CONTENTS List of Photos and Illustrations viii List of Tables x Foreword by form Todd xi xv Preface PART ONE THE GARDEN AS ECOSYSTEM 1 INTRODUCING THE ECOLOGICAL GARDEN 3 Gardens that Really Work with Nature 4 Why Is Gardening So Much Work? 7 Beyond—Way Beyond—Natural Gardening 8 The Natives versus Exotics Debate 10 Making the Desert Bloom, Sustainably 13 How to Use This Book SIDEBAR: What Is Permaculture? 4 2 A GARDENER'S ECOLOGY 17 Three Ecological Principles 18 A Mature Garden 22 A Few of Nature's Tricks for Gardeners SIDEBAR: DO Plant Communities Really Exist? 27 3 DESIGNING THE ECOLOGICAL GARDEN 30 The Ecological Design Process 31 Natural Patterns in the Garden 45 SIDEBARS: Some Pear Tree Connections 36 A Summary: Designing the Ecological Garden 44 Building and Planting a Keyhole Bed 46 PART TWO THE PIECES OF THE ECOLOGICAL GARDEN 4 BRINGING THE SOIL TO LIFE 57 Soil Life: The First Recyclers 59 Building Soil Life 68 Sharing the Wealth of the Soil 79 SIDEBARS: Woody Ways to Build Soil 70 The Ultimate, Bomb-Proof Sheet Mulch 72 Starting Plants in Sheet Mulch 75 5. CATCHING, CONSERVING, AND USING WATER 80 The Fivefold Path to Water Wisdom 8 1 Conserving Water with Catchment 89 Water Brings the Garden to Life 95 SIDEBARS: How to Make a Swale 84 Planning a Water-Harvesting System 90 Tips for Using Greywater 93 Creating a Backyard Wetland 96 6 PLANTS FOR MANY USES 99 The Many Roles of a Tree 99 Multipurpose Plants 102 The Roles of Plants in the Ecological Theater 107 Annuals and Perennials 110 Microclimates for the Garden 114 Nurses, Scaffolds, and Chaperones 117 Summary: Mixing the Many Functions of Plants 120 SIDEBAR: Weeds and Other Wild Food 113 7 BRINGING IN THE BEES, BIRDS, AND OTHER HELPFUL ANIMALS 121 More Good Bugs than Bad 122 Attracting Beneficial Insects 128 The Gardener's Feathered Friends 129 Other Backyard Helpers 132 SIDEBAR: A Gallery of Beneficial Insects 127 PART THREE ASSEMBLING THE ECOLOGICAL GARDEN 8 CREATING COMMUNITIES FOR THE GARDEN 141 Interplanting and Beyond 141 Guilding the Garden 147 SIDEBARS: lanto Evans's Polyculture 144 Jajarkot's Advanced Polyculture 145 Growing the Three Sisters Guild 149 9 DESIGNING GARDEN GUILDS 155 An Intimate Way of Guild-Building 155 Guilds or Bookworms 158 Creating a Super-Guild 162 Guilds Aren't Perfect 164 SIDEBAR: Using Natural Plant Communities to Guide Guild Design 159 10 GROWING A FOOD FOREST 167 Experimenting with Forest Gardens 170 The Seven-Story Garden 1 7 2 How the Food Forest Evolves 1 80 SIDEBAR: A Brief History of Forest Gardens 171 11 POP GOES THE GARDEN I 8 2 Choosing the Right Pieces 1 84 The Garden Gets Popping 1 8 7 Assembling the Garden Revisited 193 SIDEBAR: Ecological Compromises, or You Can't Make an Omellet 192 Appendix: A Sampling of Useful Plants 195 Glossary 206 Bibliography 20 8. Resources 21 1 Index 2 1 5 CONTENTS vii Photos and Illustrations Deer-deflecting food hedge 6 Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, before 14 Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, after 15 Typical zone layout for suburban lot 40 Sector map for suburban lot 41 Garden bed patterns 45 Keyhole bed 47 Multiple keyhole beds 47 Mandala garden 48 Herb spiral 49 Spirals in nature 50 Branching garden paths 50 Triangular net seed spacing 51 Net-and-pan tree spacing 51 Using edges 52 Pond edges 53 Ecological pyramid 58 Soil and nutrient cycle 59 The soil food web 61 Humus molecule 63 Sheet mulch 74 Swale 83 A-frame level 84 Straw-filled swale 85 Fishscale swales 85 Drain-to-mulch-basin greywater system 94 A greywater system 94 Penny's ponds 95 A greywater wetland 98 Maximilian sunflower 103 Goumi 104 Maypop 105 Black bamboo 105 U-shaped sun-trap 110 Air mixing and microclimates 115 Photos and Illustrations, continued Using microclimates to protect tender plants 115 Lady beetle larva 124 Braconid wasp 124 Tawny mining bee 125 Agapeta moth larva 128 Animal tractor 135 Rabbit hutch and worm bin 138 Apple-centered guild 150 Walnut/hackberry guild 157 Super-guild 163 Orchard of super-guilds 165 U-shaped forest garden I 69 Forest garden for a rectangular yard 170 The seven layers of the forest g arden 172 Freshly planted U-shaped garden 174 Mature U-shaped garden 175 Flowering Tree today 189 Producer-consumer-decomposer cycle 190 Tables 2 -1. Differences between Immature and Mature Ecosystems 3-1. What to Observe—A Designer's Checklist 3-2. A Pear Tree's Products, Needs, Activities, and Qualities 3-3. The Zone System: Contents and Uses 4-1. Carbon to Nitrogen (C:N) Ratios in Common Mulch and Compost Materials 4-2. Cover Crops 5-1. Five Water-Conserving Methods and Their Benefits 5-2. Plants from Mediterranean Climates 5 - 3. Wetland Plants 6-1. A Sampling of Common Edible Weeds 6-2. Nurse Plants 7 -1. Host Plants for Beneficial Insects 7-2. Useful Plants for Birds 7-3. Plants that Provide Poultry Forage 9-1. Members of the White Oak/Hazelnut Community 10-1. Plants for the Forest Garden Appendix A Sampling of Useful Plants FOREWORD by John Todd Within the first few weeks an observer can As THE READERS OF Gaia's Garden will discover, Nature notice grazing and predatory cycles. Swimming is an extraordinary designer. I teach ecological design to animals, called zooplankton, appear seemingly out university students and one of my favorite teaching tools is a of nowhere, then disappear to be replaced by other simple one. My students collect samples from at least three species. Snails lay egg clusters on the walls. The aquatic habitats, such as a wet pool in the woods, an animal aquatic plants grow into complex shapes to gather light and nutrients. Some plants penetrate the wallow on a farm, and a pond or lake, and mix them together water/air interface and grow up into the air. Algae in a glass jar. With lids screwed on tightly, the students turn on the walls create a green carpet that consumes their jars upside down and place them in sunny windows to carbon dioxide and saturates the jar with oxygen watch and record the unfolding drama within. I myself have gas during the day. The snails graze the algal car- kept such a jar near my desk for several years. In the pets, leaving winding and spiralling paths that let presence of sunlight, a microcosm, or miniature world, light through to the rooted plants within. The communities that adapt within are unique, begins to organize itself. Tiny bubbles of oxygen congregate part forest pool, part farm wallow, and part pond. under small aquatic plants and on the surface film of the All the life forms in the jars are familiar to biolo- water. Within days, an internal physical structure or gists, but the combinations of species are unlike architecture starts to evolve, complete with biological zones anything in the ecosystems from which they have of activity. Life burrows on the bottom in the sediment zone. been derived. Ecologically they are new. And each of the students' microcosms develops differently Aquatic weeds, fragments at first, grow into miniature from the others. The water and sediment samples "forests" that reach up into the water column. The water that seed the jars vary for each student and these itself teems with a divercity of microscopic life. With differences will affect the life within the jar. Even magnifying glasses the students discover creatures where the jars are placed on the window will reminiscent of shrimp and other minute creatures resembling determine their fate. monsters from one's imagination. The water/air interface is What is perhaps most fascinating and relevant to my tale here is that despite their differences, another zone with its own activity, where tiny insects skate all the glass jar communities have four basic across the surface film.The air column above plays its own attributes in common. First, they have the ability role, exchanging gases with the water below. At night, when to self-organize in the presence of sunlight. the air column cools, water droplets condense at the top of (In darkness or dim light, they do not. Waste the jar. Tap it with a pencil and it rains inside. products accumulate and most of the organisms XI die.) Sunlight generates nutrient cycling, gas collective experience of all life as a whole system. exchanges, growth, grazing, predation, death, and Like the title of this book, it is Gaian knowledge. decay: an ecological dance. Seeing the world as an ongoing process of eco Secondly, self-organization leads to self-design. logical design transforms how one approaches the A living "architecture" is formed where light, basic problem of supporting humanity. Ecological space, and the limits of the jar interact with all the knowledge is now being used to develop new liv life within. The jar's inhabitants occupy the space ing technologies that can repair damaged environ optimally. Self-design leads to a beauty and a deep ments and recycle wastes into beneficial new aesthetic within the jar that an observer immedi products. These eco-technologies are beginning ately senses. to influence the design of infrastructures for Thirdly, these microcosms can repair them human communities. In Gaia's Garden, author Toby selves. If a window blind is left closed and the Hemenway takes this thinking a powerful step for sunlight blocked for several days the ecosystem ward by bringing living systems' intelligence to within will collapse. But if the jar is returned to the the household. The book sets forth the radical light soon enough, the living systems will begin to notion that ecological design, applied at the level reorganize itself. The self-repair process generates a of the home, can utterly transform how landscapes new system, usually different than the one from are sustained and humans fed. This book provides which it was derived. The attribute of self- a genuine alternative to the contemporary indus repair is essential to the sustainability of the sys trial/global machine, which extracts resources tem. Perturbations, whether they be hurricanes, and exploits humans and landscapes for its own drought, or toxic assault, happen in all systems, ends and means. If the ideas presented here are but life-in-concert has the mechanisms to adapt. widely adapted, then we have the possibility of A final characteristic of the microcosm is the forging a culture based upon Earth stewardship. In ability to self-perpetuate. The microbial life within my opinion, ecological design as developed in the jar reproduces over time periods measured by Gaia's Garden represents the only long-term hope minutes for bacteria and hours for algae. Higher for humanity. forms perpetuate their species in days or weeks. Gaia's Garden owes its heritage to the Perm- Cycles wax and wane with the season, but with any aculture teachings pioneered by Bill Mollison and luck the system will persevere. In the jar on my David Holmgren over the last quarter century. In office desk, a microcosm has been unfolding for its quiet and wise way, this book outlines a radical years. Over time some of the original life forms redesign for the future of gardening and agricul have gone extinct, for the small size of the jar tests ture, organized around the basic premise that the limits of life working in concert. Yet as a whole, in the growing of foods and the crafting of the system is amazingly persistent. The miniature landscapes, it is possible to substitute ecological ecosystem that I am looking into now as I write information and human stewardship for today"? may well outlive me. dependence on capital, hardware, chemicals. The Lilliputian world within the jar has a real machines, genetically engineered organisms, and power: it reveals Nature as designer. Ecologists have destructive technologies. Hemenway shows us that begun to decode the language of natural systems on the task of restoring the Earth begins in our own a larger scale than in my jar. From the rain forests, gardens. coral reefs, mangrove swamps, prairies, deserts, One of my favorite tales from the book embod lakes, and northern forests, they are deciphering ies the worldview of the ecological designer in principles of natural design. This knowledge practical ways—through what Hemenway terms embodies the genius of evolutionary time and the "polyculture," and what I shall call "gardening in xii Foreword the image of a meadow." Instead of the often back- pokes garlic cloves and fava beans into these newest breaking labor that goes into tilling, sowing, weed- openings, to be harvested the following year. The ing and chemically controlling a conventional polyculture provides enough botanical diversity to vegetable garden, Toby Hemenway's meadow- control pests and disease as well as to protect the inspired garden works on totally different plants from excess rain and drought. principles. It provides its own fertilization, has Variations on this polyculture theme through internal weed suppression and pest-control mech- out the book expand the meaning of gardening anisms, and manages its internal moisture levels from the traditional battle to control Nature to a through dry times and wet, functioning as a self- conscious and conscientious attempt to imitate and organizing ecology. The cycle begins about one re-create natural systems in the backyard. Gaia's month before the last frost, when the gardener Garden shows how ideas and patterns from Nature prepares the garden bed with sheet composting or can be blended and integrated to create larger sys mulching. After the last frost, the gardener broad- tems. These larger systems in turn connect with casts seeds of radish, dill, parsnip, calendula, and each other to create a self-tending and co-evolving many varieties of lettuce over the garden and garden landscape. spreads one-quarter inch of compost over the Ecological design is predicated upon place. seeds. That's it. Then Nature goes to work. After Each garden, each valley and each region is differ four weeks, the radishes are ready for harvesting. ent. These differences, in the hands of an Earth Cabbage seedlings can fill the holes they leave. By steward, can be honored and used toward creative week six, the dense lettuce crop begins yielding and diverse ends. Each garden is a reflection of the mesclun, leaving other lettuce varieties to grow to potential of place and the intimacy with which the size over the next several months. When the gardener can connect with the needs and latent 1and warms up in late spring and early summer, forces of the land. Earth wisdom becomes an bush beans and buckwheat take the space formerly expanding universe for the seeker, until the garden occupied by the lettuce. Dill and calendula, whose becomes an Eden where the gardener and garden flowers are edible, are harvested next. The cabbage exist in true harmony. The world we dream of, sus varieties mature over an extended period, and by tainable and beautiful, takes shape in the ecologi fall the parsnips are ready to harvest. The gardener cal garden. Gaia's Garden is a fine place to begin. Foreword xiii