Those fine words of encouragement “Keep at it, you’ve got some work on your hands getting that lot done, but you’ll get there”. Oh, how they make me smile, those kind gardener sages who feel encouragement is the finest complement to bestow upon a worthy gardener tending to his small plot as they pass by on the adjacent public snicket.
I smile even more to myself as I proudly state, “Fear not my great one, alas I am already at the destination chosen by the green man, he who not look upon the beauty of nature captured and contained in an order satisfying to the eye of an English garden of the year of 2024. Nature cannot be contained; it can only be experienced”.
It’s at this point in the conversation where people will think you are a little mad and move quickly on. Fortunately, there are additionally those few inquisitive folks who hummer the fool with further encouragement for a little more of what was just said.
I’ve talked many an hour to people as they walk by my garden and happen to mention how it looks. It is these, the additional few inquisitive folks who my garden tends to speak to. Sometimes I even end up having a conversation with fellow permaculture folk, something Richmond seems to have few of, yet slowly through lots of conversations permaculture is becoming a recognised word.
What most people do not appreciate when I am sharing with them all that I have done in the garden is how the garden makes me feel. Many people understandably see a garden waiting to be tamed by the hand of man. To most, a garden needs to conform to the rule book of appropriate gardening. Lawns represent an acceptable beauty when placed next to a flowerbed containing a coordinated planting policy as referenced in the latest updated version of the gardening rule book. Order is a necessity in the world of control, the question is who decided they were to be the ones to write the gardening rule book and remove the right of the lowly folk to observe the patterns of nature and grow gardens that make them experience the joy of life vibrating through their souls.
No better garden there is than the edible forest garden to blow people's minds out of their designated parking spaces. Permaculture is about working outside the boundaries of control and not overstretching your life in ways that bring with it additional stress. I’m sure out there in a far and distant Shire of the country some lone folks wake up early on a morning unable to sleep, tense with anticipation that once the summer dew has been burnt off their grass by the blazing sun, they will be able to cut their lawns. Oh, how I love the sound of the neighbourhood lawnmowers, strimmer's, and leaf blowers filling the peaceful summer Sunday afternoon air with the sounds of a population controlled by order.
It is the edible forest garden, my chosen confrontation tool to disarm the ordered mind of the average passer-by. Many a time I watch as people stop and take in what they are looking at in my garden. Many plants are recognized, yet there is no order so who has allowed such disorder to take place on their preferred route into town? The edible forest garden is where we now find ourselves amongst the wildness of a garden designed to bring calm to the mind of the experiencer by breaking down the boundaries of how a garden is expected to be looked upon.
To find oneself in an ancient woodland, listening to the voice of nature, absorbed in the moment of higher intelligence at the point of which only patterns exist is not unique to the place one finds oneself. It is but a pattern that can be created where one chooses. Therefore, it is the imagination of the designer to bring together the elements and functions that are required to shape a simulation fitting to the space required. Do not be fearful of making mistakes for nature only chooses different outcomes for every thought created. When left alone the woodland returns to its rightful state of patterns, and a garden will also have the final say in the preferred pattern that your simulation will produce if allowed to dance to the music of the wind. To design in the natural flow of nature an edible forest garden will over several circles around the sun begin to be that place where the wildlife frequents, and habitats will be assembled of their accord. As the designer, you are only providing the building blocks for nature to reclaim as their own. If you try to control the garden you will be left constantly puzzled as to why this and that is not working, and you will produce marvellous stories to tell yourself and friends as to why something you designed did not work. In truth, the only thing you failed to do was not to let nature into your design.
There is no wizardry or witchcraft, no chanting to the great unknowns, no secret formula or even a special handshake needed to design your edible forest garden. You do not need to go on countless courses to gain certificates that have value only to those granting them. Observation and a desire to begin is all you need. Nature does not evaluate for it is only a word generated to describe something that cannot be singled out and held. Let yourself be taken on a voyage through observation. Guides are not required, this is a time for you the beholder to become absorbed in the patterns that surround us all, a time when the experience will initiate a desire. A desire that will single you out to nonchalantly share the secret of joy contained in permaculture design.
When was the last time you found yourself deep in the inner thoughts of nature? That place where everything makes perfect sense. To step outside and listen to each of the sounds that travel on the vibrations that fill the space that a moment before was not even there. To state once more, you need not travel to ancient sites, majestic mountains, or temples of the sun or moon. Sacredness is a concept constructed to lure the inquisitive. Have you not embraced the permaculture principle of observe and interact.
Observation is a key to unlocking many a thought process, to release the patterns contained within. The obvious is often the most difficult to hold in a world full of ideas. As the passer-by tells me what I need to do to improve my garden they miss the objective of the design put forth by nature.
To walk the same path through the countryside week after week, year after year nature never stands still. Patterns change moment to moment often unobserved by the casual eye. The ultrasonic echolocation of the bat waveform as it flows through the cool night air may go unnoticed to most, often until it’s too late and can no longer be heard. Layer upon layer the reality we experience is created. As the edible forest garden design matures new seeds will continuously drop into the fertile soils, awakening once more another layer to the complexity of the web that is life.
The leading permaculture ethic of earth care is not a like or even a smiley face on a generic social media post to make the unengaged believe they are making a change in a world they have become wonderfully disconnected from to the point that even Alice would be proud of their fictional worlds. Earth care is a participatory activity that is the foundation of our edible forest garden design. As the designer an awareness of the soil is the focus of any productive garden. Fertility is the cycle of all life no matter how large or small. It is the microbes found in the soil that are the life force that generates the requirements our garden needs to become its true self. A self-contained living ecosystem where everything flows continuously inside of a closed-loop ecology.
As the winter winds blow through the skeleton stalks that once resembled plants bursting with chlorophylls, it is now the memory of summer that feeds the soil. In the edible forest garden leaves are not tidied up into bins to be collected by the Ministry of Conformity, they are allowed to rest where they fall to moulder over the shorter days and longer nights, the time of year in which the Alchemical processing microbes perform their great work.
If the looking-glass reality of your edible forest design amongst a sea of ordered gardens captures the attention of even just one of those beautiful folks passing by, instantaneously the butterfly embraces the gentle transformation found deep inside the warm summer breeze as it continues its journey through all that cannot be seen. Your garden is not a statement to proclaim you arrived here with the Normans to conquer the lands of our medieval town. Your edible forest garden is the spark that ignites the memory of the patterns of nature in all who take the time to gaze into the looking-glass reality that is always here to be seen.
People proclaim to be many a thing, yet often miss the idea of what life is all about. I have good-naturedly listened to many a fellow as they explain where I am going wrong and what I should do to make my garden more presentable to those passing by. A sense of bafflement is the gift they bestow upon me as they leave to continue their journeys spreading their great teachings near and far around the town. If only these same people were of action instead of gaining their knowledge through soundbite facts alone. Observe and be whispered to by nature, that inner voice calling out in patterns that things are not what they at first seem to be in a world that is made up by you and me.
Further information
The above photographs try to capture a snapshot of the garden described in this article. This permaculture design was set in motion in December 2017, here you can view its creation.
What are the permaculture principles and ethics? Here is an article where I give an overview of each of the principles and ethics
