Feature Article Permaculture and Horticulture: Gardening with the Future in Mind

by Dale Hendricks

ermaculture has been to fully respect and Paround since the late ’70s and bring out the best in has been growing, changing, everyone. and adapting. Its name is a Fair Share can be combination of the words seen as frugality, permanent and agriculture. It modesty, and was conceived as a science- and simplicity—using observation-based system for only what you need, designing restorative or beyond living lower on the sustainable human habitats. consumption chain, As it is about how we live, eat, Mark C. Psoras restoring rather than interact, garden, and provide

photo © extracting, doing all shelter for ourselves, it’s been The author making biochar while cooking at home. we can for those with called “revolution disguised as less, as well as for gardening.” People Care starts with taking future generations It is often defined as an ethically responsibility for and best care and the rest of creation. It might based design system working to for us and others. It may look include making sure that classes build productive, diverse, and like leading with love, awareness, and workshops are respectful of, resilient habitats for humans empathy, and respect rather than available to, and thoughtful of all that are in harmony with all our unaware fears, expectations, folks. of creation. Permaculture privilege, and insecurities. It’s What is also good, as well as (sometimes called “Future Care”) also designing lives, businesses, tricky, about permaculture is has three core ethics: Earth Care, and relationships in such a way as there’s no central command, People Care, and Fair Share. no hierarchical organization or Nuts and Bolts “Perhaps we seek to recreate city hall that decides what these terms mean. Each person is free Earth Care is, as much as the Garden of Eden, and why possible, always learning to define them for his or herself. not? We believe that a low and seeking to be completely Observation and critical thinking renewable, reusing all we can, energy, high yield agriculture are deeply imbedded in this and operating as organically is a possible aim for the whole culture, something uncommon in and restoratively as possible. It world, and that it needs only today’s mainstream media-rich means building soils; learning human energy and intellect to society. and sharing about building a achieve this.” An important part of this is low carbon, high joy world; and —Bill Mollison and David continuous learning or skill enjoying our roles as respectful, sharing. There are lots of aware, and dazzled cocreators Holmgren in Permaculture One, 1978. workshops offered, from here on, in, and with the living mushroom-growing outdoors, earth. ethical foraging, natural building,

Vol. 29, No. 3 Hardy Plant Society/Mid-Atlantic Group 3 There are a dozen or Solomon’s seal, Polygonatum perhaps up to twenty biflorum; and others. This permaculture principles. planting approach has other Although we can’t get to benefits. them all here, “use small Since I’m crazy about pawpaws, and slow solutions” is I planted a new row nearby in full worth a mention. It gets sun, in an area converted from tricky as we see a myriad lawn. I felt some soil building was of seemingly intractable

Dale Hendricks in order. Compost, enriched with problems all around us; biochar, as well as sea minerals, photo © many think the only way was added, next with a layer of Pawpaw fruits landing on a cushion of native systemic change will nitrogen-fixing groundcovers, Amphicarpaea cardboard, topped with 2" or so of bracteata and Chrysogonum virginianum. happen is if lots and lots of well rotted woodchips. Since this people do it in their own area was sunny, I supplemented biogas1, biochar2, and food unique and creative ways. forests to growing beyond the earlier successional plantings organic nutrient-dense foods. So how does this impact with a completely different suite A network of folks, some in my gardening style and of plants: Baptisia australis and other overlapping fields, some choices? What are some cultivars for beauty and nitrogen techniques and exam- fixing; comfrey, Symphytum sp., explicitly permaculture-oriented, ples? have decided that nothing is for soil building and compost Here’s what I did, and please enhancing, nutrient rich tea stopping them (I suppose I should remember that your bite of the say “us!”) from moving ahead making, and income-producing apple will surely look and be divisions; lemon balm, Melissa and working to build the kind of quite different. I began with world we want to live in. officinalis, for pollinators; the plants I already had in the perennial vegetables such as Gradually we are beginning landscape—pawpaws, Asimina Turkish rocket, Bunias orientalis; to see lots of people, who are triloba, in this case. I thought everbearing raspberries, Rubus not waiting for the government they’d be happier in a diverse idaeus; garlic Allium sativum; or the marketplace to save us, polyculture. It turns out that and several others. These have jumping in and working to foster plants are not just “takers” of become low maintenance and an interconnected, loosely knit, soils and nutrients but both givers beautiful (at least to my eye!) localized and worldwide network and takers, and that “guilds” gardens that produce much of to create the beginnings of a (supportive diverse designed their own nutrition, build soil hopeful and resilient culture. In plantings) can help plants grow carbon, and provide fruit, seeds, this way the moniker “radical healthier, provide nutrients, and and divisions for the micro- empowerment” would seem to fit supply numerous other benefits. enterprise nursery. In addition We started with 10-year-old 1Biogas—a natural, gas-like fuel, often used for cooking, produced by anaerobic mature trees and in their shady Books of Relevance (without oxygen or very low oxygen) understory settings, we added Cows Save the Planet: And Other digestion of food wastes or manures. Visit ground bean, Amphicarpaea Improbable Ways of Restoring solarcities.blogspot.com/2012/04/pushing- bracteata, a native nitrogen- Soil to Heal the Earth, Judith D. envelope-for-providing-power.html for Schwartz more information. fixing groundcover; ramp, Gaia’s Garden, Toby Hemenway 2Biochar—charcoal purpose-made for Allium tricoccum, for later adding to soils. It holds nutrients and seed or edible harvestings; Permaculture: Principles and water, provides habitat for beneficial Chrysogonum virginianum for Pathways Beyond Sustainability, soil fungal and microbial life, and lasts beauty and attracting native David Holmgren for a very long time in soils. For more The Biochar Solution, Albert Bates information, visit www.biochar-journal. pollinators; toothwort or native org/en or articles.philly.com/2015-01-19/ wasabi, Cardamine diphylla Edible Forest Gardens, Dave Jacke news/58204783_1_soil-carbon-public- (syn. Dentaria diphylla); giant and Eric Toensmeier garden-landscapes

4 Hardy Plant Society/Mid-Atlantic Group May 2015 they serve as a laboratory and when I dig out the Japanese bare soils while adding as many demonstration for continuing knotweed roots, I could take perennial crops to our gardens learning and plant selection and them to my buddy for healing and diets as possible. a venue for folks to visit, teach, tinctures? Can I border the raised Gardening and learn, and browse. What’s not to beds with logs and plug them with Integration love? edible mushrooms? The native plant and sustainable Fifty years ago our twelve acres landscape movements have been was an overgrazed and abandoned most successful in broadening the farm. For the first few years, scope of what we care about as the focus was on helping the gardeners. These plants, projects, deciduous mixed forest to return. and gardens are beautiful and Recently we’ve begun a bit of beneficial for wildlife; they rewilding—adding appropriate improve water quality and are plants and seeds and growing

Mark C. Psoras unique to their bioregions. new populations of plants to the There’s still quite a way to go forest and edges. Ramp, Allium photo © on our journey—I can picture us Carrots grown in high carbon soil in tricoccum, seeds, gathered in Landenberg, PA. moving past the current “leave no autumn 2010, now have yielded trace, stay out of nature, mankind thousands of small and happy The importance of soils and has always been so destructive” plants. Watercress, Nasturtium the pressing need to spread worldview. soil-building, carbon-friendly officinale, has spread from one An integrated approach based small patch to two other seeps, techniques and knowledge cannot be overemphasized. Many on observation and applied Virginia bluebell, Mertensia ethics might help point us to a virginica, (edible leaves, beauty, are aware of the frightening economic, geopolitical, and spot where we can see that it’s and future seeds) is germinating possible for us to become native happily, American and Chinese environmental implications posed by our current mainstream here, to live in ways that nourish, chestnuts and hybrids are growing reinvigorate, and enhance nature in bright clearings agricultural practices. At the moment we use 10-15 and humans together. calories of fossil fuel for every calorie of food Dale Hendricks has been growing and produced, while at the propagating plants professionally since same time oxidizing our 1975. In 1988, he cofounded North Creek Nurseries, Inc in order to propagate and grow topsoil, thereby contributing perennials and grasses with an emphasis mightily to the overload of on natives and garden selections of natives. atmospheric carbon. Some He served on the founding board of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater brilliant and holistically Philadelphia and as cochair from 2004–2007. oriented scientists are He also served on the founding Steering

Dale Hendricks Committee of, and remains active with, the illuminating the many living Native Plants in the Landscape Conference

photo © interrelationships that well at Millersville University, June 4–6, 2015, Native ramps, Allium tricoccum, happily recolonizing managed diverse gardens, www.millersvillenativeplants.org. four years after seed scattering, with trout lily, pastures, and plantings In 2008, he founded Green Light Plants, Erythronium americanum. LLC to consult on carbon friendly and fecund can use to rapidly build landscapes and to grow native, woodland, A view to permaculture also soils, improve water holding and permaculture plants renewably, offers the gardener a bounty of capacity, tilth, and productivity organically, and joyfully. He has been a new and refreshing ways to look permaculture advocate since 2010 and (see: www.amazingcarbon.com/ enjoys life and lives with his family, gardens, at plants and human/ecosystem PDF/Jones_ACRES_USA%20 propagates plants, and makes biochar interactions: Is that weed a %28March2015%29.pdf). With whenever he can in Landenberg, PA. nitrogen fixer? Why not make Ed Note: For a full-color version of this this in mind, many stress the article, go to the HPS/MAG web site, garlic mustard pesto? Maybe importance of reducing tillage and www.hardyplant.org.

Vol. 29, No. 3 Hardy Plant Society/Mid-Atlantic Group 5