One of the things I have wanted to get involved in for years was to set up productive gardens in our local schools. For me there could be no higher purpose than to be involved in teaching the next generation how to grow their own food and live more sustainably. I had considered approaching the schools where our daughters went, but since they had left school more than ten years ago, any connection would be pretty tenuous at best, so I had not worked out how to crack that one.
Due to the work with the veggie groups that I do locally my name has been bandied around (even, if you can believe it, without any associated curse words!) and the local primary school Vice Principal gave me a ring a few weeks ago. It seems they had some grant money to refurbish their cooking room and she wanted to start a garden but didn’t know the first thing to do, could I help? Oh yes, my friends... Golden Opportunity!
If this is the thing you want to do, my advice would be to talk to one of the local schools, particularly if you have a connection of some description - even if it is something as simple as knowing one of the teachers. If you can, open the dialogue with the Principal or Vice Principal because they will be the ones you will have to win over if you are going to get a school garden of any description going.
The Initial Meeting
I met the Vice Principal for an initial discussion and she showed me over the area where she wanted to site the garden, where the cooking room was and what the surrounding areas were like. We then retired to the buildings and discussed what options there were.
At this point I would like to mention that the process we went through in developing the Permaculture design is based on the Permaculture design course that I did in 2011 and if you really want to get into this stuff a PDC is a very valuable series of skills and qualification to have.
Thankfully we had access to a computer so I was able to pull up the website and show her some things we could do, the list of things we talked about included –
• Raised veggie beds
• Vertical gardens
• Mandala garden
• Small green house/ seed raising
• Banana circle
• Fruit tree circle
• Swales
• Herb spiral
• Strawberry tower
• Wicking beds
• Worm bath
• Chook tractor
After our discussion and review of the possibilities I left and allowed her to consider what we had talked about and run this past any other teachers she wished to involve and come up with a shopping list of the things they wanted.
The Second Meeting
We got together at the school the next weekend to discuss alternatives and have a more in-depth review of the site, and to make things easier I took with me –
• A digital camera
• A compass
• Bottles for taking soil samples
• Loooooong tape measure (supplied by the Principal) but one of those measuring hand wheels would have been better.
• A clip board, paper and pencil
After we reviewed the site and I took down the measurements of the area we had and the location of existing structures etc, we discussed the Permaculture design features she was looking for, and the main features turned out to be –
1. A series of fish-scale swales that had fruit trees planted into them
2. A mandala annual vegetable garden that had a herb spiral and chook tractor incorporated into the design
3. A series of wicking bed gardens which would incorporate perennial vegetables in them.
4. A series of edible flower towers
All of these features had to be incorporated into my finished Permaculture design but before I could develop the design, I had to take all the information that I had gathered and conduct a sector and zone analysis of the site.
Zone and Sector Analysis
To do the sector analysis you need to take note of such things as aspect of the site (which way it faces) shade in summer and winter, the directions that cold, hot and damaging winds come from, soil types, fall of the land, existing buildings and vegetation. I noted all of this information in my note book and took a few photos to help me remember. I got hold of some A3 paper with 1 cm grid lines and then drew in the things listed above. To see what I came up with, go to the resources tab and then look in the “Permaculture Designs” file.
I conducted the zone analysis by looking at all the information gained from the sector analysis and worked out where each of the zones (0 to 5) would be located on the site –
Zone 0 – In urban Permaculture this is usually the house or dwelling but in this case it is the school building which is to be turned into a room for cooking and processing the products of the Permaculture garden.
Zone 1 – this is the vegetable garden which is intensively cultivated and is likely to need the most intervention in the form of watering, weeding and harvesting etc and so is placed closest to zone 0
Zone 2 – this zone contains the closely planted and somewhat intensive fruit orchard which is also close to zone 0 but requires less intervention than the veggie production area.
Zone 3 – is the farming zone where commercial crops are grown and animal forage systems are used such as organic orchard, nut forest or extensive organic poultry system, or even cereal production or sheep or goats could be raised here
Zone 4 – is the harvest forest where long term tree species are grown to produce firewood, mulch or timber to be used for sustainable building, complementary grazing animals can also share this zone at low stocking rates.
Zone 5 – is the indigenous conservation zone where plants native to the region are allowed to regrow into what would become natural forest.
I used the same page as the sector analysis to draw the zone analysis on but if you wanted to you could do the basic site drawing then mark up clear overlays showing the sector analysis and the zone analysis to go over the top. You don’t have to be a competent graphic artist to do these drawings, I don’t have an artistic bone in my body but I was able to put something together that people could understand and needless to say if you are artistically talented it will make your design all the better.
The Permaculture Design
Using the same basic layout as I did for the zone and sector analysis (alright, I drew up the first one then photocopied it before putting any of the analysis stuff in!) I then proceeded to locate the design features my client (the Vice Principal) wanted. When doing a Permaculture design it is important to place the areas that need the most regular work closest to the Zone 0 (house or dwelling) but in this case the school buildings themselves would be Zone 0 so the mandala garden and wicking beds were located in closest to them.
The original idea was to have the edible flower towers along the fence on the northern side of the site but after reviewing the zone and sector analysis it appeared that the flowers would grow best on the side away from the buildings and would be shaded out in winter. To prevent this I changed their location so that they were right outside the school buildings to give maximum amenity and usefulness for the edible flowers.
The swale/fruit tree garden was located at the very western end of the site so that it would capture water moving down from the play areas on the uphill side, reducing the likelihood of flooding out the mandala garden in wet weather and enabling the trees to make the most use of scarce moisture in dry weather.
The graphical design is also available in the “resources” section of this site. The written part of the design is mainly around some simple description of what Permaculture is and how Permaculture zones work and then provides a description of each of the parts of the Permaculture design, what the features of each part are, how they are constructed and a selection of plants that can be used in each part.
The final part of the design was around implementation, breaking the design down into its parts then working out which parts can be done when. In some cases it doesn’t matter – the fruit tree swales, mandala garden and wicking beds could be done simultaneously if the manpower was available but the mandala garden would need to be finished to do the herb spiral and the mandala garden would need to have completed a circuit before needing the chook tractor.
The Third Meeting
The main purpose of the third meeting with the Principal is to present the finished design and to present the design professionally I bought a folder with a clear front to make everything look nice. I printed off the title page twice in colour, one going in the cover of the folder and the other acting as the first page. I then printed off the A4 typed pages and then inserted the folded A3 drawings (zone/sector analysis and the design) into the folder as well. With everything stowed away I was ready!
At this point there should really be no surprises, the client should understand that you will be presenting them with the detail about the design which you will already have agreed on, there should be no major changes. Of course, during your design you may find that minor changes are necessary as I did with the location of the flower towers once I had consulted the zone and sector analysis. If I found something that we agreed on would not work I would have gone back to the vice principal to discuss the situation with her before continuing with the design.
As part of this meeting you might want to do a formal presentation to other teachers, parents, students or other interested persons but in my case even though I offered, the Vice Principal decided she wanted to handle the wider consultation phase. After she has done this she will contact me to let me know if there are any changes required from her end.
