Just got my newest Organic Gardening magazine in the mail (the only other subscription at le Five Birch Perch is Field & Stream…you can see where our loyalties lie) – and was immediately inspired by this article on a North Carolina family living la vida Permaculture:
Dependable Diversity
A family home and garden that is a model of urban permaculture.
As house-hunting newlyweds in 1994, Will Hooker and Jeana Myers had an unusual priority list. Their ideal property would be in a residential neighborhood, yet offer land suitable for food production. To reduce their dependence on an automobile, they wanted to be close enough to their work to either walk or bicycle. And the house should face south to benefit from passive solar energy.
At the heart of their plans was their desire to make their home a living classroom to demonstrate the principles of permaculture. Will, a landscape architect and horticulture professor at North Carolina State University, and Jeana, the Cooperative Extension horticulture agent for Wake County, North Carolina, wanted to showcase sustainability in action. This is how they came to purchase a 1,050-square-foot home located on a mere .18 acre in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Permaculture, a word that combines permanent and agriculture, describes a system of producing a diverse and useful harvest—usually food crops—while minimizing inputs and waste. Although permaculture incorporates many basic principles of organic gardening, such as species diversity and sustainability, it takes the concept a step further.
“Permaculture is more comprehensive in that it encompasses all of what it is to live in a place—food, water, shelter, energy, and how you handle the material stream and waste,” Will says. “Organic agriculture is certainly part of it.” In a home landscape designed with permaculture in mind, frequently harvested vegetables and herbs are sited closest to the house. Small fruits and occasionally harvested crops are planted a little farther away, with orchard fruits and nut trees growing at the edges of the property. This arrangement makes care, watering, and harvesting more efficient.
Read the rest of the article here at Organic Gardening!
And for ways to incorporate the basic theory of Permaculture into your little homestead, check out this article from Ground to Ground: “5 Ways to Make Permaculture Practical.”
Related articles
- Permaculture: A Quiet Revolution (topdocumentaryfilms.com)
- How Two Plant Geeks Grew a Permaculture Oasis in an Ordinary Backyard (yesmagazine.org)
- Permaculture Food Forests Will Heal The Planet (digthetunnel.wordpress.com)
A Green(ish) Life 