Living Permaculture
Adventures in designing for Earth care, People care & Fairshares
Integrate rather than segregate
I evolved my way of working with clients to be much more interactive. The client themselves can be the most important resource. Really, the client designs the garden themselves with me representing the permaculture aspect. You can see another example of how I have done this in one of my workshop designs 'Blarney Park'.
Designing for Clients
I got the opportunity over the last couple of years to try my hand at this for afew people who put their faithfull trust in my fledgling design skills! I've learnt alot from doing his work, lots of lessons around communcation, relationships, myself, & ways of working as well as design skills. It's been quite challenging, revealing the gaps in my knowledge & skills, & has also offerred me great learning opportunities within the detail of the designs.
With the earlier client work I felt that I was prioritising this work over designing my own space which needed/s attention too, and I wasn't really happy with that. With the later work -Cloughmills, I saw & used the opportunity to use the research needed for the clients design to help with designing my own projects and this felt alot more fulfilling. I've also learnt many lessons in between times while working on other designs and projects, I now feel quite comfortable designing for other people.
A 3 Acre concept garden design for a local social farming project employing men with special needs....
Detailed planting plans for the continued development of 'Incredible Edible' community garden in Cloughmills, Co.Antrim.
Multiple Functions
In this way the clients take much more ownership of the design and the whole project is more likely to come in to being & be well maintained! It's also educational for the client(s) giving them skills which they can use on other areas of work & life. In addition It means I have a 'design partner!' or even better design 'team' and between us we have alot more resources to hand.