Permaculture and Food Forests

Holly Solano
Adams County Master Gardener

(8/12) Permaculture, ecological landscaping, sustainability...these buzz words circulate in gardening discussions. But what to do these terms mean? The term permaculture is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture and permanent culture. A popular current definition is credited to Bill Mollison: "The conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems." Permaculture-based agriculture has existed since ancient times; examples can be found or traced to Japan, Europe, Scandinavia, and Native Americans, to name a few. Consider this Native American Ojibwa prayer: "...Sacred One, teach us love, compassion and honor, that we may heal the earth and heal each other." Permaculture values surged into mainstream US awareness after Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, which exposed the link between pesticides and the near extinction of bird populations across the US.

Permaculture has three core values of conscious design: Earth care, people care, and fair share. Earth care refers to growing food with design and maintenance practices that are focused on caring for the Earth. This includes avoiding pesticides, poisons, and other harmful agricultural practices such as GMO seeds and overirrigation. Earth care also includes nurturing the ecosystem by rehydrating soils, reducing irrigation, restoring the water cycle and healthy soil, building habitats and food sources for wildlife, protecting pollinators, making native plants a proirty, and using renewable resources as much as possible. People care refers to agricultural practices that are helpful and sustainable for people. This means growing food that is healthy for our bodies, planning medicinal plantings, not introducing toxicity or health risks in agricultural and horticultural practices, and collecting and filtrating water for safe human consumption. This also includes conserving human labor efforts, using methods that are friendly to our bodies and our ability to do work on the land through all our life stages and abilities. Fair share refers to the commitment to grow and harvest what we need, sharing excess bounty with wildlife, other people or across space and time when food is scarce (such as food dehydration).

So why bother practicing permaculture? First, we live in a closed system. We must acknowledge that there are limited resources on planet Earth (except for solar energy). Second, we must admit that as humans, our species is interdependent with our planet. Everything we do to, in, or on the Earth affects our ecosystem, which in turn affects our ability to survive here. As Rachel Carson posited in Silent Spring, "In nature, nothing exists alone." The third reason to practice permaculture is that our descendants will be left with the Earth/land. Do we want to leave them poisoned barren land, or healthy land they can feed themselves and their families for generations to come? Like the Japanese gift of cherry trees to us in Washington DC in 1912, the gift-givers were aware that their gift would serve humans and wildlife long after they, the gift-givers in Tokyo, had died. A fourth reason to consider permaculture is that we do not grow younger, we grow older. Permaculture designs are meant to care for human efforts and share the bounty.

Since permaculture includes both animal and plant crops as well as food storage practices, not all permaculture practices overlap with gardening. Permaculture practices related to plant crops, water, and soil health do overlap with gardening. For example, Food forests are a plant crop permaculture concept. A food forest is a plan and plantings that transform an open space by first planting trees with edible parts (fruit, nuts, leaves, bark, sap, roots), with the tallest trees in the northern sections of a space. Once trees are established, each tree is then treated as its own "island" ecosystem. Around each tree, ecosystem-compatible herbaceous perennial plants (preferably nutritious to humans) are added as mineral miners, weed control, pest control, and pollinator hosts, interspersed with annual (preferably self-seeding) edibles. In this way, you build a space that provides permanent (perennial) sources of food for humans and wildlife.

Related terms are numerous. Permies is a term for people who govern their survival, homesteads, and businesses using permaculture values and practices. Ecological landscaping is an aesthetic or restorative planting design, where native plants or others that work well within the local ecosystem (without harming it) are prioritized over aesthetics or costs. Since it does not entail growing food, ecological landscaping is not directly linked to permaculture. However, if a landscape design includes edible plants in an aesthetic planting, it is then dubbed edible landscaping- plantings designed for visual interest and food. Sustainability is an often-abused term, especially in retail plant advertising. The term sustainability is generally intended to mean practices or plants that are non-resource intensive over a period of 10 or more years, that do not deplete Earth's resources, but rather add to them by contributing to the ecosystem, wildlife, soil, water, or composting cycle in a positive way. Human labor efforts are included in sustainability considerations for permaculture.

There is much to explore about permaculture and being responsible stewards of our Earth's resources. Initial steps typically include a site analysis and planning permaculture activities in zones. The proliferation of books, workshops, and videos can be overwhelming. An easy place to start is to check with your local extension office or garden club. They are likely to have affordable classes, resources, and referrals to help you.

Read other articles by Holly Solano