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Keyhole Bed Origin?

 
pollinator
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Does anyone know the origin of the keyhole bed concept?  It appears in the Designer's Manual  (1988), in a drawing called "Gangamma's Mandala" but there is apparently no mention of it in "Permaculture One" (1978).  There is a design of a similar shape in a 1982 article by Susun Weed called a c*** garden.   Trying to see if either author borrowed the idea from the other, or from somewhere or someone else?
 
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The keyhole garden design as I learned it came out of the need for easier gardening for families impacted by the AIDS epidemic in Lesotho. Maybe you could verify with FAO.org if they actually did originate the idea or if the FAO modified a previous garden style.
https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/wa_workshop/docs/FSNL_Fact_sheet_Keyhole_gardens__2010_.pdf
 
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Bill Mollison talks about it in his Permaculture, A Designers’ Manual, as the Gangamma’s Mandala [p.269, picture p. 274]. He took inspiration from Taiwan and the Philippines to design this polycultural garden. Linda Woodrow’s book, The Permaculture Home Garden, seems to give a more detailed approach to this concept, adapted to tempered climates.



At the bottom under Sources

Bill Mollison, Permaculture, A Designers’s Manual, Tahari, 1997



https://www.appropedia.org/Mandala_garden

Erica Wisner talks about this here:

https://permies.com/t/33928/Permaculture-Designers-Manual-Chapter-HUMID#265743

And this might prove to be interesting:

https://mandalas.life/tag/boyakonda-gangamma/
 
pollinator
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If you search for something like "ancient garden drawings" you get a lot of pics going back hundreds of years that include circular elements with a little path into the middle. Although I think a lot of these are for formal landscape architecture type gardens, not vegetable gardens. Here is a collection of such illustrations: https://www.pinterest.com/nidzalina/ancient-garden-drawings/

Since the keyhole garden is a sensible, intuitive design that uses the most basic of shapes, I'm going to guess that keyhole gardens have been independently "invented" by numerous gardeners since the dawn of agriculture.
 
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