Bring Back Eden
Permaculture Design
And Landscaping
Would you like to create a garden, landscape, or whole site that is as adaptable as a natural ecosystem? A permaculture design approach helps you grow food in harmony with nature while making use of available resources. Turn your property into a food forest and have an abundance of organic natural food to give back to yourself and communities.
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What is Permaculture? Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable and harmonious ways of living with nature and people. It is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems.
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The prime directive of permaculture is a guiding light, especially with regard to how we feed ourselves. It basically means to strive to do your best to take care of your own needs, given your life situation. It doesn’t mean living separate from others. Rather, it means to make the best and highest use of the resources we have available to us.
Permaculture Ethic #1: Care for Earth
We are only as healthy as our planet. Therefore, caring for the forests, the waterways, and the diverse life forms of our magnificent planet benefits us. It means to recognize and value resources that come onto and leave your site. For example, by slowing down stormwater, you can reduce pollution in local waterways. On your site, seek ways to regenerate fertility and biodiversity rather than simply sustain current levels. always ask yourself, ’Does this action help or hurt the ecology? How would nature solve this problem'?
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Permaculture Ethic #2: Care for People
Caring for people includes caring for ourselves and our own household. When we ‘take responsibility for our own existence’, we naturally begin producing more. It’s this step away from consumerism that helps us avoid products and companies that exploit people. In modern times, it’s become admirable to favor the opposite of taking responsibility for ourselves: Committing our lives solely to helping others. However, this leaves little room to care for ourselves, and little energy for reducing our own level of consumption. This unfortunately can have a net zero effect. When we make the best and highest use of the resources available to us, there is likely a lot we can do to both care for ourselves and others. Sometimes it starts with creating an edible landscape that is as beautiful as it is fruitful, which can serve as a model and inspire others.
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Ethic #3: Reinvest Surplus
When we care for the earth, nature responds with richness, more biodiversity, more plants, more animals, cleaner water and air, and so on.
We can reinvest useful flows, such as rainwater or compost, back into the garden to create a self-maintaining ecosystem that requires fewer inputs from off-site sources.
This is the peak of land conservation: Noticing the potential abundance rather than viewing resources as scarce.
As an example, In Los Angeles, California, the annual rainfall only adds up to about 6 inches. But this adds up to a possible 3,000 gallons per year you could collect from an average roof. When we care for ourselves and act as responsible consumers, life is rich. We have access to an abundance of healthy, homegrown food. We are financially stronger. Ultimately, caring for our own existence (and any land we have access to) provides abundance that can be put back into the community, through sharing food, skills, or financial assistance.
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What is a Food Forest?
A food forest mimics a forest edge that is planted with edible plants. An example of a food forest might include chestnut trees as a tall canopy tree layer. Apple trees grow below the chestnut trees. Meanwhile, currant bushes grow as an understory layer beneath the apple trees. A host of edible herbs and mushrooms grow underneath, and perhaps even grapevines use the apple trees as trellises.
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The Benefits of an Edible Perennial Forest Garden
Perennial gardens don’t disturb the soil regularly like annual gardens do. Rather, they continually enrich soil with organic matter as leaves fall and plants die back for the winter. Consequently, the food forest model can help to restore land, biodiversity, and habitat while creating an edible yield. A forest is one of earth’s most stable ecosystems. In fact, when we mimic it in food production, we get all the ecological benefits of a forest PLUS food!
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My team and I have partnered with Jim Gale and his company
Food Forest Abundance, located in Cloud, Florida.
We have install teams in all 50 states and throughout the world.
If you are interested in design creation for your property please reach out to me for a 5% discount off of site designs. If you are in need of installation for your site design, we send our team out to your property and do all of the installation work for you.
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Contact my team founder Matthew Nadu via his website or email me to set up a call to speak further about changing your property into an edible landscape.
Bring Back Eden:
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