Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 1 of 17 pages The Cellar and Gloriette

This gloriette is perched on the south sloping margins between our house, an open area to the west between the house and the trees and shrubs which protect it and the terrace from the prevailing wind, the goat shed and the entrance to the potager and a small wood. It is covered by climbing plants and surrounded by shrubs and flowers.

It offers a vantage point where we can see into the goat shed and down to the second terrace where our poultry spend a lot of time under the trees. The view over the garden is spectacular and the gloriette, under its shady cover of climbing plants, gives me an ideal space to work when I'm sorting wool, plaiting onions or doing other outside chores.

No matter what the weather or the season, I love looking at it. It's beautiful and gives me so much joy. It provide us with space for extra seating when we have groups visiting and is a lovely place to have breakfast.

When people remark on how pretty it is, I sometimes use the gloriette and the thinking process behind its conception and construction as an example to explain how “Permaculture” Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 2 of 17 pages isn't just mulching a garden or making a herb spiral but a way of creating sustainable, functional designs using a design process and a collection of principles which can be applied, in a very practical way, to almost any aspect of life.

Introduction

The gloriette came about as a result of a solution to a problem we had with a cellar we built which, because of the extreme slope of our land at the back of our house and the erosion of the sandy soil in that area plus the erosion of the soil covering the cellar, was too hot in summer to do its job.

Thinking about it now, the gloriette is an obvious extension to the cellar and I can't imagine it not being there but when we built the cellar, our priorities were purely practical as we really needed somewhere quickly to store our food.

Each year we make as many preserves as possible from our garden – pots of jam, concentrated tomatoes, ratatouille, mushrooms, stews and curries, pickles, chutneys and different types of Sauerkraut.

We make elderberry flower “champagne”, dandelion wine and cordials. Using our eau de vie made by a neighbour, we make crème de cassis and lots of different types of aperitifs. We conserve fruit, plums, mirabelles and cherries in alcohol for an after dinner treat. Living in the countryside, with a large garden, acres of good foraging land around us, a lot of poultry and a flock of sheep we're very fortunate to be almost self-sufficient in food.

We buy dried foods like rice, pasta, chocolate, flour and our cleaning materials and milk from a little organic cooperative we've organised with friends in the village.

We rarely need to go shopping but like anyone else we don't always want to spend hours cooking every day and conserves are our equivalent to “fast food”. We need to have plenty of stores for the winter when the vegetables we grow in the garden are lovely but limited.

When you've been working all morning or guests turn up unexpectedly, it's nice to be able to make a meal in minutes – just a few slices of the ham from our pigs and some pickle makes a nice lunch with some crusty home-baked bread or a dinner of Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 3 of 17 pages lasagne made with last year's aubergines and tomatoes.

We needed a large cellar close to our new house to store all of our preserves safely, a dark place with an even temperature and enough room to walk around with a light to check on things regularly.

As a management consultant, used to tackling system problems and planning projects. I was attracted to Permaculture because of its ethical framework and the tools it could offer to create, develop and improve human systems. After deciding to leave the commercial world behind and begin a life of full-time farming, I still tend to apply everything I've learned, (And I know works.) to the design of almost any project that I am involved in.

This ingrained behaviour really annoys my husband. He just wants to get on with it, get his chainsaw out and start building. Instead, he's faced with a wife who insists that we sit down and define our objectives, plan what we intend to do then plan how we're going to do it. I'm never satisfied until I know and everyone else knows what is going on.

As the job is progressing, I bother him with “meetings” to discuss the progress, discuss making tweaks in the design and even when we're opening a good bottle of beer to celebrate when the work's finished, I'm still talking about how we could have done it better. That must be so infuriating but to me it's pure Permaculture.

What's the point of spending time, enthusiasm, energy and materials to make something which just “Does the job”. Why not make something which does “Lots of jobs” and make it properly and make it beautiful ? Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 4 of 17 pages

The Design and construction of the cellar

One of the most commonly used design process in Permaculture is the mnemonic 'OBREDIM'. According to Anita Mckeown, a researcher in local food cultures and bio-cultural diversity : “The OBREDIM design mnemonic facilitates an immersive mapping process embedded within an artists practice and is presented as a tactical approach to problem finding and solving within an open- ended generative process.”

So, our objective was “To create a large cellar close to the house to store all of our preserves safely, a dark place with an even temperature and enough room to walk around with a light to check on things regularly.”, we used OBREDIM to plan how that objective could be achieved.

O = Observation

We began with a site which was a little wood, near the top of a hill. To build the base for our house and the space around it, our plan was to remove as few of the existing trees as possible.

While we were waiting for planning permission to build our house, we had plenty of time to wander round the site placement, deciding how and where to terrace the sloping land behind it to incorporate a system of swales to retain water and to organise steps and paths down to the garden.

The soil to the west in the wood was full of river stones and extremely dry and sandy – probably because the trees which were mostly chestnut had been pollarded regularly to provide firewood and building materials and they had taken what they could from the soil which was impoverished. Many of them had signs of suffering from Bleeding Canker.

To the north and east, the soil is very heavy clay. Our house would straddle those two types of soil so it needed good deep foundations.

For the foundations for the house, we hired a digger to push the earth southwards, flattening an area sufficiently large to accommodate the house, its entrances and have space for a terrace, lean-to greenhouse and cellar on the south side and provide enough space for the surrounding plants we intended to use as a windbreak from the prevailing west wind. The excess earth from the holes for the foundation could be used for terraced planting but would be full of roots from the trees we had to move from the site and there was a risk that the ground would not be stable or suitable for plants unless we were very careful to fill between and around the roots with stones and earth. Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 5 of 17 pages

As diggers are not the most delicate of tools we thought of filing in by hand between rainy periods but as we had so much to do at that point, we decided that we would just have to wait for several seasons for the earth to sink naturally before we began planting.

We have not yet completed this part of the garden because of changes in the planning laws in France which will now allow us to use a grey-water system.

We also decided to leave some young deciduous trees to develop to maturity to provide the south side of our home with shade in the summer. Now, several years later, this tree does the job of providing shade and is a beautiful feature and in springtime it's full of nesting birds.

B = Boundaries

The boundaries of this area were the (As yet unbuilt.) terrace to the north. It was vital to leave enough access between the back of the terrace and the cellar for a tractor and digger which we'd use when we were building the terrace.

This would also leave enough space for groups of people walking around the house and space for extra seating in the shade as we intended to use the raised terrace as a place for welcoming groups and having concerts and parties.

The other boundaries were the extreme drop (See photo right) where the land sloped towards the south, the placement of a septic tank and it's drainage at the east side of the house and Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 6 of 17 pages

space for paths and walkways towards the east and south where we planned to site the potager.

On the west side, we wanted to leave space for planting shrubs and climbers under the mature trees for the protection of the house from the wind.

Above eye level, the winter sun must enter the house, so we were careful when choosing trees and planning pergolas and other structures for climbing plants.

R = Resources

As a placement, to be able to “pop down to the cave” in a few minutes, this area was perfect.

A well-built cave would stabilise the area at the back of the house and would increase the area of the margins and planting potential between the house and the second terrace at the entrance to the cellar. We could easily build a framework, then surround and cover it with the earth we'd dug out for the house foundations or from the pond we'd planned on the lower terrace.

The cellar could be dug out at the same time as the pond at the entrance to the garden. All it needed was some planning and a finished design before we hired the digger. We had a lot of breeze-blocks left over from the house build and we could used them to build the walls of the cellar.

We had left-over bitumen which we had used for the house drainage system and could use that to cover the outside walls of the cellar to keep it dry. There were thousands of river stones around the site and they would provide both insulation for the cellar walls and drainage. Excess water could be directed towards the planting on the lower terrace near the cellar door.

We could use tree trunks cut from the woods behind the house to support the roof temporarily while we poured a reinforced roof. All the shelving in the cellar could be made from reclaimed wood, shelving supports, wine racks and metal shelving units which neighbours had given us.

Any other material needs could be found in our growing stockpile of wood, stones, metal and everything under the sun that our friends and neighbours had been delivering almost daily since we started building our house.

Apart from driving the digger, we had all the skills and knowledge necessary to self-build.

In total, the cellar would probably cost around €60. Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 7 of 17 pages

E = Evaluation

At this point, it was obvious that the steep steps that we had designed to go down to the cellar from the terrace at the back of the house would not be suitable for anyone unsure on their feet.

When the steps were wet, they would be treacherous even for a young able-bodied person and dangerous if that person was carrying bottles or glass jars.

So we also incorporated into the design two other ways of accessing the cellar whilst pushing a wheelbarrow full of jars.

One was by an entrance to the woods on the west side, it was well shaded and had a very gentle slope and the added advantage of allowing wheelchair access.

In the photo below, the entrance is in the dark space to the right.

To make a new path, we decided to use a swale which we had dug previously as part of our water catchment strategy.

It was to the left of this entrance to the wood, below the level of the cellar.

We filled the swale with river stones then smaller stones, then even smaller stones to make it comfortable enough to walk on but still allow the lower level where there was a very dry wood to benefit from the water that collected in the swale when it rained heavily. This path also leads to a little caravan which guests often use, to the chicken shed and the forest garden. Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 8 of 17 pages

The third access to the cellar was made was by placing cement blocks which we found in a local tip, to make a series of comfortable steps leading down to the goat shed, potager and chicken shed.

These steps are shallow enough to bump down a wheelbarrow or a pram and provide a good grip even in very wet weather.

This is the access I now use most often when I visit the cave on the way back from the garden or from closing or opening the chickens.

Dogs and visiting children on the other hand, choose to scramble up the steepest slope where there is no path.

I'll no doubt incorporate their now established access into the design we produce for the grey-water filter basins.

D = Design (1)

The site looked pretty bare and ugly and I was desperate to start planting the south-facing terraces but our priority was to make our house comfortable enough to move into before winter.

We were both tired managing two sites, maintaining our garden at the cabin where we'd lived for four years and bottling surplus veg, dividing new fields and putting up fencing, kidding, fixing the tractor for cutting hay and trying to keep up with hundreds of other jobs that needed doing to ensure everything was running smoothly and the animals were fed, safe and in good health.

We'd walk up the long steep hill to the house in the morning with wheelbarrows full of tools with the dogs and goats We hadn't built a goat shed yet at the new house so the goats and their kids grazed up at the new new house but slept near the cabin. We'd work all day on the house, then walk down to the cabin before nightfall. The cabin in the valley was cold and damp because it had no thermal mass and we weren't heating it during the day. It didn't help hanging damp washing inside the cabin in case it rained.

Our clothes were filthy, the hot water system we had at the cabin didn't work without the heat of the sun. Even the kindling we kept inside the house was damp and we had to bring down dry wood from the new house in the evening to light the woodburner. Winter was looming and we were aware that we were exerting ourselves too much and the practical, physical needs that we had to meet were sapping our creative energies.

I love drawing and designing things and so does Fabrice but when the time came to dig the cellar, all we had prepared was a simple basic drawing with measurements and the exact placement. Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 9 of 17 pages

I = Implementation

We finished preparing all the levelled areas, the terracing and swales at the back of the house, and we used chalk and wooden guides to mark the area of the cellar and the distance from the house where the digger driver (A friend) would scrape the earth.

We discussed the site with him and explained what we wanted and said that we'd fill in around the cellar and finish the stone walls supporting the earth around it by hand once we had seen the amount of earth that the excavations had moved to the back of the cellar.

Everything went according to plan -.we even had a stroke of luck and the hire company left the digger for two more days than we'd paid for, so Fabrice practiced using the digger to make some small swales at the front of the house, another pond to store rainwater on the east side of the house and level out the roads leading to the house and the area we used for storing hay.

We build the basic cellar structure, then its roof, made a door and some shelves then moved our jars of conserves into the cellar which was completely ignored for the next few months.

Life gets in the way

I'm going to suspend this part of the OBREDIM analysis for the moment to say that producing a successful Permaculture design isn't always as easy at it looks on paper.

We were forced to re-evaluate what needed to be done to save us time and energy. It was obvious that we had to move the goats, the dogs and our cat and our tools from the cabin to the house as soon as possible, even although we said that we wouldn't move before the first part of the house was finished.

We built a temporary goatshed, (Which we still use after 17 years.) finished the house roof and put 300 watts of photovoltaic panels on to it, we dismantled the little windgenerator at the cabin and installed it on the windiest part of our site. We moved the woodburner, the bed, our clothes and everything important from the cabin. Camping in the new house, we finished wiring up the electricity system for lighting and music, we even had a telephone connected and looked forward to having a rest and some fun over the next week or so – the Christmas and New year period - in a warm house.

On the night of 27/28 December 1999 the storm “Martin” struck and the next few weeks were chaotic and non-stop work for everyone in the village. We were the only people for miles to have electricity, we also had a working telephone and fax machine, water and a warm house. So we had a constant stream of neighbours laden with food from freezers to share or to cook on our woodstove to make conserves. We had people queuing up to make 'phone calls or have their mobile telephones charged. Over a few week period, the EDF workers who were repairing the electricity lines used our house as a base.

We didn't have a rest, but we had a great time. The house was constantly full of people, some who stayed with us until they had sorted out heating for their all-electric homes. As the Irish say, “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”

It was spring before everything came back to normal and we resumed work on the house. Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 10 of 17 pages

Re-evaluation and Design (2)

We had an exceptionally warm spring and a few bottles of dandelion wine we had in the cellar burst open. The temperature in the cellar was well over 20° and over the next week or so it crept upwards.

The earth covering the cellar had eroded badly because of the heavy rains during the storm, leaving it exposed to the rays of the sun. We terraced the south side and moved heavy stones to make a retaining wall filled with earth and that helped a bit but we needed to do something more to provide the cellar with shade before summer arrived.

We had already made a pergola at the cabin using a recurring design I use which is inspired by cartwheel shaped lines on my hand.

This pergola had been a great success and invaluable in providing us with extra living space – an outside kitchen and dining room which was shady and cool at the height of summer. We thought that it may be possible to use the same sort of thing to shade the cellar.

We got out the drawings we'd made when we were designing the cellar and started drawing over some of them, planning how to implant a shady cover on to the square cellar.

We were fortunate that the cellar base was strong enough to support a substantial structure which would become much heavier when it was covered with climbing plants.

We were lucky too that the top of the cellar was large enough to offer us a good usable space, providing that we used the four corners as support and added two stone and wooden pillars for the two remaining pergola posts.

We had been given several electricity posts by some EDF employees and could use them as a strong base for the uprights and we'd also been given a lot of storm damaged wooden telephone poles which we could use to make the structure itself.

We did a few more final drawings, gathered all the materials together and made the gloriette in just a few days. I spent the next few days planting climbing plants around the base of the gloriette. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera at that time to record all of the the building process of the gloriette. but years later we had another opportunity to repeat the process. Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 11 of 17 pages

M = Maintain

After fifteen years the telephone poles we used for the original gloriette started to show signs of rotting and the terraces behind the gloriette were becoming less fertile because of erosion.

So, we have replaced the old gloriette with an exact copy of the old one (Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.) but used newly cut chestnut posts from the little wood at the back of the house which had now grown to a perfect size for the frame and roof posts.

I removed most of the smaller plants on the south slope and we used some of the old telephone poles from the original gloriette to increase the height of the terraces and infill them wood and branches to improve their water retention.

The increase in the height of the terraces also prevents erosion and will provide more mass against the cellar and more space for dense planting, making the temperature in the cellar even more stable.

We replaced the south facing plants, trimmed and rehung the climbing plants back up on to the new gloriette just in time for the breaking of new buds in spring.

Because the chickens do most of the work of weeding and tidying up the compost, we hardly need to do any maintenance in this part of the garden apart from trimming the shrubs occasionally, tying up roses and dividing up the Irises when they become too crowded.

Conclusion

I hope it's obvious that we are delighted with our work here.

The gloriette has created a useful and beautiful space behind our house and does a great job of keeping the cellar cool. Even in the height of summer we can go and get a bottle of rosé and the condensation appears on the chilled wine bottle, just the way it does when it comes out of a 'fridge.

I have an album of even more photos of the gloriette and cellar which include the planting and building details. Click on this link to access them :

Garder les conserves au frais dans la cave : Keeping food cool in the cellar

Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 12 of 17 pages

Permaculture principles and their application and connection to the design, building and use of the cellar and gloriette.

I will quote the principles from the book : Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison and provide a brief example for each principle.

Relative Location

The cellar is perfectly placed within its boundaries and close enough to the house to be very convenient. The view is magnificent. The relationship between the gloriette and the cellar are symbiotic. The solid base of the cellar supports the heavy gloriette, which in turn provides shade for the cellar contents and helps to maintain a constant temperature in its interior.

Each element performs many functions

As well as using the cellar for food storage, the gloriette is used for seating, for looking out over the animal sheds and garden, for working under, for hanging carpets when they're beaten to clean them, for private conversations when the house is too busy, for growing climbing plants. (The grapes are picked straight from the vine and rarely ever make it to the house.) No doubt we'll find many other uses for it over the years. Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 13 of 17 pages

Each important function is supported by many elements

As well as freezing and refrigerating food we now have extra space to have enough food conserves for a couple of years. The experience of the 1999 storm helped us realise the importance of planning for disaster. We use the cellar to store drinking water in quantity and keep animal fat for soap making or candle making if ever the solar system fails.

Efficient energy planning

The cellar and gloriette take full advantage of the slope of the land and are very close to the house.

Apart from nails and screws, all the construction materials were reclaimed or left over and were already on site.

The "ready meals" that the cellar contains are stored without the need for electricity and are a wonderful time saver.

Having a choice of paths to access the cave means that we can do other chores such as shutting chickens or collect garden produce on the way. We can even just saunter admiring the plants on the slope on the way back up to the house.

The walkways are beautiful – This my birthday garden where I put plants which people have given me for my birthday – making the area even more special.

Using biological resources

As well as using the plants on the south side of the the cellar to protect it from the sun, we often chop vegetables or clean onions or sort wool under the shade of the gloriette, then throw the waste into the compost pile hidden by a huge Basksaie rose (Rosa banksiae 'Lutea') The chickens take what they want and the rest becomes part of the earth to feed the roses, two peach trees and other shrubs and perennials in that terrace.

I never need to weed that part of the garden, the chickens do that for me. Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 14 of 17 pages

Energy cycling

The cellar is kept cool naturally. The leaves of the deciduous climbing plants fall to provide mulch and food to the surrounding plants. The compost is scratched by our chickens who add their own manure to the mix. The water run-off from the sides of the cellar fall by gravity to water trees on the lower levels which I have planted with a Virginia creeper for autumn colour and a species rose which was a gift, a Rosa helenae which has a beautiful perfume and lovely winter hips. Both give much needed shade to the terrace.

Small scale intensive systems

The cellar, gloriette and terraced planting area behind them require no maintenance. All of the flowers are perennials or self-seeders. All the fruit trees in the surrounding area have been grown from pips or stones thrown into the compost from the the terrace. If the placement of a young tree pleases me, I leave it. If not, I replant it or pot it up to give to friends.

The stacking of plants in the area around the cellar includes the tallest, the Oak, which supports the huge Basksaie Rose.

Next, an Acacia provides nesting space, shade and edible flowers, the Peche de vigne, the Hamburg Vine for grapes and shade, the Wisteria which fixes nitrogen, provides shade, perfume and beauty, the Virginia creeper which gives shade and is bright red in autumn, the Honeysuckle which smells wonderful, the bees love it, and it provides shade, the smaller roses, Paul's Scarlet and Red Cascade provide shade, perfume and edible flowers.

Lower down on the terrace, there is another peach tree, many useful and ornamental shrubs and herbaceous plants such as Verbena, Melissa, a few rhizomes including perfumed Lilies and Irises and ground cover plants such as Sages, Periwinkle and little edible Lamiums and wood strawberries.

Accelerate Succession and evolution

One of the best ways I know of creating scared space in a new garden is by building a structure and planting it with climbing plants. The back of our house was an aesthetic disaster and I averted my eyes each time I saw it. The cellar and gloriette provide us with useful space and a living area which is beautiful and a host to hundreds of plants and many animals, birds and insects. The invasive pioneer plants such as the Acacia and Wisteria are often frowned upon as weeds by gardeners but they have both contributed their own attributes to accelerate the evolution of this part of our home. Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 15 of 17 pages

Diversity

The yields from around the gloriette are amazing - even a self-sown bunch of nettles next to the entrance have made many a nice quiche and their capacity to sting has stopped kids from trampling the other plants to death while they were struggling to grow.

There are several established guilds and hundreds of different plants within eight metres of this area which provide an enormous number of yields for us, our poultry, birds, insects, bees and other pollinators.

Imagine if, instead, we'd planted a privet hedge.

Edge effects

The clearing which we created between the wood and our house by felling trees has always made me feel guilty. I don't like destroying natural ecosystems. I feel that I can justify this by the fact that in this edge we have not only replaced, but improved the biodiversity in this area.

The site where we built the cellar and gloriette was a difficult one from an architectural point of view but by overlapping our needs with those of the surrounding wood and its habitants we have provided resources which both can access from the same place.

We have also increased the diversity of plants which flourish in this area by provided variations in the height and opening it up to receive more light and more nutrients from our compost waste. By terracing, we have created an energy trap which captures organic materials and plant food for the surrounding flora and have, at the same time provided ourselves with a way of storing our own food without using fossil fuels. Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 16 of 17 pages

Attitudinal principles

The problem is the solution

I love this phrase. One of the wonderful things about Permaculture is that a vivid imagination and unbounded creativity are appreciated in finding solutions to problems. Placing the gloriette on top of the cave is a good example of this.

The yield is unlimited

We are always finding new uses for the space that the gloriette offers – some friends even used it as a backdrop for their wedding photographs !

"You can do that in the gloriette" has become a catch phrase here.

Anyone doing a job like stringing onions, plucking chickens or shelling peas is directed to the gloriette. This keeps our house clean and contributes to the feeding of the chickens and the fertility of the plants outside.

Just sitting in the gloriette is very pleasant indeed. I find that most people relax there – you can see their shoulders moving downwards and their breathing changes as they look around them. It's nice too to appreciate the various perfumes that drift in the air at certain times of the day.

Using the gloriette and cave as a teaching tool has enormous potential.

Photographs of it are amongst my most popular on the internet and have been re- blogged and copied thousands of times.

People say they are attracted to the photographs because the Irene Kightley : Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio : Gloriette and cellar : 17 of 17 pages gloriette is pretty, then they become fascinated when they read about its practical use of covering a cellar to keep conserved food in good condition.

I've used this as a design example for hundreds of Permaculture students, in my blog, in forums and many thousands of visitors from schools, colleges and associations have had an explanation from me on it's relevance to Permaculture.

I agree wholeheartedly with Jane Goodall when she says, “It's been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development.... we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don't suppose anybody really understands yet.”

Work with nature, not against her

Building a cool cellar instead of using electricity to store food uses natural forces rather than man- made ones.

Grid supplied electricity is produced at a terrible cost to the environment and at the basis of that grid is a vulnerable system of cables which, (As was the case in the 1999 storm), once broken, can result in thousands of tons of wasted food. Nature provides us with warm seasons and cold seasons and with good planning it is not difficult to store food at a constant temperature.

Everything gardens

Moving nature along faster than in an established ecosystem seems wrong but when a mature tree falls or a disaster occurs, nature is quick to fill the void.

By using trees, shrubs and climbing plants that grow quickly to provide shade, terracing to avoid the erosion of the earth and compost and chickens to manure and maintain plants in good condition, we created the conditions that allow our gardens to work for us.

Least change for greatest effect

A good example of this is when we decided to throw our kitchen compost over the side of the gloriette. The chickens love it and in return keep the earth between plants weed-free and mulched with the food they don't eat.

Another example is the placement of the gloriette itself.

With just a bit of planning and a few days work, we've vastly improved our cellar's capacity to stay at a constant temperature and keep our food safe.