A Design Process

Bring your dreams for a sustainable, abundant, beautiful, ecological, and low-
maintenance landscape into fruition!

Design Steps

Each garden, each valley and each region is different. These differences, in the hands
of an Earth steward, can be honored and used toward creative and diverse ends. Each
garden is a reflection of the potential of place and the intimacy with which the
gardener can connect with the needs and latent forces of the land. Earth wisdom
becomes an expanding universe for the seeker, until the garden becomes an Eden
where the gardener and garden exist in true harmony.
~Tody Hemenway, Gaias Garden
Your Objectives

Defining Your Goals, Vision and Principles

Setting Your Primary Objective is to reestablish a sustainable ecosystem that

regenerate itself that will include:

An ecological food forest garden based on biological principles that will

deliver all the food that we need to sustain our family, guests and local
community.
A culinary herb garden
A medicinal herb garden
A wholistic orchard

Basic Design Principles

1. Work with nature.
2. The problem is the solution.
3. Make the least change for the greatest possible effect.
4. The yield of a system is tentatively unlimited.

A step-by-step approach to creating a forest garden design is as follows:

 Observation: Here we ask ourselves what do we have to work with? What
are the conditions and constraints of the site?
Visioning: What ideally will the design do? What do we want? What does the
present location require? How would you like it to feel?
Planning: What do you need to make your ideals and concepts transpire?
How will the sections be put together?
Development: What will the ultimate creative design look and feel like? How
will you make it materialize?
Implementation: The finishing step: How to inaugurate the garden.
 A Step-by-Step in Creating a Forest
Garden
1. Observation

Our initial step is to make a detailed map of the land recording every possible
characteristic. The first step is observation.

Here we ask what do we have to work with?

What are the conditions and constraints of the site?

This is where you take to time see and feel what is. You start by doing nothing at all.

Ranges of shade and sun

Wind direction, intensity, and change over the seasons
Temperature highs and lows, dates of first and last frosts
Points of sunrise, sunset, winter and summer solar zenith
Microclimates (cool, hot, wet, or dry spots)
Rainfall amounts and seasons (moisture, snow, ice/hail)
Streams, ravines, water movement during rain, flooding zones. Recognize
sources of water, investigate for quality and quantity, and reserve locations for
storage tanks, swales, or dams. Wherever feasible, use slope benefits (or raise
storage tanks) to give gravity flow to use points, and detail plant lists that will
grow (as mature plants or trees) unwatered or with an irrigation system.
Describe water pathways in use, so that water use is cost-effective in houses,
and that grey water is recycled into the gardens (via purification beds) or
forests.
Soil (drainage, heavy or light, sand or clay, rich or exhausted, stable or
collapsing)
Rocky outcrops
Outlooks and focal points in various directions
Activities of neighbors that may distress or limit design (noise, children, pets,
visits, etc.)
Utilities: power, phone, sewer, and gas lines
Traffic and access roads, frequency of traffic, heavy or light vehicles, pedestrian
traffic
Location and influence of structures: house, garage, fences, walls, etc.
 Vegetation: species present, aggressive or poisonous plants, rare species, and
their state of well-being
Wildlife: native and introduced, pests, frightening animals (snakes, spiders)
History of the land (talk to locals, study old books, maps, photos)
Resources in neighborhood (sources of organic matter, soil, and construction
materials): sawmills, factories, food processors, stores, landfills, plant and seed
sources.

In nature, there is life and death, and nature is joyful. In human society, there is life
and death, and people live in sorrow.
~Masanobu Fukuaka, The One Straw Revolution

2. Visioning: Articulating Goals

Begin by collecting the goals and vision you desire from your garden. Look for both
pattern level goals like increasing on-site food production to specific desires like
creating a long-term vision of a magnificent food forest. Use both pattern and detail
level goals to inform the rest of the design process. After your visit to your garden it
is good to create a Goals Articulation Statement of what you wish to see with your
garden.

What should the design do?

What do we want?
What does the site need?
How should it feel?

This is the phase for dreaming and brainstorming, to see the potential of
regenerative abundance.

What do you desire and require from the landscape?

What can it offer? Potentials include food, herbs, wildlife habitat, wildflowers,
privacy, income, play space, or all of these. You will need to research whats
available, and go into gathering detail, remembering that this is just the
dreaming phase of this process.
What does the landscape and region require?
Has earlier misuse or exploitation initiated a problem that can be amended by a
better wholistic design? Does the soil require rejuvenating?
Are trees suffering, plants stressed?
Would the land benefit from a pond, from wildlife habitat?
 Are rare native plants growing here that can be nurtured?
Could the design regenerate and replenish a damaged landscape, and offer a
better chance of survival to endangered species?
What are your abilities, physical and financial resources, limitations, likes and
dislikes?
How much energy, time and capital are you willing and likely to spend on the
design project, implementation, and maintenance?
A design cannot flourish without an accurate representation of the resources
and limitations that constrain it.
How should the redesigned ecosystem feel?
Like a forest, a garden sanctuary, a meadow, a gathering place?
What will you do there?
What kind of food, culinary herbs, medicinal plants, firewood, timber, or other
goods, can the land provide sustainably, for the long-term?
Will the place have an inclusive theme or function such as education, sanctuary,
demonstration site, simple living, or market gardening?
Layout: defining the zones and sectors.

3. Planning

Layout: Zones
To support and manage a forest garden layout there is a system, which is called the
Zone-and-Sector. This ecological system aids in helping choose where to place all
the pieces of the forest garden so that they work with each other and for us - most
harmoniously, successfully, according to intensity of human intervention and
involvement, on-site energy and resources management or physical characteristics
(slopes, temperature variations, etc.)

Zones organize the pieces of a design by how often they are applied or need
attention and sectors help locate the pieces so they manage the forces that come
from outside the site. Using zones and sectors together, we can optimize the use of
the connections within a design. Typically zones are numbered from 0 to 5.

Zone 0
The house, or home focal point. Here ecological principles would be applied in terms
of aiming to reduce energy and water needs, harnessing natural resources such as
sunlight, and creating a pleasant-sounding, sustainable environment in which to
live, work and relax.
Zone 1
The zone closest to the house, the location for those elements in the system that
need repeated consideration, or that must to be visited frequently, such as salad
greens, culinary and herb tea plants, soft fruit like strawberries, raspberries and
currants, greenhouse and cold frames, propagation area, worm vermiculture unit
and compost pile for kitchen scrapes, etc.

Zone 2
This area is expended for growing perennial plants and bushes that need less
frequent upkeep, such as intermittent weed control (preferably through natural
techniques such as spot-mulching) or pruning, including currant bushes and
orchards. This would also be an ideal place for beehives, larger scale home
composting piles, and so on.

Zone 3
The area where the larger crops are grown, both for domestic use and for trade
purposes. After establishment, care and maintenance required are fairly minimal
(provided mulches and similar things are used), such as watering or weed control
once a week or so.

Zone 4
A semi-wild area. This zone is mainly used for forage and collecting wild food as well
as timber production. An example might be coppice-managed woodland. This area
would perhaps be visited once or twice a month.

Zone 5
A wild area. There is no human intervention in zone 5 apart from the observation of
natural eco-systems and cycles. Here is where the most essential lessons of the
forest gardening principles can be observed; working with, rather than against,
nature.

Choosing the zone in which to place a design element depends on two things: the
frequency in which we need to visit the plant, wildlife zone, or structure. The overall
approach with forest garden zones is to start at the backdoor, design and develop
the places closest to the house first, and gradually work outward. In this way, we can
keep a continuous area under control that gets as much attention as it needs, rather
than having an assortment of disseminated patches that are easy to overlook.

Layout: Sectors
One way of considering the external energies that move through a system such as
prevailing wind direction, site positioning and aspect (north, south, east, west, etc.),
winter/summer sun paths, fundamental geological make up (bed rock causing clay
or sandy soil types, etc.), frost pockets, etc. and how we might best take phases to
either apply or counter such influences is defined as sectors.

Once we know what plants and structures we desire in our design, we can use the
Zone-and-Sector method to systematize them. By sketching a base map and our
concepts on overlays of tracing paper or clear plastic sheets, we can assemble the
pieces of our design to connect sensibly with each other in their zones and sectors.

A suggestion: In Zone 2, mulch heavily between the young trees and shrubs, and
plant the herb, root, and ground cover layers as time, nursery stock, and finances
become available. Restore the mulch once or twice a year to increase the soil fertility
and choke the weeds. To try to plant and landscape a large area would possibly be
taking a too large of a portion at once. Consider, the cleverest approach is to get
Zone 1 started first and then enlarge outward. With the above approach, the shrubs,
trees, and soil of Zone 2 will be complete when Zone 1 is established and in place.
In this way we have created and established three zones in the forest garden: an
intensively cultivated Zone 1, a well mulched but lightly planted (for now) Zone 2,
and a long-term set of soil-building cover crops beneath the young shrubs and trees
of Zone 3.

Diversity isnt involved so much with the number of elements in a system as it is with
the number of functional connections between these elements. Diversity is not the
number of things, but the number of ways in which things work. This really is the
direction in which permaculture thinking is headed.
~Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture

We should not confuse order and tidiness. Tidiness is something that happens when
you have frontal brain damage. You get very tidy. Tidiness is symptomatic of brain
damage. Creativity, on the other hand, is symptomatic of a fairly whole brain, and is
usually a disordered affair. The tolerance for disorder is one of the very few healthy
signs in life. If you can tolerate disorder, you are probably healthy. Creativity is seldom
tidy. What we want is creative disorder. I repeat, it is not the number of elements in
a system that is important, but the degree of functional organization of those elements
- beneficial functions.
~Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture
 The characteristic that typifies all permanent agricultures is that the needs of the
system for energy, are provided by that system.
~Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture

Examples of Design of Zones and Sectors

Most commonly zones are usually characterized as concentric circles, they can
however have any kind of shape dependent on the land formation and position of
the various buildings.

4. Analysis & Assess

The first step is we can assemble the design elements - plants, structures, tasks, and
functions that will create our vision to come to life. How do we select and assemble
them? The directorial principle here is that were not creating a stagnant assortment
of objects, but a dynamic, living landscape packed full of interactions amongst its
occupants.

This phase of the design process begins by researching soil types, printing aerial
photographs of the site and establishing a birds eye view of the property in relation
to its surroundings. Site analysis continues through the initial consultation and
depending on the size of the property/project additional site visits will be
scheduled. This crucial data collection phase is informed by the landscape. Looking
at slope, soils, aspect and existing vegetation to name just a few of the already
existing landscape features that will support the rest of the design process.

Take time to create a list of the things that will fulfill your vision.

What kind of fruits and vegetable go in your sustainable sanctuary?

What companion plants can you incorporate?
What kind of culinary and medicinal herbs and teas do you desire in your
garden?
What species will attract the wildlife you want?

Create detailed lists of species and structures. These lists produce a great deal of
singular members.

The following, and most significant, is to see how these singular members of your
design can be associated in a harmonious relationship to create a living and dynamic
ecosystem. Each plant, tree or structure in a garden design ought to have its
requirements met by other design components, and offer help to other components.
Visualizing up these associates often encompasses a flowing thought progression.
You need to select a design component that you want, see what it requires and can
offer, then find a desired component that meets some of those requirements, and
then see what connects to the second component. This procedure is proposed to
construct a dense web of networks, but if done randomly it may generate a
scrambled mass of disorganized feedback loops and dead ends.

Priorities
What are the most pressing complications or desires that you require to give
attention to? Is it getting free of the energy-gobbling lawn, readdressing runoff from
the walkway or driveway, growing some organic food? Survey the least significant
features of the vision too; conceivably these contradict the more central ones, or can
just be let go of.

It may be helpful breakdown the urgencies into numerous classifications: personal,

aesthetic, difficulties to be solved, environmental/ecological, and the like. Take note
to which classifications and issues standout as the most essential.

One of the major priorities needs to deal with soil erosion and soil restoration.
Permaculture invites you to care for yourself, to care for your family and immediate
community, to care for your neighbors in the widest possible sense, all around the
globe. It is rooted in strong historical evidence that such care cannot work unless we
also care for the land. Implicit in this is the understanding that we duly respect the
waters and air of the Earth as well. ~Tody Hemenway, Gaias Garden

5. Development: Conceptual Design

These initial phases form the foundation upon which the rest of the design process
unfolds. Now we move into Design. Begin by creating a number of Schematic and
Concept Designs. These designs are not detailed and act as a creative canvas,
throwing all of your ideas on the table. The point at which your ideas are exhausted
you distill down all of the right design elements to be included in the Final Design.

What does the rough draft look like?

What patterns are emerging?
What is the base survey showing you?
This is where a napkin diagram is sketched out on paper. Concept design is an early
phase of the design process that explores far-ranging design ideas that are
plausible.

This phase is to refine these coarse concepts, working with the locations arrived at
by the Zone-and-Sector method. Draft in the numerous planting mounds, plants,
trees, walls and fences, patios and decks, and other strategy components. The
important part is not to go into too much detail, just draw rough circles and sketches
of the foremost sections, displaying their comparative location; this will look like a
bubble diagram.

From these coarse sketches, individuals with the skills or time may choose to make
more official drawings and plans. Whether the documentation is of professional
quality or not is up to the designer/forest gardener. Usually just simple drawings
will do, as long as they comprise of distances, scale, and sufficient other detail to
apply to the design. Dont expect to trust your memory. It is quite challenging to
install a pricey and rare plant and not be able to recall where it is to planted.
Without these records, the job becomes greater and then it has to be.

Another step is to arrange the installation. What needs to be done first? A

combination of factors interacts to form this conclusion. These include:

Personal: Is your most important desire to be food production, a patio, shade,

an herb garden, or some other consideration?
Environmental: Does the garden site most need soil fertility, erosion control,
habitat, or something else?
Technical: Will your design require earthmoving, concrete or stonework, or
other landscaping? These usually need to be done first and foremost to escape
disturbing the remainder of the forest garden design, and to diminish the
expenditure and possibly for destruction done by various bulldozers on site.
Trees and berry shrubs need also be planted at the early stage of the work,
following to the old wisdom, the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago.
Seasonal: What can be prepared during the season suitable to the project? Earth
moving in the wet season will be devastating to the soil structure; planting in
summer heat may bake the transplants.
Financial: Is there adequate funds available for the whole project design? What
aspects make sense to phase in first, if there is lack of funds?

Everything has its own beauty. Putting it in the right place can only enhance it, and
putting things together in the right place at the right rime is the essence of
 Permaculture. () People who choose to practice Permaculture spend a lot of time
collecting, understanding and learning helpful techniques but the real secret is how
effectively they are placed together.
~Tody Hemenway, Gaias Garden

6. Implementation, Harvest & Enjoyment

In installing the design project it is essential to be adaptable enough to deal with the
unsuspected occurrences that materialize when a paper design encounters the real
world.

An order of implementation:

What will the final design look like?

How will you make it happen?
Initially, do any main earth moving. Grade the site to a rough shape and
pattern, if required. Excavate out to create swales, ponds, and drainage
channels. Install utility lines and underground irrigation system. Then
backfill the channels.
Add any broad scale soil amendments and compost. Mulching and shaping of
intensive Zone mounds can be held off for a later date.
Complete any landscaping, that may need work with wood, stone, concrete,
and other constructed elements: walls, sheds, paths, fences, etc.
Make any definitive adjustments to the grade shapes with rake and shovel.
Apply sheet mulches.
Plant the larger trees and major shrubs and berry bushes.
Plant ground covers, non-woody plants and cover crops.
Fine-tune mulches, and adjust the irrigation system.
Observing and caring for those that need extra attention establish and keep
plants and trees well watered.

Once the phases are complete you move into the harvest and enjoyment of what
was observed, visioned, designed, planned, implemented of the design process.
This is where you go to enjoying the trees, shrubs and herbs into the ground, and
creative and beautifying begins. The components of harvest and enjoyment take
place to ensure that all of your desired design components get appreciated
through athis step-by-step process.
7. Revaluation, Reassess, Redesign, Revaluate

The next and final phase of the design process is Evaluation, Reassess, Redesign and
Reevaluation. This is where you take a step back. The landscape informs us on the
validity of our design decisions. From there the Redesign Process begins anew. New
goals might be formed based on the Revaluation phase and so forth.

So you never really stop. Well, neither does nature.

This is the flow process. We will cover this in-depth along with a through case study
of a forest garden through its evolutionary journey.

Now, lets take a look at each of these phases in depth.

From just this one straw a revolution could begin. This straw appears small and light,
and most people do not know how really weighty it is. If people knew the true value of
this straw a human revolution could occur which would become powerful enough to
move the country and the world.
~Masanobu Fukuaka, The One Straw Revolution