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home garden
home garden
creating an up front and beautiful urban permaculture garden in just a three months
"I came to understand that my five-decade long love affair with nature was telling me to stay put in the changing neighborhood and fight softly, by example, and demonstrate ways in which we can live sustainably and in harmony with nature beautifully, outside and inside our own urban and suburban homes."
Once we'd made the decision to stay for as long as we could in our 'forever home', we moved quickly to design and create our front yard 'urban orto'. Working from a relatively recent Google Earth image as my template for scaling and orienting our homesite (homestead) gardens, I re-imagined what I'd learned and envisioned studying permaculture and its related sub-sets over the past several years. I'd made a wish list of sorts in the memory of my imagination, of how to miniaturize, adapt and 'ornament' a fruit and nut orchard, a berry patch, a shiitake and lion's mushroom garden, a food forest, and variations on fundamental permaculture installations such a swayles, herb spirals, hügelkulture, keyhole gardens, and no-dig production beds. I knew that I'd have to tread softly given the conservative history of our community.
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front yard, pre-install, working from a blank slate of soccer worn grass, near level, with full sun
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