Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-scale PermaculturePermaculture is a verbal marriage of apermanenta and aagriculture.a Australian Bill Mollison pioneered its development. Key features include: use of compatible perennials; non-invasive planting techniques; emphasis on biodiversity; specifically adaptable to local climate, landscape, and soil conditions; highly productive output of edibles. Now, picture your backyard as one incredibly lush garden, filled with edible flowers, bursting with fruit and berries, and carpeted with scented herbs and tangy salad greens. The visual impact is of Monetas palette, a wash of color, texture, and hue. But this is no still life. The flowers nurture endangered pollinators. Bright-featured songbirds feed on abundant berries and gather twigs for their nests. The plants themselves are grouped in natural communities, where each species plays a role in building soil, deterring pests, storing nutrients, and luring beneficial insects. And finally, you--good ola homo sapiens--are an integral part of the scene. Your garden tools are resting against a nearby tree, and have a slight patina of rust, because this garden requires so little maintenance. You recline into a hammock to admire your work. You have created a garden paradise. This is no dream, but rather an ecological garden, which takes the principles of permaculture and applies them on a home-scale. There is nothing technical, intrusive, secretive, or expensive about this form of gardening. All that is required is some botanical knowledge (which is in this book) and a mindset that defines a backyard paradise as something other than a carpet of grass fed by MiracleGro. |
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animals annual aphids apple attract Autumn olive backyard bamboo beans beetles beneficial insects benefits berries birds black locust boost bugs build soil canopy chapter chickens compost cover crops create cycles decomposers deep dense diversity earth ecological garden ecosystem edge edible Elaeagnus elements feed feet fertility flowers forest garden fruit trees garden beds grass greens greywater ground grow guild habitat hackberries harvest herbs HP Lf human humus inches insectary insectary plants irrigation keyhole bed landscape lawn layer leaf leaves manure mature microbes microclimates moisture N-fixer native plants nature niches nitrogen fixers nitrogen-fixing nutrients offer organic matter path perennial permaculture pests pile plant communities pollinators polyculture pond predators rain recycling role roots seeds shade sheet mulch shrubs soil organisms species sunlight swale techniques varieties vegetables walnut wasps weeds wetland wild wildlife wind yard Zone