patterns in design

Today, I watched the "understanding and applying patterns" video lecture from Bill Mollison's PDC. I would love to know how others have incorporated patterning into their permaculture designs.

There are a few terms in permaculture that to me are hard to understand.  Maybe it is just me not understanding.

It took me a long time to understand a Food Forest, especially when people were talking about putting one in their backyard in the city.

I finally figured out that it is using the different layers like in a Forest Garden or at least that is what helped me to understand the concept.

So what are Permaculture Patterns?

I feel like I understand the concept of Permaculture Design. To me, it is designing something, like a garden.

I also feel that when you look at a piece of land you are seeing patterns, the way the trees are placed, where rocks are placed, etc.

Am I on the right path?  Are these patterns? I see a pattern as something like this:


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And maybe this:


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These look like Permaculture Designs:


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Sorry, I could not answer your question though I hope you can answer mine.  

Are these examples correct or are they all patterns or designs?

Ann, it sounds like you are puzzling over the same things I am. Here are some of my notes from the Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton videos and book:

- Patterns are events of form.
- We're surrounded by the natural patterns of the universe, from micro to macro
- Design that follows natural patterns is productive, design that doesn't, isn't.
- there are very few pattern form types but infinite variations
- Partial list of pattern forms:
   - waves such as water waves and sand dune ripples
   - spirals - snail shells, whirlpools, sunflower seeds in the flower head
   - lobes - reefs, lichens
   - branches - rives and tributaries, tree branches or roots
   - nets - cracks in mud or skin, honeycombs
   - scatters - algae, lichen on rocks
   - cloud forms - clouds or tree crowns
   - tessellations - turtle shells
   - Fibonacci sequences - found in the number of sunflower seeds in a flower head or number of pine seeds in a pine cone.

So, some simple examples of using pattern in design would be an herb spiral, making swales that follow land contours, making an herb garden with branching pathways, or circular greywater mulch pits. I guess, contrast with this with how most farming and gardening is done - squares, rectangles, and rows of straight lines, none of which is found in nature!

Where I'm stumped, is how to use patterns to design my property, or even transform my garden. I get the concept of patterns, but haven't found a good step-by-step tutorial so that I can look at my property and decide which pattern form to use where.  

Here are a couple of Geoff Lawton videos about pattern and design.

Pattern Understanding


Working with Natural Patterns

Leigh Tate wrote:Ann, it sounds like you are puzzling over the same things I am.

Yes, that last book promotion first got me interested in what patterns are.

Leigh said, "Here are some of my notes from the Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton videos and book:

- Patterns are events of form.
- We're surrounded by the natural patterns of the universe, from micro to macro
- Design that follows natural patterns is productive, design that doesn't, isn't.
- there are very few pattern form types but infinite variations

Yes, these were very helpful for me to understand patterns.  I forgot to watch the videos this morning, so I will try again tomorrow.

Leigh said,
- Partial list of pattern forms:
   - waves such as water waves and sand dune ripples
   - spirals - snail shells, whirlpools, sunflower seeds in the flower head
   - lobes - reefs, lichens
   - branches - rives and tributaries, tree branches or roots
   - nets - cracks in mud or skin, honeycombs
   - scatters - algae, lichen on rocks
   - cloud forms - clouds or tree crowns
   - tessellations - turtle shells
   - Fibonacci sequences - found in the number of sunflower seeds in a flower head or number of pine seeds in a pine cone.

Now that I see your list and look at the permaculture designs like the ones I posted I can see some of the patterns. Especially waves, spirals,  and clouds. Branches remind me of when a tree is pruned to make a shape as with esparlier.

Leigh said, "So, some simple examples of using pattern in design would be an herb spiral, making swales that follow land contours, making an herb garden with branching pathways, or circular greywater mulch pits. I guess, contrast with this with how most farming and gardening is done - squares, rectangles, and rows of straight lines, none of which is found in nature!

Where I'm stumped, is how to use patterns to design my property, or even transform my garden. I get the concept of patterns, but haven't found a good step-by-step tutorial so that I can look at my property and decide which pattern form to use where.  

I can easily understand spiral as with herb spirals and your other explanations make sense  Like you I can't figure out how I would use these on my land.  Before the grass took over I could see areas that to me looked like they had been landscaped when I know they had not been.

I feel it is much easier when working with a blank slate.  My gardens are already established and my only livestock is the wildlife.

Anne Miller wrote:I feel it is much easier when working with a blank slate.  My gardens are already established and my only livestock is the wildlife.

I agree. Having so many elements already in place seems to make it more challenging. I'm watching videos from both Bill Mollison's PDC and also Geoff Lawton's 2013 PDC, and their examples all seem to be starting with raw land. On top of that, our set-up is backwards! Ideally, house and zones 1 and 2 should be lower than the water source. Mine are on the highest part of the property, with my zone 5 at the bottom of a hill. I hope your place is more cooperative, Anne!

I'll take a crack at some of the questions by sharing a portion of a permaculture design I have had in my back pocket for a certain landscape.  It's still in the "observe and interact" phase of land development, no major earthworks, accessways, etc.  Just lots of time watching and thinking, and hundreds of trial pioneer and fruit tree plantings, because, as the wise Chinese proverb goes:

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now."

The largest pattern you see is obviously the spiral.  So, why a spiral other than the beauty of it?  

Well, each pattern in nature solves a problem, right?  Patterns resolve tension.  In my opinion, a spiral solves the problem of incremental growth from a central point, with a minimized perimeter while maximizing protection, and coming in and going out, like that of a snail's shell.  The snail can grow, and remain protected, without having to toss its shell and get a new one like the hermit crab.  A circle maximizes area with minimal perimeter, and a spiral is similar, but with the ability to expand via it's endpoint.  

In this application, the spiral would allow me to start at zone 0, and slowly, over time, radiate outward, adding raised beds, enclosing pasture, expanding the irrigation line, fencing, etc. along the way.  It's a pattern of gradual growth with a compact footprint.

Another pattern in my design are waves.  Waves are high/low over a distance pattern.  

In this case, my "waves" are two-fold:
   1) Alternating persimmons (or apple trees) with indigo-bush nitrogen fixers.  You could think of the N2-fixer as the "high" or energy source, and the fruit trees as a "low" or energy sink.  This pulse transverses the spiral of course.  In this case a person would walk along the spiral to harvest on their way in or out.
   2) My raised beds are likewise pulsed outward along the mulch path. This is to (theoretically) help break up pest transfer compared to a large single patch, while allowing for cut and carry / chop and drop.  I like to imagine the electrical engineer's symbol for a resistor, for instance, which is wave-shaped.  The green between the beds would allow for a Ruth Stout like mulch source for the future raised beds.  You could also consider my garden pattern to be lobes.  Lobes maximize surface area for nutrient transfer along a path in a tight space.  Aka, keyhole gardens.

Another pattern is the parabola.  Parabolas are for deflecting, or concentrating energy, right?  Our ears are goofy parabolas for collecting sound.  Whereas dunes are parabolas which are relatively stable in deflecting wind over and around a terrain.  

In my design, there are two parabolas:
   1) I want to deflect or block any adverse light and sound sector coming from the north east.  
   2) But I also want to keep things warm in winter near zone 0 via a sun trap.  Aaaand I also want to maximize planting potential and microclimates.  

So I am contemplating a Hügelkultur berm or two NE of zone 0 to achieve all this.  That said, I'm still on the fence with Hügel techniques, however, because honestly, I haven't ever seen simple pictures of a beautiful, orderly, diverse mound culture planting.  I've been fortunate to see a lot of beautiful gardens in my life, and I want to be impressed!  Surely someone has a good link they can share to a beautiful Hügel?

Another pattern in my design (not shown) is Streamlines  More specifically, a straight line.  

What?! A straight line in permaculture?!  *gasp*  permaculturalists frequently tout how great squiggly paths and curves are, but streamlines are an important pattern too.  The quickest way from A to B is a straight path.  The most stable place for paths of course are on ridges or on terraced contour, but I haven't drawn that in.  Anyway, lobes (like in our small intestine) are for maximized resistance and exchange or transfer from a path at one end leaving another, but straight lines are for getting stuff done quick: getting in or out.  Our trachea is mostly straight so we can breath, right?  Our esophagus is mostly straight so we can eat yummy healthy garden food quickly, right?

I am a complete novice here in that I haven't taken a PDC, so these are just my opinions from watching videos like Geoff's in the past, and reading the PADM, etc.  My design probably has all sorts of problems with it that I haven't thought of yet.  But my unsolicited advice to newer folks struggling with pattern would probably be:

   1) Gain familiarity with that list of patterns, and look for them everywhere in nature. "Ah, a honey comb!"
   2) Ask yourself what problem is being solved, or what tension or boundary stresses are present that the pattern is evolving from.  "Ah, the bees are trying to maximize strength over an area, but minimize weight with minimal materials!*" or "the bees have several cells for their brood, and want to pack them in tightly as possible"
   3) Hold the patterns in your mind's back pocket for a rainy day, and if a problem comes up on your homestead or design site, the pattern might intuitively come to mind.  "Ah, if I offset or stagger my plantings in a hexagonal manner, then I can fit more trees in compared with rectangular planting!"

Random factoid: Modern composite aircraft structural skins, like those in search and rescue helicopters, are honeycomb patterned. Yay biomimicry!

George, what a pretty design! Very well thought out. Thank you for explaining the patterns and rationale behind it. Do you have a projected starting date to make it a reality? Or are you still working on some fine tuning on the drawing board?

Leigh Tate wrote:George, what a pretty design! Very well thought out. Thank you for explaining the patterns and rationale behind it.

Thank you for the compliments.  Honestly, its surprising that there is no "patterns" sub-forum already.

Mollison, PaDM, pg 70. wrote:“The pattern is design, and design is the subject of permaculture.”

Perhaps at some point we all can craft a series of wikis, one for each pattern.  A template may consist of:

-Pattern name;
-Form or Shape (a doodle);
-List of a few examples found in nature (plus pretty pictures);
-Interpretations of boundary-conditions or qualities resulting in the pattern, or what problem or tensions are being resolved in its design.
-Pattern application examples:

Biomimicry in technology

Farmstead design application

Cultural or organizational use

Do you have a projected starting date to make it a reality? Or are you still working on some fine tuning on the drawing board?

We started plantings for this design portion over two years ago, actually, and here is a post on 10 things I learned during the planting process for the broader space.  The lessons are from both a practical, tree planting perspective, as well as a more allegorical, organizational leadership perspective.

Here's one way I'm trying to improve our homestead design with pattern. The patterns of swales are created as curving lines according to the contour of the land. It occurred to me that my grazing paddocks could follow the same pattern.

This is roughly how my current paddocks look.

a plan I made several years ago when researching soil building in different usage areas

My paddocks are all squares and triangle shapes. Recently, I've taken a closer look at the contour of the land.

contour lines are every 4 feet. yellow X's indicate the highest points

To work it out, I roughly superimposed the contour lines over my Gimp made map.

lines are approximately in place

Now, I'm looking at reshaping the paddocks along contour. Thanks to watching Bill Mollison's PDC videos, this makes more sense to me.

with proposed paddock fences

Eventually, we will add swales along the contours as well.

Hexagon Orchard
I like to plant in a hexagon grid pattern. Which on at the edge is more like a stream pattern (boxy wave). With the hexagon, I get to pack the most in a confined spaced

Spiral Herbs?
I know that the less water herbs have the more aromatic they are. And a quick draining raised bed vs a sunken swale help to replicate that. Rice on the other hand I would put in a sunken wet area. But why we do a spiral for the elevated herb hill? We could have done concentric circles, but that would have soaked the water. A spiral will shed the water downhill smoothly unlike say a star that would have created ravines. Would the inverse of a herb spiral be a crater garden, should we always pair them together,  a hill/mound with a depression?

What about walkways/roadways, what patterns should we use?

I like this design