PERMACULTURE!... Putting it into Practice

Maybe you've done some Permaculture study and reading and are now getting a bit overwhelmed by starting to put it into practice, or maybe you're well into a project but want to re-develop an aspect of it and have got bogged down in the detail... Or maybe you just need a bit of physical help with a daunting amount of work.
Either way, this is where Ruth and I love to help.
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
We've spent many years living, visiting and working on eco/permaculture projects, farms and gardens all over the UK and in Portugal and have now got a wealth of practical experience. We've made loads of mistakes! which is a particularly good thing, because we can help you avoid some of them yourselves...

Mistake 99 - taking on more than you have energy for. Ruth and I were actually thinking of developing that whole field behind us. We did do some interesting stuff with the two strips in the foreground though.

LITTLE AND LARGE
No project is too big or too small. Our clients' gardens range at the moment from a 8 foot by 3 foot patch to a vast walled garden, and we've planned for and worked on 100 acre farms, eco-villages, orchards and community gardens.
WOODLAND - THE CORE OF SUSTAINABILITY
My special interest is the woody aspect of a project, from planting trees, to renovating and managing orchards and woodland, setting up forest/woodland gardens, to making the things we need from local wood - not just raised beds and so on but also low impact housing homes and furniture.

Me at work on the verandah for the LogCabavan - it made a HUGE difference to have somewhere to sit outside

The LogCabavan itself, a static caravan clad with garden fence panels and insulated with waste plastic. The trusses for the extra roof are local poles and bits of palette

PRESERVING
Ruth is the one with the deeper knowledge of plants and also with the skills and experience for food preserving. Here in the UK we will do well to relearn these skills as soon as possible. With so much of food coming from abroad and are our local food yields coming mostly in quite a narrow part of the year, our food security is terribly fragile.

A shelf full of delicious jams, jellies, chutneys, pickles and the best maramalade ever - reminds me of my mum's larder

They may not taste of very much on their own, but courgettes/marrows absorb flavours brilliantly so are great for storing bulk

GET IN TOUCH!
So get in touch and see if we can help:
ianecowatt@gmail.com
07450 332 430

NEED ANY HELP?

Ruth and I have been delighted to find that all the experience we've picked up in our travels and work over the years on eco/permaculture projects, farms, small holdings and gardens around the UK and in Portugal is proving so useful now in and around Perth. The basic patterns of Nature's way are of course the same here in the city as they are half way up a mountain in Wales.

Fruit and nut area taking shape in Dundee

We've been getting pleasantly busy helping people with gardens of all shapes and sizes, ranging from small town gardens, to an allotment, to village gardens, (which tend to be that bit bigger), not forgetting lending a hand with Craig Barnett at the excellent Perth Community Farm

Perth Community Farm - inspiring stuff!

NEED ANY HELP?
We are delighted to give you whatever kind of help you need in your garden, whether it's with some of the heavier work, eg clearing veg beds of heavy weeds which can be a bit daunting on your own, or with advice on techniques and design, companion planting, biodynamics and so on, or just chatting over plans and ideas. A lot of my own work involves trees, whether it's woodwork for gardens or looking after fruit trees and orchards, or managing larger areas of woodland. Ruth is the one who knows more about individual plants, how to propagate them and what ones grow happily together. So do please get in touch if we can help at all! Text me: 07450 332 430 or email: ianecowatt@gmail.com

Forest Gardens - Part 2 - Pics and Links

Here's a few photos of a some great examples of forest gardening, first the amazing roof garden at RISC, really well documented here: RISC:

The RISC garden is especially amazing because it's on a roof! Yes, everything is planted in just two foot of soil... here's a link to the list of plants in the garden: RISC plants - its a useful list of forest garden plants in itself.

Here's the RISC roof garden not long after planting

Detail of the planting and the different path materials: woodchip and reclaimed slabs

Loads of understory variety, including medicinals etc

Another forest garden, this one's at Seaford on the South Coast, planted and developed by Bryn Thomas

This one's at the Peat Centre

And this is Chris Dixon's project in Wales; more of an example of natural regeneration than of forest gardening but a fascinating project

Finally for now, here's a link to Geoff Lawton's site - lots of great free stuff on forest gardening and also on Permaculture in general: Geoff Lawton.

FOREST GARDENS - FOOD FOR THE FUTURE!

If there's one idea that will help people everywhere to ride out whatever environmental, social, health and financial storms are gathering, it's Forest Gardening - why? because it's...

• a way of growing food, AND medicinals, materials in patterns that mimic Nature and support the environment
• Forest Gardens are drought, flood, pest and disease resistant
• they produce a wide range of food with a minimum of energy input
• they produce a succession of varied yields
• they're friendly to the environment, bees, birds and build healthy, dynamic soil
• the principles work whether you have a tiny town garden, an allotment or a hillside
• they're four dimensional, rather than two dimensional

  

  The layers of the forest, and what's going on underground

The illustration is from the main reference work for Forest Gardening, "Edible Forest Gardens", by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier, and it shows the basic idea beautifully. The trees and plants copy the layers you would find in woodland that had generated all on its own: tall trees, smaller trees, shrubs, bushes, herbs, a ground layer, roots, mycelium and maybe some climbing plants and an emergent layer.
THE REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF IS GOING ON UNDERGROUND
People are often surprised to find out that fruit trees aren't all that deep rooted. The roots of the pear tree in the illustration are mainly shallow for feeding and sharing with other plants with a few deeper tap roots. Compare that with horseradish roots which can go sixteen foot down into the ground. This is really crucial to the forest system, those deep roots bring up nutrients that would otherwise be unavailable. We can chop up the foliage of horseradish and other similar plants like comfrey and use them to feed and mulch other plants wherever they need it, being perennial, it just grows back.

The unremarkable foliage of horseradish and its very remarkable, sixteen foot deep roots

FOREST: NO WASTE, NO ENERGY REQUIREMENT
If you have a look at some natural woodland, (we're very lucky here in Perth, Scotland to have Kinnoull Hill on our doorstep) you won't find a skip full of stuff that the forest didn't need, or plastic packaging left from stuff it bought. Everything is generated on the spot, and regenerated using dead and decaying plants. There's no electricity cable, the energy requirement comes from the Sun, wind, rain, and animals passing through. Compare this with industrial agriculture:

...it takes a tremendous amount of energy to produce a crop of just one plant, because that's not what Nature wants to do. It uses fossil fuel in each and every process, from the manufacture of those enormous machines through to harvest,  and tons of packaging too. Not only that, annual ploughing destroys soil fertility.
MORE SOON! It's a huge topic but it's relevant to all my gardening clients and friends and I wanted to get started on spreading the word.