Permaculture in New Zealand

Late nights, early mornings, and food getting cold while excited fingers scribbled down notes and drew delicate lines is the best way to describe the last 3 days of the course.

Out of the whole class, we formed design teams of 4 based on interests, skill sets, strengths, and weaknesses, and each set out to different properties in Golden Bay who were interested in a permaculture design for their property.

I chose Uta and Steve’s property, a 2.4 acre place currently home to a happy family 2 sheep, and 10 chickens. They’ve been struggling with super challenging soils over the past ten years, and though they have some fruit trees and a small garden, they really wasn’t producing nearly as well as they could. I picked this one mainly out of my desire to actually change a place that already has systems in place, which just aren’t effective. The other properties were more or less blank slates.

 

The client interview was fun and relaxed, with Uta and Steve both happily chiming away in response to each of our questions. We inquired about their needs, capabilities, dreams, passions, knowledge, skills, experience, habits, and visions.

Steve being a full-time builder and Uta being a school teacher, they are pretty limited on time. They said they’d like to have WWOOFers come during the spring and summer to help them maintain gardens. They identified their top priorities being to keep weeds down and prevent overgrowth, improve the soils, grow significantly more fresh foods, and to create a system that has overall flow. They dream of going to the garden to pick fruits and vegetables for dinner, and gave us a list of some things they would like to grow and eat. Most of all, they wanted to be inspired by a plan that showed them how they could improve things, and told us that if they feel passionate and excited about it they will actually invest the time and money to implement our design!

Then they took us on a walk around the land and pointed out different things.

We conducted 4 basic soil tests on different parts of the property, and realized immediately that they weren’t kidding about the poor soils! They are on straight iron pan, and the top 4-6 inches was entirely solid, concrete-like, compacted soil. Their were some slight differences between place to place in terms of moisture content being higher and infiltration being slower in the lower elevation spots. The pH was also fairly acidic, being between 5.5 and 6.0 across the board.

We identified the NW prevailing wind, used the compass to identify north and map the sun sector, drew in the shade behind trees and buildings on the map, marked in the frost pockets, and outlined the flow of water on the property.

We also walked around and noted the elements that were definitely problematic and needed to change. Their garden beds were overgrown with weeds, and in a spot where they claimed it got “no sun” in the winter. The chickens hadn’t been moved off of  their hillside paddock for 6 years, and the patch was now barren, eroding soil. The bees were in a very shady corner of the sheep paddock, a considerable distance away from the food production with no sources of nectar nearby.  Their were patches of dried up soil and dead grass throughout the property where they had sprayed for california thistle and gorse weeds (which I did later research on, to find that they are both indicators of poor-draining, eroded soils). There was no active composting system going on. The septic tank’s overflow system leeched out into a trench in the sheep paddock and filled up a pond they dug at the bottom, which they said is susceptible to overflow in the winter.

Back at Tui, we developed a more detailed base map, with accurate angles and placement of objects, which we were able to obtain through measurements on site and photos and videos we took.

The next morning, we began the visioning process. We looked over our notes from the interview and picked out key goals and words to identify what their overall dream for the property is. The goal is to write a couple sentences that, if the client said it out loud, would feel really good about. We came up with this statement:

“Our property utilizes proven, low-maintenance, regenerative systems to increase soil fertility and fresh food production. We feel uplifted by the diversity and flow that nourishes and further enriches our home.”

With the vision in mind, we made a bubble map for holistic goal setting, branching off different changes that must be made in order for the vision to come true. Low-maintenance, flow, diversity, animals, fresh food production, and soil fertility were our categories, and they each have specific solutions to the problem outlined. We separated out the goals into 3 stages of implementation, the first ones being immediate actions, second being for next year when WWOOFers come, and third being long-term plans.

 

 

Next came the ideation process. We discussed what specific things we wanted to implement in order to meet our goals.

We made a few overlays for the base map to show the property in different phases. On a clean slate, we placed these things on the map. Without setting in stone, we made cutouts of each item and moved them around until we came to some consensus. Of course, after this first consensus we moved things around quite a few more times after further consideration.

 

 

 

”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, we grouped the categories of our placements into clear zones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before going ahead and drawing in all of our ideas, we spent some time hitting the web and some books to research the practicalities of our ideas. I focused on researching cover crops, compost systems, and worm farms, and found some valuable information to pass on to them. All are great options for making a difference on their soils and production!

And so, after valuable knowledge from resources and some feedback from the teachers, we began our broadscale design of what the property could look like in 20 years if they implemented our design.

We added in an exotic “Timberland” for Steve to grow wood for his building business, a three-bin cold compost (low-maintenance) system, a WWOOFer sleepout in the shady corner of the pasture where the bees were, a mandala garden behind the house in a sunny field which will contain a rotating salad bar of fresh veggies, a low-lying riparian planting upon the creek, and a food forest with a fruit orchard and an understory for the chickens to rotate into. The current placement of the firewood shed (near the mandala garden) is one of the sunniest sections on the property so we moved it to the shady section in front of the garage and added in a firepit there for a nice social space. We also lined a sunny strip by the porch with another annual veggie garden.

We didn’t have time to do a detailed design for each section, so we split up some of the important ones. One member took timberland, two took on the annual veggie gardens, and I embarked on creating a detailed food forest design.

 

I wanted the understory to be a chicken-nutrition haven, full of good forage crops, as well as pollen sources for bees and beneficial insects. All of these plants are pollen rich, and all but daffodils can be eaten by chickens.

The understory:

Crimson clover- Nitrogen fixing and chicken feed

Comfrey- Bio-accumulator, key compost ingredient, and chicken feed

Borage- Beneficial insect attractant, chicken feed, and tasty flowers for salad

Daffodils- Late blooming to provide fall nectar source, and adds color and beauty to the garden

Buckwheat- Beneficial insect attractant, chicken feed, and seeds can be harvest and ground to make flour

Phacelia- Beneficial insect attractant, chicken feed

 

In terms of the higher, fruit producing layer, I chose all frost-tolerant plants because the section where the food forest would be put in gets frost in the winters. I suspect that when all of these things are put in, they will need lots of compost in order to take off and get going well. This project will have to be undertaken after the compost system is well-established.

I organized the shrubs so that the shade-tolerant plants hid behind the shadows of the future trees, and the full sun plants got their optimal light. All of the shrubs produce flowers, and tasty yields for humans and chickens! There was also already a thick patch of jerusalem artichoke which will make great chicken munchies.

The shrubs:

Lemon Verbana (Shade)

Rhubarb (Shade)

Gooseberry (Shade)

Goumi Berry (Shade)

Pineapple Sage (Sun)

Cranberries (Sun)

Blueberries (Sun)

Raspberries (Sun) In a patch off to the side so they don’t take over the forest.

 

Taking a look at the canopy layer, I started by digging in deeper, to the roots. Using the edible forest gardens magazine, I researched different root stocks for iron pan soils. I chose a semi-dwarf stock called Northern Spy which is suited to heavy, low-draining soils. From there on out I picked some different varieties of fruits to be grafted on to plan for year-round nectar sources for pollinators, however taste is super important so it’s open to flexibility. The key thing is the root stock!

They already had a few lemons, several fejoas, some mandarins, and a couple plums growing on the property, and Uta expressed interest in adding in apples and nashi pears, plus some other fruits.

 

The pathway into the forest has a human entrance near the garage, and a fenced alley-way entrance for the chickens to enter in from their coop paddock. The food forest can be seen on the larger broadscale map in the bottom right corner.

 

Coming together, we realized we had a significant amount of work to present to the client, and were all really happy with the turnout. Uta wasn’t able to make it to the presentation, but Steve came and was very impressed. They have our contact info and plan to send us questions now and then when they start acting on some of our ideas. It felt amazing to use my newfound permaculture knowledge in a real-world application, and I enjoyed every step of the way. Maybe this was my first step in a career of design, who knows!

 

Here’s the link to our full presentation, if you want to see the detailed staging and planting plans!

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XYfng1jqsdevljrjoayu0JjwViZkyKJPH55ekRcIM2A/edit?usp=sharing

Animals in the garden provide so many services for us! They can be sources of manure, food, milk, wool or leather, pest control, pollination, nutrient cycling, seed dispersal, indicators, and of course, companionship! The only job for humans in the garden is creative thinking, and for every other task there is an animal who will do it better and enjoy doing it. When placed appropriately in the system, it’s a win-win-win for the animals, the human, and the earth.

I got the chance to look at the designs of many forage and rotation systems for animals. Here’s a design I made for some dairy goats! (I chose goats in honor of my friends at AislingQuoy, and for my love of goat cheese)

 

 

It’s a four paddock system, one is the home (moveable huts for sleeping and shade, feeding and water troughs, trampolines, rocks and sticks to play with). The second is the forage paddock, with hay, corn, and other grasses. The third is a paddock of native trees, with big rocks and a little pond. It also has a goat medicinal garden with varies herbs so they can have access to nutrients they may need. The goats come in for morning milking at the dairy shed (located conveniently in the center), and then can be released into either the native paddock for foraging and playing or the grasses paddock for grazing. The fourth paddock is a regenerating “home” paddock, which is an annual vegetable garden right now, and will be used again as the home paddock on a rotational basis so both paddocks can get a chance to recover, and the manure deposits can be used as nutrients for human food. 

 

Land has been cleared for human use ever since we began to occupy earth. Now, there’s not nearly enough wild forests, wetlands, or plains to provide necessary climate functions and wildlife habitat. We can change this though, by planting it back in with patterns of what wildness still remains. To decide which natives to plant, just look at nearby wildlife zones and mimic the designs!

After some ecology lessons we each got to practice native re-design of a different area (ie fire prone, wetlands, bird habitat).

My riparian restoration zone has umbrella and spike sedges as the rhizosphere, NZ Iris and mata water fern for the ground cover, which is intermixed with flax, mikimiki and koromiko shrubs. Manuka and cabbage trees make up the sub-canopy, and the canopy is a few big kanuka trees.

 

 

The PDC included one full day of checking out other permaculture sites in the Golden Bay area.

I met many people who are living the permaculture dream, and have low-maintenance, high-production gardens!

 

Chris and Sylvia at Nikau Gardens showed us all of the plans they created to design their property. So much time and effort went into them, and now they have endless pockets of fruit trees and big, flourishing beds of veggies and fruits!

 

Albie is a man who is incredibly interested in alternative energy systems. He just got so excited telling us about the practical aspects of installing and maintaining them.

Sol Morgan, the coordinator for the community gardens in Takaka, has his own permaculture property in his backyard. On just a quarter acre, he produces enough food to almost entirely sustain his family through the summer! I could barely find a patch left to grass other than a small picnic area.

Alli had a huge integrated orchard system with chickens and ducks running around everywhere!

The Mussel Inn is a local farm-to-table pub and restaurant. They grow their own fruit and hops for ciders and beers, process everything on site, and have big veggie and herb gardens to provide ultra-local, seasonal food. The only inputs that come from off-site are mussels grown on the nearby beach, as well as a few ingredients from local farmers like meat and dairy products, and some grains which they don’t produce here.

Another day was spent visiting homes at the Tui community, which all have amazing and unique permaculture designs interwoven in them.

 

All in all it was just an inspiration to see all of this permaculture in action. I can’t wait to keep designing, building homes, and growing food! So many ideas and immense excitement is running through me.

Possibly my favorite day of the course was the one we spent building. I think I’m going to be an earth builder someday.

 

We built a bamboo greenhouse for the community gardens at Tui. Using bamboo from down the street and old bike tires we got from a recycling plant, along with some stones from the river, we put together a super strong frame for a greenhouse.

We also helped a member of the community named Tyson to finish up earth-building his door frame. Most of the initial work had been done, as he had built the beginning structure with bamboo poles and interweaved mugwort, willow branches, and wormwood, then packed in one layer of cobb (this method is called waddle and dobb). It was outlined with chicken wire and wooden boards to hold it up, and a second thin layer was added. It still needed one more layer of cobb, plus a plaster layer, which we managed to take care of!

We also practiced making a rocket stove out of cinder blocks found on an abandoned warehouse site. An easy way to cook outdoors!

It felt amazing to use basic technologies, and reusable/renewable materials to create something highly functional. I can’t wait to do a bunch more of it!

 

 

Healthy soil means healthy food, which means healthy people! Caring for our soils is caring for ourselves.

A good soil consists of 45% minerals (sand, silt, or clay), 25% water, 25% air, and 5% organic matter. Most soils aren’t naturally like this, but thankfully theres lots we can do to adjust them.The main goal of most soil building is to create more humus, which is organic matter (material that is or once was living) that is decomposed. Humus acts as a literal sponge for nutrients, and the more you have in the soil, the more productive plants will be. Increasing life content (bacteria, fungi, and micro-organisms) is another major goal.

 

Many of our soils are now deficient of most nutrients and fairly devoid of life due to the use of chemical fertilizers. Giving a garden an N-P-K cocktail is like sticking in an IV, the plant is fed a huge supplement of nutrients which it already naturally knows how to receive. Plants receive nutrients by releasing exudates out from the roots, molecules full of starches and sugars to draw in bacteria, who will feed on the them. Protozoa come to feed on the bacteria, and they all release nitrogen as they produce waste from eating and when their bodies decompose after death. Plants even know how to release many different exudates who can attract varying bacteria to bring whatever nutrients they need help with. It’s a system of extreme effectiveness that’s evolved since the beginning of life on earth. When we direct wire a plant a synthetic version of nutrients, the plant stops releasing exudates because it has no need to. But this creates a vicious cycle of addiction, as the plant will keep needing more and more chemicals. Without the abundance of life in the soil that is fed by roots, necessary functions of maintaing that healthy balance of water, air, and organic matter aren’t met, and that leads to nutrient leeching and erosion.

Soil tests are a human-created way to read what’s going on underground, but the soil uses its own language through the presence of weeds. Soil is full of seeds, and when it needs something, it will activate a plant can relieve the negative systems. For instance, mats of creeping buttercup likely means the soil is compacted, as the roots of buttercup are designed to loosen and aerate poor draining soils. Thistles do a great job at extracting silica, so seeing them pop up everywhere means a possible deficiency. We can do our best to listen to the needs of the soil we see from the weeds that pop up and replace the unwanted plants with useful ones that benefit us. In the case of creeping buttercup in compact soils, we could replace a patch of it with black currents, for example, which perform the same function and give us a tasty yield.

 

Composting, mulching, and cover cropping are the key to feeding the soil! We practiced these skills, along with basic soil testing, in the community gardens at Tui.

Other methods we talked about but didn’t get to practice are Hugel Kulture (burying logs under soil to slowly release nutrients and contribute fungus), worm farms (feeding food scraps and human waste to worms in bins to break it down and excrete worm castings, containing quickly accesible nutrients), and leaf moulds (bins full of fallen deciduous leaves, kept moist to develop fungus and turn into almost pure humus).

My knowledge of soil science was greatly expanded as I learned about how and why we need to work with this complex system of life that lies beneath our feet. Nothing excites me more than a handful of rich soil, moist, fluffy, and crawling with creatures!

 

The world is facing a huge issue with water, as it is a super finite resource with only an estimated 1% of it being fresh and drinkable. In the past year it’s been ranked as the highest urgency crisis for the next decade by the World Wildlife Foundation and the World Economic Forum. Statistics show that without a change in practices, the demand for water will be 40% greater than supply by 2030. That’s less than 20 years away and will soon become a serious issue that will effect the daily lives of all beings if we don’t start using water wisely.

 

It’s not that we’re getting less rain than we always have, it’s that the fresh water is becoming either toxic or inacessable, and rapid population growth means tapping more rivers and springs more than they can handle. One major source of loss is the lack of water retention in poor soils causing us to irrigate more and lose more to the groundwater table. Another is the use of water for sewage systems, and the fact that in urban environments, water isn’t absorbed into the soil at all, it just absorbs pollution in the streets and gets drained and emptied out elsewhere. Many of these pollutants in the water are permanent, and we don’t yet know if we’ll ever come up with a way to remove them to make the water fresh again. Wetland environments are also frequently destroyed for property development, and these environments are crucial to filtering our water.

 

In these daunting times, designing our lives to use water in the most efficient and regenerative matter is one of the most crucial things we can do. When water arrives on our property, we must ask ourselves where it enters and exits, and how we can leave it cleaner when it runs off than it was when it arrived. The permaculture mantra is ‘slow it, sink it, spread it!’ Conventional house design often just directs rainwater off of the property and into the sewers rather than using it at all. In order to make the best use of this resource, we can use some techniques to use it for our advantage.

One of my favorite examples is the use of swales and terraces. Swales are small ditches dug next to plant beds or trees to create a basin for infiltration, which means when water runs into them, it stops and is slowly drained into the soil rather than sliding off and causing erosion. It’s often implemented on slopes to allow for more even irrigation. Terraces are just like staircases made on hills that are used for the same reasons.

Another popular method of wise water usage is called keyline ripping. A plow comes through with fork like prongs that dig lines along the contours of the land, loosening up the soil and providing slits to let water soak in. This can be done a few times to create a bunch of little pockets of water storage in a landscape.

Fascines, piles of brush lined against ditches and swales, or other areas where water puddles up can be used to add organic matter and provide mini shelter belts from erosion by holding on to water and letting it drip slowly instead of rushing by.

Raised beds are also a pretty key factor for water retention as porous, absorbent mounds of rich soil can hold on to the water and provide it to plants. To really improve freshwater usage, it’s just important to fill the soil with as much biomass as possible, keep it covered in plants and build up the organic matter layer with compost and mulches.

Then there are plenty of ways to make better use of our water. Driveways and sidewalks can be made with permeable surfaces instead of entirely flat concrete. Gardens can be made in areas where storm water runoff collects from roads, and on top of rooftops!

 

It’s also best to catch water where it really counts. The inflection point is the spot on a slope in which the angle switches from convex to concave, and immediately following it is the keyline point, where the force of water movement changes from erosive to depository. Mapping the topography of a slope allows us to find these points and create a structure like a keyline dam, which simply collects water there and then channels outwards to the rest of a field for even distribution.

I got the chance to practice a few different methods of mapping a slope!

We also clay-crafted an island and then mapped the topography of it by etching it in with matchsticks. We even built a miniature keyline dam with dendritic irrigation channels expanding from it, and poured water on top to watch it all working.

 

Mother nature speaks in its own language, and we can read it and speak it once we take a deeper look, thus allowing us to utilize this beautiful evolutionarily crafted tongue.

The patterns found in ecology have been refined over millions of years to allow for dynamic exchange of energy and resources. There are endless amounts of patterns we can identify that serve different purposes, lobular and dendritic, serpentine and radial symmetry, and of course there’s the golden ratio and many, many more. These mathematical depictions show that edges are key- and increasing the surface area of marginal spaces is the key to being able to maximize inputs and outputs. There are two important skills to using patterns. The first is tracking, first identifying individual marks, then following a sequence of marks to see a trail, and lastly encompassing a network of trails into a pattern. We can do this by both inspecting (infinitely looking within an element to find the root analysis of why it is the way it is), and aspecting (infinitely looking outwards from an element to understand the forces which have acted upon it). Humans are not capable of uncovering the mysteries between many connections of an ecosystem, so we must constantly be re-asking why and how, using the patterns as our teacher and our minds to unlock the codes. The second key is to think creatively about how to re-invision patterns into ecosystems that are man-made to benefit and regenerate an earth full of ecosystems that have been spun out of whack by human disturbances.

 

Using ecological patterns to design landscapes allows for amazing nutrient exchange, and lets the elements in a system prosper in the setting they’ve learned to live in. Designing with and for nature creates a balance that can withstand challenges.

One way to use patterns is to actually physically create the structures. Some examples include keyhole beds, mandala gardens, curving pathways, and companion and guild plantings, all expanding the rims around elements so they can fully interact with each other.

Every permaculture technique implemented into a design shifts the pattern, and hence, the system.

 

 

There

All permaculture systems are created based on the concepts of natural morals and principles. We spent some time looking into why nature is our best teacher and this method of thinking is so efficient!

 

Nature is not a machine, it’s inner workings are non-linear, and the connections between all elements are of greater complexity than we can ever understand. There are no lines between organisms, and every element is in constant interaction with itself and everything around it. There is no such thing as an “end” of a stream or a “top” of a tree, as energy is exchanging between every cell of all life, every second of the day. An invisible web of nodes, connected by links, forms a resilient loop, perfected by evolution surrounds every ecosystem.

The whole universe is a network of nested systems, an atom within a cell, a cell within a tissue, a tissue within a body, zooming out all the way to the limitless boundaries of our cosmos. The stronger the bonds both within and between these networks, the more resilient it is to change and destruction.

 

In permaculture design, it is important to remember that every particle of soil, every plant, every ray of sun, and every drop of rain, is serving a purpose in the design, and it is up to us to figure out how to improve the way each element is connecting and benefiting one another. We can identify “open” loops, sources of energy that are flowing outwards rather than within the network, and convert them into feedback loops that can contain and sustain all nutrients from each other, without depletion or leaks. It is also important to consider a place’s position within its neighborhood, a watershed, a biome region, a continent, and a globe. When design decisions are made, analysis must be made with the idea of accounting for all of these connections. Aristotle said “The whole is greater than the sum of all its parts”, which is extremely relevant to permaculture, as the purpose is to develop progressively more and more effective whole systems through increasing the functionality of their parts. As humans have interfered and artificially changed the course of these evolutionary systems, we have created immense imbalances within ecosystems, and it is up to us to now incorporate the age-old, time-tested successful method of integrated, mutually beneficial relationships for strength.

Additionally, the more diversity present in a landscape allows for heightened productivity and acts as a safety net. If we plant, say, 10 varieties of a crop versus one, it is more likely that we can obtain a significant (and more interesting) yield because if one species doesn’t produce, there will still be nine others. Stability comes from a high number of varying aspects filling different niches, utilizing their spaces and gifts fully.

 

Stepping away from the land-based side of things, societies that embrace differences and individuality, allowing for positive social interaction through equality, are more resilient to stress through community. If every human in a culture is supported and embraced for their unique strengths, they can flourish to their optimum potential.

Our current state is a society that is streamlined for efficiency of economics and specialization of labor. Most of our cultural designs in “developed” countries value the rich and privileged, and our decisions are made with a money-driven mind considering only the aspects that suit us rather than the whole picture.

To create a world in which humans can thrive, we must build a network like nature does, supporting every node with a strong link.