With all five phases of the design complete, I will use two design tools to help evaluate the design. To start with I will use PMI – Plus Minus Interesting to bullet point the things that stood out in the design. Then I will use SWOC Analysis – Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Challenges for a deeper review at evaluating the design.  

To end with I have added a selection of photographs to help evaluate how the garden performed in it's first growing season. 

 

 

PMI is a brainstorming, decision making and critical thinking tool. It is used to encourage the examination of ideas, concepts and experiences from more than one perspective.

 

 

SWOC is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Challenges. Here this is used as a tool to focus on the key areas of the design.

 

Strengths

Having a detailed plan was very important for this design. There was lots of measuring and constant checking to make sure I was correct in what I was doing especially in phase one. The detailed design also kept me focused on the order that I was to do things in and at what points I needed to order materials.

Having worked in the original kitchen garden design for three growing seasons allowed me to understand where the weaknesses were with that design. This enabled me better insight into how the elements of the design could be improved. I also had a much better understanding of how the seasons of the year affected each part of the garden, how the sun moved through the garden and how the wind impacted the garden. Taking all this information into this redesign was of great value and helped locate all the different elements in the final design.

Another major strength with this new design was having some money to play with. The final costs came to just short of £2500. Included in this were the power tools that have already been used on other projects with more in the pipeline.

I also now have an excellent bird feeding area directly facing the kitchen window where I can stand to watch an ever-growing number of birds. The highlights so far have been a great spotted woodpecker regularly feeding over the summer and seeing it feeding 3 young woodpeckers in the garden. I also had regular visits from a jay, and I have had my first squirrel on the feeders.      

 

Weaknesses

Incorporating time scales into the design would have come in very useful. This is something I never considered and would have gone a long way to guide me into how long this whole design was going to take. In the beginning, I was under the impression a few weekends and I’ll have it done. Not the case, I started in March and ended in June.

During this time, I did also have to put together a small design for the back garden. Due to having over a ton of soil I needed to find a home.

I also probably didn’t consider how difficult some parts of the design were going to be for somebody working on their own. Moving 2.4m damp sleepers was a bit of a struggle, and then thinking I could cut them with a hand saw made me wish I hadn’t started the design. This is something I will make sure I consider for future designs. A two-man lift would have saved me a lot of time and energy.

 

Opportunities

My skill set grew immensely with this design. It was the first time I’ve worked with very large timber. My measuring skills had to be correct. I had never used a circular saw before and I’ve now gone on to create garden furniture with the saw and enjoy using it and plan to keep on using it. By using it I'm referring to the saw, not the furniture, but I am still using the furniture, just not to cut wood with. 

This was also the first design with groundworks that have involved external resources such as sleepers to hold back the garden so it could be levelled out. I had to figure out how I was going to achieve this, thankfully I guessed okay.

This design also got me involved with having to measure up and order building materials for a design.

 

Challenges

One of the main challenges was out of my hands and that was due to the building supply chain running low on stock due to the Covid chaos. I’m very grateful to another neighbour, the manager of our local Atkinson's Bob for helping me with the materials I needed. I think I got the last stock of a few of his items. Once again, thank you Bob.

Moving sleepers was difficult on my own but I’m very persistent and found a way around it. 

The extra ton of soil that I ended up with also gave me something to constantly think about, I didn’t expect it so had no thoughts about what I was going to do with it. The dilemma was to find a permaculture solution to use it without paying for somebody to dump it for me. The soil had far too many stones and was a heavy clay to use in the raised beds. As mentioned, I created a new design for the back garden where I used the extra soil to level some ground that I then gravelled and used as a base for the bike shelter that caused so much upset to stand on.

One other thing to mention is the sun, it seemed that each time I needed to do heavy work the sun would be out melting me, then when I need to do work with my fingers it would be ice cold. Not sure what the solution to this is?  

 

Conclusion

I love the new design.

The long workdays weekend after weekend, all the money invested into the garden, the few setbacks, the ton of extra soil, all paid off in the end.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time sitting in the garden over the summer reading. There is a constant flow of different birds coming and going through the garden all day long giving a constant chatter of songs, chirps, and a flutter of wings to the garden. The growing beds are easily accessible along with all the different composting systems.

This new design, an updated version of the original design still has space for many more layers to be added to it. The good thing now is that the next elements that will be added to the garden will be light work compared with the groundworks that went into this design. The future of this garden is going to be one of enjoyment, I can now focus on the plants and compost systems.

 

Photographs

Below are some photographs that were taken throughout the summer of 2021. With vision and a little hard work, amazing permaculture designs can come to life in such a short space of time. This is just the beginning of this design.