Bellingen Permaculture logo
Bellingen Permaculture
For sustainable living. Building design. Landscape design. Wastewater design.
  • Home
  • Services
  • FAQ
  • About Us
  • a permaculture language
  • Courses
  • Contact
  • Blog

Organic Garden Design

What’s the difference between organic gardening and permaculture? Permaculture is a multidisciplinary activity that mixes organic gardening with other fields like water, housing, animal husbandry and many more. If that sounds complex, the idea is to achieve a garden that produces a lot of food in a small area without needing a lot of time or inputs.

red ochra
red ochra

Some organic gardening is quite heavy in inputs. An input is something you need to regularly import to the site. It might be town water, organic fertilizer, biological pesticide or mulch. An organic garden can be low in inputs by using water that moves passively through the site, biological resources and inbuilt mulch sources.

soil high in organic matter planted with garlic - you don't need to pull so much mulch back, we did it to show you the soil
soil high in organic matter planted with garlic (you wouldn’t need to pull back so much mulch, we did it to show you the soil)

High biological activity produces a lot of food. You can create conditions for high soil biological activity by:

moving plenty of on site moisture through it

thick & complex mulch

shade & shelter

minimal compaction or disturbance

high site biodiversity.

Set this up and the system largely self maintains, because a healthy biology is quite capable of doing well without any human interference.

black pumpkin growing in a food forest
black pumpkin growing in a food forest

The design of such a garden means setting up all the above factors and probably a few more. Spend time thinking about how to set up a healthy garden and you should save work later.

What is Permaculture? Earth repair

Related Posts

Nick and Geoff Lawton

Mentoring, Permaculture

How Geoff Lawton changed it all

A visit to Geoff Lawton & Zaytuna farm 24 years after getting into permaculture I had never met Geoff Lawton […]

roadside revegetation

Landscape, Permaculture

Earth repair

“As the worlds problems become increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple” (Bill Mollison).   Nowhere is this more evident […]

What is Permaculture?

Permaculture

What is Permaculture?

What is it? The production of food and other human needs sustainably, using general principles adapted to specific situations. Why […]

Blog

Categories

  • Our Work
  • Permaculture
  • Design
  • Building
  • Landscape
  • Water
  • Mentoring

Recent Posts

  • The street is to the northwest - windows have been minimised on this face to avoid summer overheatingYou don’t have to face the street
    What do you do on a town block where the street faces
  • Nick and Geoff LawtonHow Geoff Lawton changed it all
    A visit to Geoff Lawton & Zaytuna farm 24 years
  • north facade of stone & timberPascals stone & timber shed
    Pascal is a unit of measurement and in this case the
  • deck pond with sitting platformIndoors out modern Queenslander – Brisbane
    This article was written by Nick and the owner. (Hint
  • perspective from northA hat roof
    Nat had built many great houses for other people