultural planing provides an environment where plants function as they would “in nature.” What seems like competition between varieties is actually a productive ecology of different plants. Simply put, polyculture suggests growing more plants together in a given space.

…in more sophisticated polycultures, the plants themselves tune their environment to the best conditions for their growth. Given the chance, heat-shunning lettuces will snuggle for protection under a leafy canopy of cauliflower. Slow-germinating wildflowers will bide their time in the moist shade of an early-leafing currant bush…

We can create gardens in which plants nestle together in minimally competitive patterns, bolster each other with beneficial interactions, and shift their composition to ecological succession, all combining to provide lengthy and varied harvests of food, blossoms and habitat.

To contrast, when we think of gardens that utilize a row structure, we see a “clean” and understandable garden. We employ our math skills and create an easy-to-maintain, means of food production. Mainstream agriculture values efficiency over health – in this case, the health of the Earth.

There are two things that strikes me about polyculture permaculture. On the one hand, we sacrifice an efficient means of food production for healthier soil, plants, insects, etc. The second aspect that challenges us, is the fact that we are planting seeds in a way that mimics plant systems in nature. What seems like a chaotic scatter of plants, will actually develop into a dynamic and plant-intentioned (not human-intentioned) grouping of plants.

Assuming is works, the sustainability piece comes each season. The choice of crops on our part, combined with the plant’s ability to resume its natural inclinations, creates a soil that is rich in nutrients and ready for the next set of crops. In a system that mimics nature, the cycle is born and recycles itself. Thus, when these plants die and decompose in the soil, their nutrients will “pave the way” for the next set of plants. I suppose we could say that the ‘circle of life’ in the garden begins with permaculture. And so we begin a new way of life too.

(By the way, most of this post and analysis was gleaned from reading Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Tony Hemenway)

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1. Grow(ing) Your Own Food
2. Urban farming – a world of possibility
3. Guess Who Received a $4,000 Grant?!
4. Cooking Class Takes New Direction
5. Urban Foraging

Tags: Gardening, seasonal eating