by Ecofilms, The Permaculture Research Institute: http://permaculturenews.org/2015/01/17/how-to-create-a-permaculture-design/
Geoff’s new video on Creating Permaculture Designs, see the full version on Geofflawton.com
So you’ve always wanted to design a beautiful plant system in your
garden, but baulked at the idea because, quiet honestly, you can’t tell
a bean from a cactus or a legume from a walnut and don’t have the time
or interest to devote to studying all this plant diversity stuff and
biology bores you, but inherently inside you, you’d know that you would
make a great designer.
Instinctively, you can spot a nice clump of trees
together and you know you could do all this stuff if you could overcome
this one small insignificant minor technical stumbling block - a lack
of plant knowledge!
Well, like everything in the Internet universe, there is probably an app made for you right now. If there isn’t an app, then its time to head down to your friendly
office supply stationary shop and buy yourself one of those little green
plastic template thingy with a bunch of circles cut out for you that
you used to have at school.
Buy that and some graph paper and a few
pencils and a long tape measure, because this week’s lesson is with
Permaculture Designer, Dan Halsey
who swapped a career as a fashion food photographer to a full-time
career as a Permaculture Designer. Dan used to photograph ice in sweet
fizzy beverages. Fake ice was used as real ice melts under hot camera
lights. A minor bit of useless trivia.
Anyway, Dan says, you need to overcome your lack of tree knowledge,
that will always bog you down and the best way to start is by focusing
on your pattern knowledge and work on your assembly of tree shapes.
Start with pattern shapes. Don’t worry what sort of trees you need for
your garden design. Work on your shape clusters, from the big shapes,
down. From the big Diva tree, then to the understory plants and all the
way down to the tiny edging plants that create a nice aesthetic
grouping. The mainframe shapes, the paths, access and water, ponds,
structures and swales come first and then we pattern the landscape with
our trusty little green stencil thingy and a pencil.
When it comes to filling in the small, insignificant minor details,
the real biology of tree species, Dan has a database for you to enjoy - The Natural Capital™ Plant Database.
You need to fill in the details.
What climate zone are you in? What
size of tree are you after, the database will filter the details and
offer you a spreadsheet for you to select a bunch of trees shapes that
will fit your climate zone. Everything from deciduous trees to legumes
are in the database. That’s the theory. The links are in the full video
on GeoffLawton.com.
Watch the full 20 minute video where
Geoff Lawton introduces Dan and takes takes you on a tour of his
property and then explains his theory of Permaculture pattern design.
Further Reading:
The Natural Capital Plant Database
Practical Plants Database
The Natural Capital™ Plant Database
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