The Permaculture School Garden - Part 1: Plans and Designs

The Permaculture School Garden - Part 1: Plans and Designs
Written by Administrator
Monday, 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 in
our local schools. For me there could be no higher purpose than to be involved in teaching the
next generation how to grow their own food and live more sustainably. I had considered
approaching the schools where our daughters went, but since they had left school more than
ten years ago, any connection would be pretty tenuous at best, so I had not worked out how to
crack 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 school
Vice Principal gave me a ring a few weeks ago. It seems they had some grant money to
refurbish their cooking room and she wanted to start a garden but didn’t know the first thing to
do, 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 as
knowing one of the teachers. If you can, open the dialogue with the Principal or Vice Principal
because they will be the ones you will have to win over if you are going to get a school garden
of any description going.
The Initial Meeting
I met the Vice Principal for an initial discussion and she showed me over the area where she
wanted to site the garden, where the cooking room was and what the surrounding areas were
like. 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 the
Permaculture design is based on the Permaculture design course that I did in 2011 and if you
really want to get into this stuff a PDC is a very valuable series of skills and qualification to
have.
Thankfully we had access to a computer so I was able to pull up the website and show her
some things we could do, the list of things we talked about included –
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• 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 we
had talked about and run this past any other teachers she wished to involve and come up with a
shopping list of the things they wanted.
The Second Meeting
We got together at the school the next weekend to discuss alternatives and have a more
in-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 wheels
would 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 the
location of existing structures etc, we discussed the Permaculture design features she was
looking for, and the main features turned out to be –
1. A series of fish-scale swales that had fruit trees planted into them
2. A mandala annual vegetable garden that had a herb spiral and chook tractor incorporated
into the design
3. A series of wicking bed gardens which would incorporate perennial vegetables in them.
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4. A series of edible flower towers
All of these features had to be incorporated into my finished Permaculture design but before I
could develop the design, I had to take all the information that I had gathered and conduct a
sector 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 way
it faces) shade in summer and winter, the directions that cold, hot and damaging winds come
from, soil types, fall of the land, existing buildings and vegetation. I noted all of this information
in my note book and took a few photos to help me remember. I got hold of some A3 paper with
1 cm grid lines and then drew in the things listed above. To see what I came up with, go to the
resources tab and then look in the “Permaculture Designs” file.
I conducted the zone analysis by looking at all the information gained from the sector analysis
and 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 the
school building which is to be turned into a room for cooking and processing the products of the
Permaculture garden.
Zone 1 – this is the vegetable garden which is intensively cultivated and is likely to need the
most intervention in the form of watering, weeding and harvesting etc and so is placed closest
to zone 0
Zone 2 – this zone contains the closely planted and somewhat intensive fruit orchard which is
also 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 systems
are used such as organic orchard, nut forest or extensive organic poultry system, or even cereal
production or sheep or goats could be raised here
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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 also
share this zone at low stocking rates.
Zone 5 – is the indigenous conservation zone where plants native to the region are allowed to
regrow 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 to
you could do the basic site drawing then mark up clear overlays showing the sector analysis
and the zone analysis to go over the top. You don’t have to be a competent graphic artist to do
these drawings, I don’t have an artistic bone in my body but I was able to put something
together that people could understand and needless to say if you are artistically talented it will
make 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 first
one then photocopied it before putting any of the analysis stuff in!) I then proceeded to locate
the design features my client (the Vice Principal) wanted. When doing a Permaculture design it
is important to place the areas that need the most regular work closest to the Zone 0 (house or
dwelling) but in this case the school buildings themselves would be Zone 0 so the mandala
garden 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 of
the site but after reviewing the zone and sector analysis it appeared that the flowers would grow
best on the side away from the buildings and would be shaded out in winter. To prevent this I
changed their location so that they were right outside the school buildings to give maximum
amenity and usefulness for the edible flowers.
The swale/fruit tree garden was located at the very western end of the site so that it would
capture water moving down from the play areas on the uphill side, reducing the likelihood of
flooding out the mandala garden in wet weather and enabling the trees to make the most use of
scarce moisture in dry weather.
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The graphical design is also available in the “resources” section of this site. The written part of
the design is mainly around some simple description of what Permaculture is and how
Permaculture zones work and then provides a description of each of the parts of the
Permaculture design, what the features of each part are, how they are constructed and a
selection of plants that can be used in each part.
The final part of the design was around implementation, breaking the design down into its parts
then working out which parts can be done when. In some cases it doesn’t matter – the fruit tree
swales, mandala garden and wicking beds could be done simultaneously if the manpower was
available but the mandala garden would need to be finished to do the herb spiral and the
mandala 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 to
present the design professionally I bought a folder with a clear front to make everything look
nice. I printed off the title page twice in colour, one going in the cover of the folder and the other
acting as the first page. I then printed off the A4 typed pages and then inserted the folded A3
drawings (zone/sector analysis and the design) into the folder as well. With everything stowed
away I was ready!
At this point there should really be no surprises, the client should understand that you will be
presenting them with the detail about the design which you will already have agreed on, there
should be no major changes. Of course, during your design you may find that minor changes
are necessary as I did with the location of the flower towers once I had consulted the zone and
sector analysis. If I found something that we agreed on would not work I would have gone back
to 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 Principal
decided she wanted to handle the wider consultation phase. After she has done this she will
contact me to let me know if there are any changes required from her end.
Next : The Implementation of the Plan
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The Permaculture School Garden - Part 1: Plans and Designs

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The Permaculture School Garden - Part 1: Plans and Designs