Throughout June I could set my watch (if I had one that is) by the arrival of a greater spotted woodpecker that would arrive in the garden each evening at 7 o'clock to take advantage of one of my birdfeeders. A few evenings I was also rewarded with 3 young fledging woodpeckers that would line up on the rale waiting to be fed by the parent.

Woodpeckers, endless groups of hunting tits, consisting of blue tits, great tits, coal tits, and a few long-tailed tits, numerous blackbirds, chaffinches, dunnocks, house sparrows, greenfinches, wrens, robins, siskins, nuthatches, a jay, along with charms of goldfinches have all frequented the garden this summer. I can’t wait to see what will arrive this winter.  

It’s now early November 2021, should I gauge the success of the redesign of the kitchen garden on how many birds come into the garden? Yes.

 

What went well?

With the encouragement of numerous birds aside, the new design of the kitchen garden has been a great success.

Having put a lot of thought into the locations of the different elements within the garden, the locations chosen, have all worked out well. I have more productive growing space than before, easier to manage beds, composting systems that are no longer the predominant features in the garden. I have an excellent location to work from with my water harvesting design. I have lots of clean and dry ground space for a table and chairs, my neighbours generously gave me a garden bench they no longer needed which has become a great part of the garden when people visit. The extra height in the garden has given me more space to grow along with more privacy. Everything has a home and I no longer need to use tarps to hide anything untoward.   

Surprisingly I was able to do everything I set out to do with regards to positioning the sleepers, I had never worked on levelling ground that needed something to hold it back to I'm very pleased with my solution.  

 

What has been challenging?

Most challenging other than trying to saw sleepers with a handsaw (I only did this once before I invested in the circler saw) was figuring out how the heck to arrange all the different elements in such a small space without having a garden full of composting systems and storage areas.

The building of the design was also challenging, the moving of sleepers on my own, all the digging and levelling took way longer than I expected. The extra ton of soil I ended up with became a problem. One of my neighbours complained about where I was putting things, complaining she could see my rubbish bin from her window, then telling me she was going to heighten the fence to around 7ft, so she didn’t have to see my garden. I did a lot of compromising with this design just to keep a neighbour happy. The seven-foot fence would have taken all the natural sunlight out of one side of my garden.  

Overall, the design took way longer than I thought, as the months went on I was getting very worn down by it, I should have taken some time off work and focused on completing it much quicker. 

 

What are my long-term vision and goals for this design?

I would like to add more height to the garden, both for privacy and to grow against. I have a few ideas. I can already see extra space where I can add more beds.

Now that I have my compost systems in place, I want to focus on improving my compost methods so I can keep on improving the soil in the garden.

The main aim now is to focus on what I’m growing in the garden. I’ve got excellent located and accessible beds I now need to make sure I use them to their fullest.

I also went to spend lots of time sat in the garden reading. 

 

What are the next achievable steps?

I have bought some more raised beds to fill the extra spaces that have now come to light after the design has been completed. One will go where I had placed three large plant pots, a bed will make much more sense than large pots. The other will go in a space near the grow shelters that has become a bit of a dumping ground for young plants, these will be moved next to the hedge where they will get much more sunlight.

I will also buy a table and chairs for the garden.

Of course, I want to add more bird feeders to the garden.  

I am also working on two more designs that complement this design. The first is a soil fertility design where I will look at my current composting systems and see how they can be improved along with other ways to improve the fertility in both this garden and the back garden.

The second design is a water harvesting design. The locations of the composting systems and the location for where I will be collecting rainwater have been thoughtfully designed into this current design, but I have intentionally focused on the design of the garden over including designs for each of the different elements to keep the kitchen garden design simple.     

 

The PRIME design Framework

 

Did you like using PRIME for the first time, how did it work for you?

PRIME is my favourite so far, first, it’s easy to say, unlike some other design processes that I struggle to say and find even harder to understand. I find PRIME simple and straightforward. However, I did have to search the internet to see how other people have used this design process to fully understand what should go where in the design. I think seeing my own completed design has helped me get a better grasp on how I can improve my use of it with future designs.

I like the way this design process goes straight to the problem and makes you describe it. Unless you know what, the problem is you will spend far too long trying to find a solution. My day job is running an IT support help desk, troubling shooting problems is a large part of what I do so this perhaps is why to like the problem section of this design, it gives you a solid foundation to work from.

I also found this a great design process for tweaking other designs, in this case, I was looking at a design I did a few years ago that was no longer performing as I expected. I did try to fit this design into the same Patrick Whitefield framework that I used in the original design but found it to be very difficult due to my preconceptions about the meanings of each section. I now realise this is just conditioning, in hindsight I can now see that I was just getting caught up on words. In Patrick's framework, the first section is the “Base Map” I understand now that I could have changed the meaning of “Base Map” to “Problem”, letting go of my preconceived meaning, and read “Base Map” to just mean problem.  

This will also be why I like simple to understand the design process, I tend to use words with their meanings and not so much as pointers as I’m starting to understand they are used in permaculture as guides to get you thinking like with the principles and ethics.   

Having the permaculture principles and ethics embedded into the research section helped me to understand much better how these are to be used when thinking about a design. Once again as pointers to get you thinking.

 

Permaculture Principles and ethics

 

Which of the principles were most significant for you?

Creatively use and respond to change, this must be the main guiding principle of this design.

I would have loved to have not had to redesign this whole garden after only three growing seasons. When I did the original design, I was convinced it was a great design. Through “observing and interacting” with the design I soon started to see ways I could make improvements. I could also see that to make one change would mean a snowball effect due to the small size of the garden and how if I was to move one element that would mean I would need to move another element and so on.

End the end I had to just admit the garden needed a whole redesign to move it forward. This is the whole part of the principle to creatively use and respond to change.

   

Which ethic was most significant?

As much as this is a ground-based design that works with nature to grow food, the most significant ethic is people care. It’s only now that I can see this has been a design to help calm my mind down. After three growing seasons in the garden, the main thing not taken into consideration was me in the original design. With the new design, I have a large area to sit, room for a table and chairs, room to work in when sowing seeds, easy access to the different composting systems, no lawn to cut, easy access to the rubbish bin, an area for water harvesting, and all this is before we get the whole point of the garden, the growing of food, I now have much higher quality growing beds, all with easy access.

I now have a garden that can act as a resource to help improve my health.

 

Any reflections on using the design tools, which was most useful?

I love the “Functions and Elements” design tool, thanks Wilf for putting me onto this version of it. It is a great tool to get you thinking and very fun to use, highlighting how the different elements play different functions in the garden. It’s also helped to understand what the heck elements are with regards to permaculture. This has been another word I’ve struggled with but now I can use it with confidence.

PMI is also a very good tool to get a simple understanding of things in a quick list format.