Permaculture offers a design approach for meeting human needs without impacting negatively on the natural world. Rooted in core ethics and guided by an evolving set of permaculture principles, it can be a wonderful tool for any design process, from a back garden to a greening of your city.
Inherently, permaculture design has the natural world as an overt focus. Thus we can use this as a way to design landscapes, gardens, farms, businesses or communities that are both productive (yielding the things we want to achieve) and regenerative (for people, planet and the future).
Edible landscaping, as the name suggests, offers a way to bring food plants into parks, cities, church grounds or other available space. FHWS offers permaculture and edible landscaping workshops and consultancy to councils, community groups and other organisations to help bring these principles and local free food into your area.
Essentially edible Landscaping is much the same as ordinary landscaping, with trees, shrubs and ground cover – except that it is populated with edible plants. Apples, Pears, Cherries, Hazelnuts, Walnuts, Sweet Chestnuts…. and that is just the trees. Then instead of a shrubbery, picture black, red and white currants, gooseberries and blueberries. Cover fences and walls with climbers like loganberries, blackberries, wild roses. If you have a sheltered, south facing wall you could even grow kiwis or grapes. Plant visual cover or windbreaks of summer and autumn fruiting raspberries. Then in the flower beds, go for the colour, beauty, wildlife value and flavour of sage, lavender, sweet cicely and a myriad of other herbs and edible greens and flowers.
Hedges can be grown from hazel trees, climbing fruit, blackcurrants or raspberries. Tall feature trees can include sweet chestnuts, walnuts or pears. Boundaries can be interplanted with crab apples, damsons and edible hawthorns. The herbaceous border can be just that – herbs; full of colour, scents and interest for wildlife as well as for the kitchen. Vegetables can sometimes be grown as perennials, providing a yield year after year from the same plant.