Kitchen Garden Reloaded Design -

Overview

This is the second part of the front garden design, continuing the series of short articles that I am posting providing an insight into how I am using permaculture design in my gardens. Each post in this series will be connected to a different permaculture design that I have worked on as part of my Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. At the end of the article, I will provide links to each of the full design write-ups to provide a greater understanding of the design process that is involved in a permaculture design.

PRIME

When I first designed the kitchen garden, I had no money to invest in infrastructure, three years further on I was able to evaluate how the garden was functioning, what was missing from the garden, what I could do to improve the garden, all in the knowledge that I had some money to invest in the infrastructure of the design that would take the kitchen garden to a new level of growth.

If you have read my previous two articles on the permaculture designs for my gardens you will know about making use of a framework when putting together a permaculture design. The framework I’m using for this design is PRIME, Problem, Research, Ideas, Make, Evaluate.

In the original kitchen garden design, I converted a grass lawn into a productive food system on a very small budget. Due to the limited budget, I never was able to create a garden design that looked finished. During the summer months, the garden appeared wonderful with plants flowing over the cracks in the design. Come winter the garden looked more like a dumping ground, a collection of tarps and tat, the classic British council estate garden from the early 1980s, I was just missing the broken-down car that would never be fixed.

Research

A couple of the questions I asked myself when I was putting a design together were:

What do you most like about the existing garden and design?

South-facing slope
Suntrap
Sheltered from the prevailing westerly wind
Been able to grow food next to the house
Able to compost on-site
The amounts of plants I can grow
The large trees just outside the garden
Birds coming into the garden to feed
The look of the garden in summer with lots of plants
The raised bed for growing salad leaves
Lots of different microclimates

To summarise, the favourite part of the garden is the fact that the location despite being on a housing estate, due to the large trees directly outside the garden, the slope dropping away to the side of the garden, the site has a feel that it is much larger than it is. With dappled morning summer sunlight shining through the trees, followed by mid-morning to mid-afternoon summer sun, the house blocking the prevailing westerly wind all creates a tranquil garden that is a suntrap even in the middle of winter you can still sit out and enjoy the warm sun whilst listening to all the birds in the trees. In summer as the sun moves around the sky the house starts to give shade to the garden which gives a cooler place to sit and relax away from the burning heat of the day. For the size of the garden, the number of microclimates it experiences throughout the year gives it many opportunities for a large selection of plants to grow.

The other question was:

What would you most like to change?

The use of tarps to hide things
All the mud
The lawn
The rotten sides of the raised bed
The slope on the lower side of the garden
No clean space to work
No storage area
The fact that in winter the garden looks like a junkyard
Plants and soil wanting to be on the path to the house
No privacy
Poor access to composting systems

In summary, what I would like to change the most is the fact that I lose quite a lot of space due to the slope on the lower side of the garden. I currently use most of this space with unsightly composting along with an area dedicated as a dumping ground for tat hidden away by a large tarp.

For a more in-depth understanding of the research section visit the website. In short, the information gained was to become the foundation for the new design of the garden.

Ideas

After much thought, I ended up with a design of the garden that seemed to fit all my needs and requirements. It’s always good to have a plan to work from when you start implementing a design. Due to the complete overhaul of the existing garden and the purchase of quite a bit of timber I needed to break this design into four phases. Phase one was everything on the righthand side of the path, then the beds on the left-hand side, continuing onto the seating area, also on the left-hand side, and finally phase four, finishing with planting up.

Make

And so it began, from mid-February working weekends it took me until the end of May to complete the design. I seemed to be doing the fiddly jobs when it was freezing cold, then doing the hard heavy work on red hot days. That said I pressed on and worked hard. As you can see from these photos it looks very different now.

Evaluate

I only thought it would take a few weekends to complete the design. I was quite wrong about that. In the end, the design came out looking amazing. The first growing season was a bit rushed but I still managed to make use of the new beds harvesting a fair amount of food. This season I’m going to put the beds to the test, I’m ready with plants waiting to go in once the weather warms.

Moving away from the growing side of the garden, the compost locations are working so much better now I have a space to work with them. I have also have just setup a rainwater harvesting system.

The seating area is the best addition to the garden. On the warm spring mornings, I now have a lovely space to sit and work on my laptop or read.

In all, it was hard work but I could not be happier with the result.