Starting a New Small-Scale Permaculture Design Project
A couple of weeks ago, I went back to my parent’s house for a short holiday. While I was on the train, I was thinking about the big garden left completely unattended for the last couple of years, as my parents moved abroad, and the house was just rented out as a shared apartment to some students. No surprise they had other things to do than taking care of that garden.
During the last couple of years, I became more and more interested in growing my own food and adopting permaculture into my daily life. Still, since I am working in a big city with horrendous prices for rent, I couldn’t pursue this hobby so much. I grew some herbs on my window sill, and I found a very small community garden close to my apartment, where I started growing some beans and corn. But I could never afford a house or an apartment with my garden.
But this day on the train, suddenly an idea crossed my mind, and everything perfectly got together within a couple of minutes. Why should I not move back to my parent’s house? Take care of the garden, grow my food, and life as sustainable as possible?
What would stop me? I love my job working in the field of organic agriculture, and I would not consider quitting it right now, but with all the Corona measures, the home office became a normal thing over the last month. I have colleagues who did exactly this – moving away from the city, only coming to the office a day or two a week, and working the rest of the time remotely. Surely, my manager would not be shocked, and it would be possible to agree with him on a certain amount of home office days. Anyways the house is only one hour away from my office, so even commuting some days a week would not be a big issue. Also, it would save me so much money!
Needless to say, how excited I got. My thoughts were turning and turning, and I thought if I forgot anything important to consider or if it was just that simple. I called my mum and presented the idea to her – she was positive about it. I called my best friend – she also did not find anything negative. Lastly, I called my boyfriend and asked him would he consider moving there with me. He was into the idea from the first moment.
Even though the garden was what I was first thinking about, the house itself is also a project by itself. The general condition is good, but generations of students living there left its traces. Many old things are lying around, nobody really cares about cleaning that much, and you don’t really know who all the stuff belonged to. As I came home, I started walking through the rooms on the ground floor, imagining myself changing things, renovating, and turning everything into an amazing and warm place to live. Even within the house, I would include as much permaculture as possible, making it a place as sustainable as possible. I could, for example, upcycle a lot of old furniture instead of buying new pieces. I could also give away the unused stuff for free or exchange it into something more useful for me. I got even more excited!
And the more I thought about it, the more ideas came into my mind. Talking to friends also gave me lots of inspiration. I could even have bees and chicken in the garden! And fish in the pond! I could grow as many vegetables to be independent from buying them at the store! I could have a small greenhouse! And the whole decoration in the house could be made of upcycled things!
The next time I came back home, I started the actual planning process. I made a list of things I wanted to have in the garden and in the house: a compost, vegetable beds, a flower meadow, a herb spiral, a small greenhouse, a nice area to sit and relax, a small workshop so I could easily fix old things or do some manual works. Then, I started drawing some plans, and I was walking around the garden or sitting there and observing a lot. I noticed the places with the most sun, I made friends with the hedgehog, and I found a lot of spiders and beneficial insects like ladybugs.
And of course, I wanted to get my hands dirty and start working in the garden immediately. You can read about my first experience cleaning up in the next blog post. And hopefully, you will find some inspiration and useful tips for your own project!
In case you want to learn even more about permaculture – register for our free introduction course or the full Permaculture Design Certificate Course (PDC) here: https://permacultureeducation.org/pdc-courses/
Franziska is an Instructor and Marketing Coordinator with the International Permaculture Education Center.
