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Patrick from Incredible Edible Cloughmills invited me to lead a permaculture gardening course at this community garden, and following that, to do some design consultancy for the developement of the site.

 

In particular they want some detailed planting plans for specific areas of the site to help them develop it as a Permaculture demonstration site and to better use the space & opportunity there.

 

There is a budget for the design work! At a very reasonable rate I offered 20 hours of design work using this budget. This is to include detailed planting advice, sketches, but no scaled planting plans as that would require more time.

In addition I offered some general advice for the developement of the site overall.

Observation onsite:

Surveying:

 

  • A detailed site survey with maps & drawings is provided by Patrick. (from Groundworks who did the initial site design 3 years ago)

  • 3 days spent on site -2 teaching/exploring & 1 observing by myself along with Danny & Patrick & the course participants. Ideas, needs, wants, challenges , opportunities, & leaks gleaned from this.

  • Sit down chat with 2 of the core team Patrick & Jim.

  • Mini client interview exploring the vision, challenges & resources with 5 members of the core team.

  • Photographs.

  • Tasting the garden – I harvested food from the garden for my meals while I was there.

  • Brainstorming onsite – With Patrick, Danny & by myself

Clarifying brief & Overall Functions:

 

First I sifted through my notes, the original Groundworks design, and lots of photos.

I clarified the team vision, the resources, leaks & limiting factors, & climatic factors.

I listed the main functions of the overall design work.

And jotted down some of my thoughts so far.

Then I considered which if the Permaculture Principles seemed most relevant & how they could guide the overall design.

The detail of all of this can be read by clicking on the document below.

 

Functions of the design:

 

It must

  • Increase the productivity of the space

-primarily by filling in & expanding the current plantings & designing new plantings for the ampitheatre space,

-also by other means/suggestions

  • Be a mostly self-maintaining system

  • Give rewards in the form of tempting & use-able yields

  • Not add to the workload of the current volunteers

  • Be climate appropriate

It should

  • Clearly demonstrate Permaculture in practise

  • Provide for wildlife

  • Attract people to the garden -to learn, to work, to play

It could also

  • Produce an income

Mapping:

 

Next I spent some time exploring the site maps that Groundworks had prepared in 2011. Patrick had also copied these & sketched in any deviations to the original plan that had been made in the meantime.

As there are three main areas of focus for this design I made enlarged maps of each of those areas. 

I had also neglected to measure out the exact dimensions of the new ampitheatre which was only sketched onto the map  not to scale so I asked Patrick to do that for me & send it on (as it's 4 hours drive away), He has since sent me on rough dimensions which I have yet to draw up.

The maps are viewable by clicking on the pdf symbols below. Zone 5 got missed at the scanner but I'll put it up next time.

 

 

Analysis: SWOC, PMI, Zone & Sector.

 

Here I started to sidetrack into some 'Wild design' as ideas began to emerge...... In response to the function of demonstrating permaculture & education I began to think about having specific themes for each area of the design.

 

This felt a bit ahead of schedule, & jumping the gun a bit so I decided to explore each area a bit more first using SWOC,

 

The SWOC set me back on track doing more analysis of the situation before deciding on any design solutions. It also gave me the opportunity to further brainstorm, clarify functions of each area & compare some of my ideas.

 

In addition I considered the zones & sectors of the site to see some of the characteristics of each area. This helped clarify the functions.

 

I then did a PMI analysis on what to demonstrate/theme in each of the three main areas, details of this are here

This part was important because I want to maximise the learning & demo opportunities on the site. (that's a function) And I also want each area to be productive (for food then fuel, fibre etc) provding usefull yields for the team (another function)

 

This exercise was very helpfull in bringing together some of the ideas so far & ensuring the functionality of the design, optimising the suitability for the needs of the project & each part, creating a perfect fit!

 

It also highlighted some risks associated with each idea so I can better design around these.

 

All of this analysis together led me to clarify the functions for each distinct area.

 

Border garden

"the combined themes of small space permaculture forest edge garden design. I will be including the other things within this (eg: vertical gardening techniques & edible landscaping techniques) but they won't be the main focus."

 

 

Functions:

  • Give useable (edible) yields: In year one & onwards & upwards!

  • Demonstrate Permaculture:

Small space gardening & forest edge garden design. + Ethics

  • Be enticing to maintain & harvest

  • Self maintaining 'Harvest as Maintenance'

  • The WOW factor: Attract people to the garden -to learn, to work, to play – innovative, clear, fun, effective, beautifull

  • Blur the edges, give the garden a more natural feel

  • Support Wildlife -native insects, birds, bees,

  • Income

Circular Centre Garden

"No-work perrennial permaculture (vegetable) garden with consideration & use of the other ideas, with lots of info on the hows & whys"

 

 

Functions:

  • Be enticing to maintain & harvest

  • Interest for visitors & volunteers

  • Demonstrate Permaculture:

No-work perrennial permaculture garden

  • Information for visitors & voluteers about permaculture

  • Yields -useable produce food wise productivity

  • Access for harvest & maintenance

  • self-maintaining

  • WOW factor!

  • Blur the edges

  • Support wildlife

  • Income

 

 

'Incredible Edible'

Cloughmills Community Garden

Cloughmills, Co. Antrim.

September 2014

Methods & Approaches:

I didn't set out with a fixed approach in mind but went with the flow & habit. Basically I was guided by an OBREDIMET style with the freedom of some more web-like tendencies! The scale & focus of the design helped things were fairly straightforward. Because of the hourly rate & out of curiosity I kept a note of the time spent on each part of the design. (see 'reflections' below)

Within this I made use of several design tools - Client interview with members of the teal & through a course onsite, Zone, Sector & Microclimate analysis, PNI, SWOC,

Further on, I did an invaluable inputs & outputs analysis of each area.

I used wild design & brainstorming, 

Ampitheatre

Edible & Functional landscaping as the main theme, with consideration given to concerns highlighted here. Other yields than fruit possibly....

 

 

Functions:

  • Wow factor

  • Beauty – aesthetically pleasing from all angles

  • & Bounty – useable edible yields & other, Productivity

  • Demonstrate permaculture:

Edible & Functional landscaping

  • Safety & shelter – from the road, & the rest of site to the east & south, also somwhat from the river walk

  • Be enticing to visit

  • Be inspiring to play there

  • Self maintaining

  • Stabalise soil/slopes

  • Support Wildlife

  • Income

  • Blur the edges, give the garden a more natural feel

Pattern to detail:

I explored the zones & sectors within each area to further frame what types of plants I was looking for, and what type of yields would come from each zone. These documents are here:

Sketching & Research

 

Here I begin sketching out some of my ideas & researching in earnest.

I started off researching guilds as the design really depends on them alot.

And now individual plants to fit the functions.

 

Books I'm using?

 

Books:

Designing & Maintaining your Edible Landscape Naturally - Robert Kourick

A Pattern language -Christoper Alexander 

How to grow Perrennial Vegetables & Creating a Forest Garden- Martin Crawford

Permaculture Design - Aranya

The Resilient Farm & Homestead - Ben Falk

Plants for a future - Ken Fern

 

and Places of inspiration:

CAT – forest gardens, demo sites, -see photos especially of signage

Cloughjordan eco village -edible landscaping, perrennial plantings,

Graham Bells garden -similar climate?

Leeds Hollybrook garden out the back of the Permaculture Association, small space.

 

 

Check in....

At this point, before I went any further, I checked in with Patrick to ensure things were going in the right direction... he likes it, phew!

 

This then, together with the functions gave me a clear runway into brainstorming Systems, Elements & plant species.

 

At this point I revisited the Permaculture Principles to see if they could give me any more directions regarding each area. Details of that are on the Systems & Elements document.

Design

 

First thing was to read through some excellent books and choose plants for each area which seem to support the main functions. That part was easy enough although it took a long time, especially for the ampitheatre area where I had more scope for being creative & less specific parameters in both space & intention.

 

Next step was to arrange said plants into areas. That was informed by the sector & zone analysis so fairly straightforward. I sketched these roughly to scale into the base maps.

Finally as Iisted all the recommended plants I set out a table to double checked to see what their purpose in this design is.

 

This document, along with the design maps,  and an overview/interpretation sheet, will be sent to Patrick & the Cloughmills team so it also includes the recommended implimentation & maintenance procedures, which I talk a bit about further down the page. As there is so much detail in this design, I used a numbers key to communicate all the plantings so the maps need the documents & the documents need the maps.

Implementation plan

 As the original brief was just to suggest some plantings to fill in the areas and I was already way over time I opted to give a very general outline of a couple of options to get things going. I did feel that this at least was necessary as the designs were quite complex & I can imagine the question of 'where do we start' could arise so I suggested some starting ppoints & included these in with the planting recommendations for Patrick.

Maintenance

Similarly, as for a maintanance plan, I included some notes around this in the document with the plant recommendations; I felt that was enough considering the original brief & time scale;

Evaluation & Tweaking

Shall commence once the guys start planting! I probably won't be involved in this but I'd like to hear some feedback on how they get on

 

 

 

For now.... That's it!

So I'm currently leafing through these books to find plants that fit into the template created by the functions together with the zone, sector & slope analysis.

 

B.R.B. WITH A DESIGN!!

Inputs & outputs analysis

When I had a design tutorial with Chris about half way through this design, he had suggested I do an inputs & outputs anlysis, it seemed like a good idea!

This is a good way to check the design against the functions & in itself -is it efficient? Is there any waste/pollution? Or extra work being created?

Here I can fill in any gaps, tweak the design & tighten things up.

Again looking at each area independantly I listed the anticipated inputs & outputs of the system in maintenance (ie: after initial set up). To do this I had to do some more research around each plant, for this I found Martin Crawfords book, 'Creating a Forest garden' invaluable, especiallyall the tables at the back. I basically cross referenced each plant many times against each input & output, you can see the whole document here...

A couple of examples of how this helped tighten up the design:

  • in the no work garden I realised I didn't have enough inputs of nitrogen to sustain the existing fruit trees so I added alot more tree lupins.

  • I also added much more comfrey plants to sustain the potassium requirements of the fruiting trees & shrubs

  • And an extra mineral accumulator – valerian

  • I also noticed that the bee forage doesn't extend into early spring or late autumn, I didn't address this because it is not a key component of the design and the site overall offers alot more scope bee forage, the main time to get bees to this area is when the fruit rees are flowering, so spring, and there are plenty of bee plants flowering at that time. The eleagnus recommended in the ampitheatre will extend the forage season there.

  • In the ampitheatre the inputs & outputs analysis highlighed a general need for more supporting plants such as mineral accumulators & insect atractors so I added in a herbaceous layer of lemon balm, soapwort & sweet cicely along the wall where there was also a missing layer of planting. In addition, I recommended introducing meadowsweet into the area as a major contributor to all required functions.

  • Here I was also concerned about my suggestion of herbs for around the stone circle, I had initialy thought they could use the heat from the stone but now I'm concerned it could be a  frost pocket so I am looking for another option for that.

What went well?

Content:  

I've learnt SO much from what I initially imagined to be quite a straightforward design - the detail & the layers involved also complimented some aspects that I'm working on in my own food garden design  & the larger scale farm project here. So there has been alot of learning.

Around, individual plants, selecting plants for specific functions & plant based whole system design.

Process: 

I'm using the template from my 'portfolio design' to help write up this design.

Writing it up here at this point -just before I get in to the real detail- is helpfull to refocus me on exactly what's needed.

I also found that contrary to my expectations, a change of acene helps get a fresh perspective on things & the way I work. Coming to work at Danny's house for a day or 2 helps (once I bring everything I need)

Personal:

I'm very grateful to Patrick for putting his trust in me, I was reluctant to do it & I feel I've got some valuable professional experience now & I feel more competent & confident to take on more design work if asked.

First time I've been paid by the hour (sort of)

Recording my time & what I'm doing helps efficiency, as you can see from this document, I went a bit overtime...

However that was -in part- due to deciding to include this project in my diploma which is a big plus.

 

What was challenging?

Content: 

The devil was certainly in the detail!! The plant research & selection too far longer than I had anticipated. And in the end I wasn't 100% happy with the planting plan for the ampitheatre area (probably 90%).

I feel I could work more on this design& improve it given what I'm learning as I go along, however the time & money are the limiting factors here.

Due to these factors I skimped a bit on the costings & sources of plants which I initially wanted to provide to make it easier or the busy people at Clougmills to impliment the design.

Drawing up the maps was a minor challenge but one that I wanted to do to improve my skills in that department. I also found it difficult to visualise the plans well without doing the maps.

Simple as it is, I feel this design could go on forever, tweaking & adding in layer upon layer of efficiency, say for more year round produce etc,

Process:

I got a bit confused around the systems & elements but I think that sorted itself out after the design tutorial.

The goals were hard to get SMART, but after doing the inputs & outputs analysis it was a bit clearerer.

I'm still having technical issues, nothing impossible but messing around uploading documents, images & so on that takes me ages & then I havn't it done how I wanted it even after all that so it's quite frustrating & time consuming.

 

 

Long term visions/goals (in design)

Be quicker & more efficient at doing designs so I can offer a quality affordable service.

 

 

Next achieveable steps 

Create (or find) a template for my next design where I can slot in each plant & tick or mark all relevant functions in one fell swoop.

For example, primary purpose, other functions, month of harvest, bee fodder, maintenance, ethics supported etc etc. This would help keep focussed & also stop having to look the same plant up like 3 times.

 

Client package:

Design Overview

Plant Recommendations

Design maps

Invoice

Update March 2015

Patrick has invited me to come to the garden again to facilitate a community planting workshop to get the bulk of this design implimented. Sourcing some of the plants in the design was challenging for them so I gave a hand in particular with the seed order. There still remains afew plants which we havn't sourced. For some of these I have made substitutions, & for others we will keep looking! I can take this as interesting feedback on this design. The detail in the design made things a little complicated for implementing it. In this case Patrick managed to source more funding for me to spend some more time on it, hwever in other projects this may not be possible so It's something I will keep in mind.

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