The Permaculture School Garden - Part 1: Plans and Designs

Written by AdministratorMonday, 12 March 2012 19:10 - Last Updated Monday, 01 October 2012 15:44

One of the things I have wanted to get involved in for years was to set up productive gardens inour local schools. For me there could be no higher purpose than to be involved in teaching thenext generation how to grow their own food and live more sustainably. I had consideredapproaching the schools where our daughters went, but since they had left school more thanten years ago, any connection would be pretty tenuous at best, so I had not worked out how tocrack that one.

Due to the work with the veggie groups that I do locally my name has been bandied around(even, if you can believe it, without any associated curse words!) and the local primary schoolVice Principal gave me a ring a few weeks ago. It seems they had some grant money torefurbish their cooking room and she wanted to start a garden but didn’t know the first thing todo, could I help? Oh yes, my friends... Golden Opportunity!

If this is the thing you want to do, my advice would be to talk to one of the local schools,particularly if you have a connection of some description - even if it is something as simple asknowing one of the teachers. If you can, open the dialogue with the Principal or Vice Principalbecause they will be the ones you will have to win over if you are going to get a school gardenof any description going.

The Initial Meeting

I met the Vice Principal for an initial discussion and she showed me over the area where shewanted to site the garden, where the cooking room was and what the surrounding areas werelike.  We then retired to the buildings and discussed what options there were.

At this point I would like to mention that the process we went through in developing thePermaculture design is based on the Permaculture design course that I did in 2011 and if youreally want to get into this stuff a PDC is a very valuable series of skills and qualification tohave.

Thankfully we had access to a computer so I was able to pull up the website and show hersome things we could do, the list of things we talked about included –

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The Permaculture School Garden - Part 1: Plans and Designs

Written by AdministratorMonday, 12 March 2012 19:10 - Last Updated Monday, 01 October 2012 15:44

• Raised veggie beds• Vertical gardens• Mandala garden• Small green house/ seed raising• Banana circle• Fruit tree circle• Swales• Herb spiral• Strawberry tower• Wicking beds• Worm bath• Chook tractor

After our discussion and review of the possibilities I left and allowed her to consider what wehad talked about and run this past any other teachers she wished to involve and come up with ashopping list of the things they wanted.

The Second Meeting

We got together at the school the next weekend to discuss alternatives and have a morein-depth review of the site, and to make things easier I took with me –

• A digital camera• A compass• Bottles for taking soil samples• Loooooong tape measure (supplied by the Principal) but one of those measuring hand wheelswould have been better.• A clip board, paper and pencil

After we reviewed the site and I took down the measurements of the area we had and thelocation of existing structures etc, we discussed the Permaculture design features she waslooking for, and the main features turned out to be –

1. A series of fish-scale swales that had fruit trees planted into them2. A mandala annual vegetable garden that had a herb spiral and chook tractor incorporatedinto the design3. A series of wicking bed gardens which would incorporate perennial vegetables in them. 

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The Permaculture School Garden - Part 1: Plans and Designs

Written by AdministratorMonday, 12 March 2012 19:10 - Last Updated Monday, 01 October 2012 15:44

4. A series of edible flower towers

All of these features had to be incorporated into my finished Permaculture design but before Icould develop the design, I had to take all the information that I had gathered and conduct asector and zone analysis of the site.

Zone and Sector Analysis

 To do the sector analysis you need to take note of such things as aspect of the site (which wayit faces) shade in summer and winter, the directions that cold, hot and damaging winds comefrom, soil types, fall of the land, existing buildings and vegetation. I noted all of this informationin my note book and took a few photos to help me remember. I got hold of some A3 paper with1 cm grid lines and then drew in the things listed above. To see what I came up with, go to theresources tab and then look in the “Permaculture Designs” file.

I conducted the zone analysis by looking at all the information gained from the sector analysisand worked out where each of the zones (0 to 5) would be located on the site –

Zone 0 – In urban Permaculture this is usually the house or dwelling but in this case it is theschool building which is to be turned into a room for cooking and processing the products of thePermaculture garden.

Zone 1 – this is the vegetable garden which is intensively cultivated and is likely to need themost intervention in the form of watering, weeding and harvesting etc and so is placed closestto zone 0

Zone 2 – this zone contains the closely planted and somewhat intensive fruit orchard which isalso close to zone 0 but requires less intervention than the veggie production area.

Zone 3 – is the farming zone where commercial crops are grown and animal forage systemsare used such as organic orchard, nut forest or extensive organic poultry system, or even cerealproduction or sheep or goats could be raised here

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The Permaculture School Garden - Part 1: Plans and Designs

Written by AdministratorMonday, 12 March 2012 19:10 - Last Updated Monday, 01 October 2012 15:44

Zone 4 – is the harvest forest where long term tree species are grown to produce firewood,mulch or timber to be used for sustainable building, complementary grazing animals can alsoshare this zone at low stocking rates.

Zone 5 – is the indigenous conservation zone where plants native to the region are allowed toregrow into what would become natural forest.

I used the same page as the sector analysis to draw the zone analysis on but if you wanted toyou could do the basic site drawing then mark up clear overlays showing the sector analysisand the zone analysis to go over the top. You don’t have to be a competent graphic artist to dothese drawings, I don’t have an artistic bone in my body but I was able to put somethingtogether that people could understand and needless to say if you are artistically talented it willmake your design all the better.

The Permaculture Design

Using the same basic layout as I did for the zone and sector analysis (alright, I drew up the firstone then photocopied it before putting any of the analysis stuff in!) I then proceeded to locatethe design features my client (the Vice Principal) wanted. When doing a Permaculture design itis important to place the areas that need the most regular work closest to the Zone 0 (house ordwelling) but in this case the school buildings themselves would be Zone 0 so the mandalagarden and wicking beds were located in closest to them.

The original idea was to have the edible flower towers along the fence on the northern side ofthe site but after reviewing the zone and sector analysis it appeared that the flowers would growbest on the side away from the buildings and would be shaded out in winter. To prevent this Ichanged their location so that they were right outside the school buildings to give maximumamenity and usefulness for the edible flowers.

The swale/fruit tree garden was located at the very western end of the site so that it wouldcapture water moving down from the play areas on the uphill side, reducing the likelihood offlooding out the mandala garden in wet weather and enabling the trees to make the most use ofscarce moisture in dry weather.

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The Permaculture School Garden - Part 1: Plans and Designs

Written by AdministratorMonday, 12 March 2012 19:10 - Last Updated Monday, 01 October 2012 15:44

The graphical design is also available in the “resources” section of this site. The written part ofthe design is mainly around some simple description of what Permaculture is and howPermaculture zones work and then provides a description of each of the parts of thePermaculture design, what the features of each part are, how they are constructed and aselection of plants that can be used in each part.

The final part of the design was around implementation, breaking the design down into its partsthen working out which parts can be done when. In some cases it doesn’t matter – the fruit treeswales, mandala garden and wicking beds could be done simultaneously if the manpower wasavailable but the mandala garden would need to be finished to do the herb spiral and themandala garden would need to have completed a circuit before needing the chook tractor.

The Third Meeting

The main purpose of the third meeting with the Principal is to present the finished design and topresent the design professionally I bought a folder with a clear front to make everything looknice. I printed off the title page twice in colour, one going in the cover of the folder and the otheracting as the first page. I then printed off the A4 typed pages and then inserted the folded A3drawings (zone/sector analysis and the design) into the folder as well. With everything stowedaway I was ready!

At this point there should really be no surprises, the client should understand that you will bepresenting them with the detail about the design which you will already have agreed on, thereshould be no major changes. Of course, during your design you may find that minor changesare necessary as I did with the location of the flower towers once I had consulted the zone andsector analysis. If I found something that we agreed on would not work I would have gone backto the vice principal to discuss the situation with her before continuing with the design.

As part of this meeting you might want to do a formal presentation to other teachers, parents,students or other interested persons but in my case even though I offered, the Vice Principaldecided she wanted to handle the wider consultation phase. After she has done this she willcontact me to let me know if there are any changes required from her end.

Next : The Implementation of the Plan

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