The following article is reposted from Eco Connections.
Permaculture is practiced by farmers in Vietnam, by bushmen in Namibia—and by a college professor near downtown Greensboro.
Founded by Australian-born Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in 1978, permaculture has been defined as “a system of applied design for the creation of sustainable human habitat.” The word combines “permanent” and “agriculture” or “permanent” and “culture.
“It’s basically a way of designing our landscapes so that whatever we do ends up having the look and feel and functional workings of an ecosystem,” says Dr. Charles Headington, a UNC-G lecturer who promotes permaculture by word and deed. “We try to imitate natural ecosystems. We even intensify what ecosystems do.
Headington regularly conducts workshops and classes on the topic, but he also integrates the system into his life. His family’s 50 X 150-foot lot on Mendenhall Street in Greensboro is a living, breathing testimony to the joys of this sustainable way of being in the world.
It also serves as a teaching tool. Their lot is all garden, from the street to the back fence. Barrels catch the rain from the roof of their 80-year-old home. Rock piles provide shelter for toads and wooden boxes in the trees encourage bats to set up housekeeping and partner with them in this noble enterprise.
Cooperation is fundamental to the system—as are diversity and care of the earth, self-reliance and community responsibility. Permaculture recognizes the intrinsic worth of every living thing—the onion plants and the garden snakes as well as the humans who enjoy the fruits of the land.
Permaculture invites people to work with nature, not against it. That means catching and storing rainwater. “My wife and I have made it our goal not to let any water leave our urban lot,” Headington says. “Everything that comes off the roof should go into the soil or into barrels or into one of our ponds. Our soil should be so absorbent that it doesn’t let any of the water go trailing off down the sidewalk.
Some of his barrels are hooked to regular metal gutters. Others take the water through a 20-foot bamboo pipe to one of their ponds. Still others are connected to soaker hoses. “Some of them directly water the land without any intervention from us,” Headington says. “It makes our work a lot easier.
Another way of working with nature is not to till the soil. “In nature you don’t have plows and Rototillers,” Headington says. “You have worms.
Worms move the nutrients through the soil. “We’ve found through permaculture, if you lay on the surface of the soil a rich worm food—compost, kitchen scraps or aged manure—the worms will actually do the work,” he says. “They nibble on it, take it down into the soil, and through their magic of worm life, they actually increase the nutritional value of all you give them.” They make fertilizer and they aerate the soil, adding to its absorption and drainage quality.
Headington advocates sheet mulching—and this can be done in a yard full of grass. First, you mow the grass, leaving the cuttings in the yard. Then you put down a layer of newspapers, compost and pine needles or straw, which acts as an insulating quilt over the soil. That ensures that the soil temperature will remain constant, no matter how hot or cold it gets.
“Then you let the worms go to work,” says Headington. “The grass gets smothered, the worms get fed, the soil gets tilled and the gardener gets to work in it.
This process can be done in either the fall or the spring. “If you do it in the fall, you can pull back the mulch in April and plant directly into the soil without turning over the soil,” he says. “It’s the tilling that really gets your weed population growing. You also lose 70 percent of the nitrogen stored in the soil when you turn it over.
Another fundamental of permaculture involves locating plants together that are mutually beneficial. “A permaculture orchard will have 30 or 40 species rather than just six,“ Headington says. “It moves toward diversity, a great principle of natural systems. The more diverse your system is, the more stable it is and the more it will be able to fend off predators.“
Companion planting might link onions and lettuce. “Onions and garlic have strong odors, which can deflect bugs,” Headington says. “Strong vertical lines with low-lying lettuce can also divert insects.
Toads and bats can help clear the area of insects. Flowers, on the other hand, can lure beneficial insects. Two main families—the umbells and the composites—attract tiny parasitic wasps that feed on aphids. The umbells, which have umbrella-shaped flowers, include Queen Anne’s lace, dill, fennel, parsley, carrot, cumin and coriander. The composites, which have a longer growing season, include daisies, sunflowers, tarragon and tansy.
At least 50 percent of the garden should be perennials. “Fruit trees and bushes and perennial herbs—things that will seed themselves easily and come up as volunteers—are essential,” Headington says. “There’s also a vertical sense of perennials that gives the sense that you’re growing not on a two-dimensional surface but in a three-dimensional volume.
Permaculture is more a frame of mind than a litany of techniques, according to Headington. “I find that permaculture is not a list of 10 things to do,” he says. “It’s about how to think about whole systems. When you begin to think that way, then each person or each household becomes an independent designer.
It can also be implemented successfully in a wide variety of environments. “Permaculture works on many different scales. It can work in a small lot or a farm or for a whole village in Africa or India. What we’re doing here is a little microcosm of what it can do.”
Dr. Charlie Headington teaches a variety of courses at UNCG and in the community. Most of them encourage people to examine themselves and society, and make constructive changes in how they think and live. He likes to garden, walk, cook, be with his family, and learn Italian.