This months OG (Organic Gardening) has a good
article on Permaculture. It discusses the efforts
of a young couple in converting a Pennsylvania site.
They began by building a large greenhouse (bio shelter)
and worked out from there. Some principles mentioned
were:
stacking - multiple functions for one element
redundancy - multiple elements supplying similiar funcitons
right livelihood - integrating economics
guilds - inter-relationships (plants)
swales - harvesting natural resource (water)
zones - our impact on nature diminishes as we move
away from the house.
the guidelines they used were:
observe/see what exists
reduce,reuse,recycle
design from the doorstep out
assign multiple functions to each element
focus on food perennials
maxamize the edge effect (natures transitions zones)
encourage guilds
plan vertical and horizontally
notice patterns and work with their cycles
the end of the article had a ponter to:
www.organicgardening.com
jeff
