Organic Garden Design has been designing and maintaining beautiful gardens for over ten years. It would be our pleasure to help you achieve the garden of your dreams.
Visit our Organic Farm! - birdofthehandfarm.com Certified N.O.F.A. Landcare Provider Certified Member of the Asian Long Horn Beetle Eradication Program Proud Member of the New England Wildflower Society Proud Participant in the First detector Program to Identify Invasive Species Please Visit www.globalgardensfoundation.org Site designed by Eric D. Maki 2010
Permaculture principles draw heavily on the practical application of ecological theory to analyze the characteristics and potential relationships between design elements. Each element of a design is carefully analyzed in terms of its needs, outputs, and properties. For example a chicken needs water, moderated microclimate, food and other chickens, and produces meat, eggs, feathers and manure and can help break the soil. Design elements are then assembled in relation to one another so that the products of one element feed the needs of adjacent elements. Synergy between design elements is achieved while minimizing waste and the demand for human labour or energy. Exemplary permaculture designs [develop] over time, and can become extremely complex mosaics of conventional and inventive cultural systems that produce a high density of food and materials with minimal input. While techniques and cultural systems are freely borrowed from organic agriculture, sustainable forestry, horticulture, agroforestry, and the land management systems of indigenous peoples, permaculture's fundamental contribution to the field of ecological design is the development of a concise set of broadly applicable organizing principles that can be transferred through a brief intensive training. Modern permaculture is a system design tool. It is a way of--looking at a whole system or problem; observing how the parts relate; planning to mend sick systems by applying ideas learnt from long-term sustainable working systems ; seeing connections between key elements (parts). In permaculture, practitioners learn from the working systems of nature to plan to fix the damaged landscapes of human agricultural and city systems. This thinking applies to the design of a kitchen tool as easily to the re-design of a farm. Permaculture practicioners apply it to everything deemed necessary to build a sustainable future. Commonly, “Initiatives ... tend to [develop] from strategies that focus on efficiency (for example, more accurate and controlled uses of inputs and minimisation of waste) to substitution (for example, from more to less disruptive interventions, such as from biocides to more specific biological controls and other more benign alternatives) to redesign — fundamental changes in the design and management of the operation (Hill & MacRae 1995, Hill et al 1999)." "Permaculture is about helping people make redesign choices: setting new goals and a shift in thinking that affects not only their home but their actions in the workplace, borrowings and investments" (A Sampson-Kelly and Michel Fanton 1991). Examples include the design and employment of complex transport solutions, optimum use of natural resources such as sunlight, and "radical design of information-rich, multi-storey polyculture systems" (Mollison & Slay 1991). "This progression generally involves a shift in the nature of one’s dependence — from relying primarily on universal, purchased, imported, technology-based interventions to more specific locally available knowledge and skill-based ones. This usually eventually also involves fundamental shifts in world-views, senses of meaning, and associated lifestyles (Hill 1991)." "My experience is that although efficiency and substitution initiatives can make significant contributions to sustainability over the short term, much greater longer-term improvements can only be achieved by redesign strategies; and, furthermore, that steps need to be taken at the outset to ensure that efficiency and substitution strategies can serve as stepping stones and not barriers to redesign...” (Hill 2000) Core values Permaculture is a broad-based and holistic approach that has many applications to all aspects of life. At the heart of permaculture design and practice is a fundamental set of ‘core values’ or ethics which remain constant whatever a person's situation, whether they are creating systems for town planning or trade; whether the land they care for is only a windowbox or an entire forest. These 'ethics' are often summarised as; Earthcare – [...] that we recognise and respect that the Earth is our valuable home and we are a part of the Earth, not apart from it. ; Peoplecare – supporting and helping each other to change to ways of living that are not harming ourselves or the planet, and to develop healthy societies. ;Fairshare (or placing limits on consumption) - ensuring that the Earth's limited resources are utilised in ways that are equitable and wise. Modern thought about permaculture began with the issue of sustainable food production. It started with the belief that for people to feed themselves sustainably they need to move away from reliance on industrialised agriculture. Where industrial farms use technology powered by fossil fuels (such as gasoline, diesel and natural gas), and each farm specialises in producing high yields of a single crop, permaculture stresses the value of low inputs and diverse crops. The model for this was an abundance of small scale market and home gardens for food production, and a main issue was food miles. Design innovation The core of permaculture has always been in supplying a design toolkit for human habitation. This toolkit helps the designer to model a final design based on an observation of how ecosystems interact. A simple example of this is how the Sun interacts with a plant by providing it with energy to grow. This plant may then be pollinated by bees or eaten by deer. These may disperse seed to allow other plants to grow into tall trees and provide shelter to these creatures from the wind. The bees may provide food for birds and the trees provide roosting for them. The tree's leaves fall and rot, providing food for small insects and fungus. Such a web of intricate connections allows a diverse population of plant life and animals to survive by giving them food and shelter. One of the innovations of permaculture design was to appreciate the efficiency and productivity of natural ecosystems and seek to apply this to the way human needs for food and shelter are met. -information used from wikipedia- "Permaculture." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 23 Sep 2008, 03:34 UTC. 25 Sep 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Permaculture&oldid=240360118>.
An organic approach to garden care is more than simply avoiding pollutants. Organic ideology is part of a holistic approach to land care which protects species diversity, encourages functioning biosystems, and preserves the health of the lands and ecosystems we leave in our children's care. Organic gardening is about nurturing the land, the plants on it, and the people who use and enjoy them. Learn more about Organic gardening and land care. Organic Garden Design & Bird of the Hand Farm are owned and operated by Cathy Harragian of Sterling, MA.
- Organic Garden Design News - Watch the video interview of Cathy Harragian by Global Gardens Foundation below.
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