Sneaky permaculture

Confession first.  I love everything about permaculture. Unfortunately I began my garden twenty years ago before I’d heard of it. My husband doesn’t understand anything but his picture perfect view of what a farm should look like: rows of monoculture respectfully separated from each other...ugh.  
In order to accomplish any of my goals, I basically have to sneak things in to my border landscape, I have managed to create a multilayered/ modified veg fruit garden that would neither be recognized as permaculture or traditional. The chickens and ducks live in the garden and I can control where and when they are doing soil building/pest control season to season. I have purchased pawpaw, mulberry and hazelnut to sneak into my narrow landscape border which also contains elderberry, red currant, comfrey, hostas, which I’ve added over the years to the border basics I grew up with: rhododendron, azalea, daffodils, hellebores, day lily, iris, alpine strawberry.
The main tree in this landscape border is a single, well aged, massive alder.  Two large well rotted alder stumps are also in the mix. They all stand in the shadow of a north facing fence line, running east to west.  There is standing water much of the winter and in our small half acre, not much can be done to mitigate this without cost or causing damage ( ie, willows are not possible, but red dogwood has established itself, and I keep it under control as best I can.
Will any of my new hopes and dreams ( hazelnut, mulberry, pawpaw,) withstand wet feet in winter? Can I take advantage of the rotting alder stumps to plant into/ up against?  I understand that the paw paw/ hazel are understory and can take some shade, but I am looking for safe siting advice on these.
The worst condition I am facing is that the neighbours on one corner to the west are negligent and have blackberry and morning glory running rampant over and under the fence. To the southwest corner the neighbours are hyper vigilant weed warriors who killed my plum trees with some sort of landscape toxins in order to deal with the mess they inherited from the same neighbours.  Conclusion there is morning glory root in the ground in my best planting sites.  Do my trees stand a chance of survival against that? Zone 7 Vancouver Island

Hey Jojo,

First rule of permaculture, your well aged, massive alder has a name and it’s name is “Pliny”... Any large distinguished or solitary Alder must be named “Pliny”... “Pliny the Alder”... You can blame the Romans for that rule .

Ok... silliness aside...

You have some inconsiderate neighbors... Let’s try to mitigate that... Can you slope your land towards that toxic neighbor? Perhaps that means building more soil and raising your own land a bit. But if you can slope towards them, then water will wash their toxic stuff right back at them. I have deployed this tactic in many a suburban backyard landscape with very good success.

Regarding your plants not liking wet feet (Hazelnut, Mulberry, and PawPaw all like well drained soil). So... Can you plant them in a bog? Sure, absolutely... Avocado trees love well drained soils and are often planted on poorly drained soil/land by planting them on 1 meter (3 foot) high mounds. And they do very well, as do other trees raised up in a similar manner. I’ve seen trees growing on top of 6’ high (2 meters) hugelkultur mounds (which is destined to settle as it decomposes, but the trees seemed happy at the time)

But let’s consider this “standing water much of the winter”  area for just a moment... You mentioned you had ducks and ducks love ponds. If you dig a small pond in the low spot, and that gives you excavated dirt to help raise the rest of it. Be sure to slope some land towards the pond and you end up with a duck pond that gets filled by nature and allows everything else to stay high and dry (and you get to add water plants... Woo hoo!!!). If you don’t want a pond, then a French drain might be something else to consider (pipe the water to some other place).

That fence line with the blackberry and morning glory sounds like a great spot for a large (very hot) compost pile. Or perhaps the duck pond or water feature of some sort. Perhaps it’s a good spot for a chicken coop or a garden shed or small greenhouse. When life hands you lemons, build infrastructure (or something like that).

Your garden sounds beautiful and very lovely but I’m not able to visualize it very well, so I’m just throwing ideas against the wall and hoping something sticks long enough to inspire you.

As for the rest... It sounds like you are doing what you can, where you can, and how you can... So great job on that! Every piece of land has its own set of rules and as stewards, we are wise to respect them. Fighting against that can be a difficult battle. Your land sounds like it wants a pond or some other way to control the water. That can be as simple as changing a slope or adding one. Regardless, you are doing a great job and hopefully having fun doing it.

I hope something here helps in some way and I wish you the best of luck!