Front Porch Permaculture - ideas to make it work

I am staying with my sister in Suburbia which means my daily walks are not currently taking me to chicken and duck houses, and instead past homes in a 1950's to 70's community which is seeing a lot of upgrading, and oversizing due to its location. That has really got me thinking about how front porch permaculture can grow or discourage community.

What do you all think makes a welcoming front porch?

How do we encourage people to repair past ills?

What makes a front porch a gathering place?

Here are a few of my thoughts:

Coverage  - this will differ based on climate, but what inspires you in your current location?  My 1980 front porch is not covered despite living on the Pacific Wet Coast. If that were its only fault, it would long since have been fixed!

Minimum size length and width? So many are too small for 3 chairs, or the chairs can only face the street. Permaculture can do better!

Furniture - What are your favorite options?

Greenery - A porch could be a wonderful spot for herbs. I am known to plant mini-toms to feed arrivals

A porch swing would be ideal to use the first principal of permaculture: Observation.

If a porch swing is not available just sitting where it might be comfortable.

My front porch is finally on the docket to be upgraded next year. I do not live in Suburbia but compared to where I did live, it is "in town" with neighbors I can see.

For me, my porch is enclosed and while practical, oh my, coupled with the houses size, my first impression on coming here was that it was a rental house. Every rental house I ever saw had an enclosed front porch.

So that is going. I am going to have a open porch, with seat and swings, and while I do not envision sitting out there, it will drastically change the look of the house.

I have a covered front porch meaning that it has a roof over it, but the sides are open.

I have two Adirondack Style chairs on it during the good seasons to be able to sit out there (with my wife) and take in everything around us.

Something that makes a front porch welcoming (something I have to work on) is an eye for accessibility. While we might not all have the ability to install a ramp per-say, we can make sure that the steps have handrails at the least.

I think the classic permies answer "it depends" is the issue here. A thought to consider:

What functions do you want your front porch to perform?

Protection from rain and snow:
      For social reasons
      For mud/debris control
      For shade in the house
Insect or animal control:
      For people's comfort (mosquitoes and flies)
      For domestic animals (pets who need to stay in a safe space)
      For wild animals (keep raccoons and squirrels out of the house)        
Protected storage area:
      Seasonal or frequent use items (toys, snow shovels, yard tools)
      Weather protected power outlets      
Social functions:
      Seating space
      Eating space
      Outdoor season extension
      Mud/coat room for visitors
      Kid hang out space
Aesthetic functions:
      Add to the beauty of the house
      Structural locations to attach seasonal decor
      Lighting to emphasize the house
Work space:
      Food preprocessing (snap beans, pick out debris)
      Small messy projects
      Kid art (which may be a large messy project!)

Those are what I come up with this morning, there are definitely more. If you have no need for any function, then it doesn't need to be considered. If you have a strong need for some, your design focuses around that.
Example: porch that is to be primarily used for Mud/coat room for visitors, Small messy projects, and For domestic animals  will not look anything like one that is designed for Add to the beauty of the house, For shade in the house, and Seating space.

Consider the reality of your life, and think what functions a porch needs for YOU.

Timothy Norton wrote:I have a covered front porch meaning that it has a roof over it, but the sides are open.

I have two Adirondack Style chairs on it during the good seasons to be able to sit out there (with my wife) and take in everything around us.

Something that makes a front porch welcoming (something I have to work on) is an eye for accessibility. While we might not all have the ability to install a ramp per-say, we can make sure that the steps have handrails at the least.

You would have an “open porch” as by definition a porch has a roof. An enclosed porch would have sides and windows in it, but might not be insulated. Which is what I have. A four season porch is one that has insulation, heat and is finished and really is just an extra room for the house.

I thought about turning my porch into the new kitchen as it’s on the front of the house and big, but  would have been a bear to get waterlines to, as well as keeping them from freezing in winter. We do keep our bunnies out there, but bring them inside when the temp reaches 15 degrees.

I am a huge fan of using what you have, but also like to keep things architecturally right. Having a Victorian home, an open porch would look better. As for room, we are empty nesters and live in a six bedroom, 4 bath, 2 kitchen house, 3 story home so we don’t need the extra room.

I have a tiny front stoop, not even a porch. maybe 3.5' square with two steps. Concrete. It is falling apart.
My vision is a porch the full length of the house, which really isn't that long; house is only 735 sf, and the whole thing is covered but with clear roofing materials so that light shines in. The front of my house faces north and so is wonderful for my tropical house plants in the summer: really bright but out of direct sunlight.

Wide enough to have a table and chairs on one side of the front door and some lounging chairs on the other. Lots of folks walk in my neighborhood so it's nice to wave to them from the porch.

Since I don't have a seating area on the porch, I made a little one under the redbud tree with a crappy rug on the ground (soon to be part of the ground) and a 2-top dinette. I sit there and have coffee in the mornings or eat lunch there while taking a break from working in the yard.

As an old country boy, I like a front porch that is wide enough to sit and watch the surrounding countryside. With a roof that extends far enough to sit and watch the rain and storms as they approach. I like to watch the weather; but, I do not want to get wet. A long enough swing to nap in with a pillow and blanket.

I live in the Netherlands; 'porches' are very rare in this country (in the past they were not there at all). Rules and regulations for building something like a porch did only allow it at the back side, not the street side. It's only since a few years those rules have changed a little.
I live in a neighbourhood of 'social rent' housing. Apartment buildings and terraced houses are all owned by a housing corporation. When living in such a house you are not allowed to build anything, because you're only a renter. But I am lucky ... I live in a ground-floor apartment. Apartments of the floor above me have a 'gallery'. In summer I often sit in the shade under that gallery as if it was my porch. But that is at the backside. People are passing over my head (I mean: over the gallery) and they don't see me.
Only on nice spring days I sit in my front yard. In summer it's too hot there (it's the South-East side, sun all morning and part of the afternoon). And when it's rainy there's no roof.

For social contacts my allotment plot is much better. There I'm surrounded by other gardeners (some of them interested in permaculture principles) and the large path in the middle of the allotments is alongside my plot. And there are no houses, only garden sheds.

Inge writes,

For social contacts my allotment plot is much better. There I'm surrounded by other gardeners (some of them interested in permaculture principles) and the large path in the middle of the allotments is alongside my plot.

Inge's description mirrors my situation. This house doesn’t face the street. The fruit trees face the street and the side of the house is behind those trees.
Like Inge's allotment happening, the evolution of the front sitting spaces was never planned. One week when I was away, I invited some gardening friends to feel free to pick and enjoy the ripe plums while I was gone. Before leaving, I brought out random chairs, loungers, tables and stuff and left them in a pile before driving off. When I returned, the furniture was “arranged” around the eaves of the house and under the trees: exactly where people went to take a break from the hot sun. I pretty much left the furniture where it was and made a random front “patio” with old bricks and stones where people chose to sit. It has become a place where walkers take a break and neighbors pick fruit. I love sitting out there with a cool drink after working. The place has an enchanting and inviting vibe that I never designed; the happy gathering place happened and I just nurtured it along.

I'm with Pearl - it depends.

One of the big factors is where one is located - if a rural setting, then it's all about personal use / preference and possibly entertaining visitors.  In which case, you do what suits you.

We are in the inner city in a 2.5 storey house built in 1903 with an open front patio (and we added one in the rear as well).  If we think back to when this house was built, few people used the automobile, so there would likely have been neighbours walking by.  Nowadays, most houses on our block have garages and/or parking spaces in the back...people go to their cars to go to work / shopping / leisure activities / wherever and fewer people are walking.  We have an elementary school across the street, so most traffic is related to comings and goings from there.  The main exception I see to neighbours out walking on the sidewalk is those who are out walking their dogs...as often as not, I'm meeting them when I'm walking my dog rather than on the front porch.

Here, we have turned into back door people except for getting the mail.  The front porch is in serious need of a rebuild along with stairs and railings.  To deal with that, one of the first things I need to do is to get rid of a couple of the big objects that have been sitting on the porch for far too many months in an attempt to keep them out of the weather somewhat until they can be disposed of.  

I wonder if we were better able to spend more time on the front porch if we might not have more conversations with passers-by.  Our front yard is somewhat unique with regular reduction in grass (won't eliminate so long as we have a dog) and a fair amount of old straw mulch.  I do sometimes see folks taking a hard look when I look out the window, but those times I'm not in a good position to work toward community building.  

It probably doesn't help that neighbours one one side have been going through separation, so there's generally nobody there (have been paying for lawn / snow removal service for a couple years now).  On the other side, the main floor is used as a short term rental (like AirBnB, but I'm not sure the owner is using that particular service), so we don't always have people to see there.

My wife wants to hang clear curtains to enclosed part of our north facing porch.
Her eventual aim is to make it into a 3 season room with its own rocket stove.
She pictures a place for plant starts and a comfy cob bench.

I am down with it, but I honestly don't know if it would do much to promote permaculture.
I'm sure the neighbors will hate it, they hate anything that's different and the clear curtains seem tacky, even to me.

Better irrigation for the street side raspberries is on my list of things to do to promote gardening in our neighborhood.
More variety of berries available for little hands is how I seek to draw children into appreciation of gardening.
Most years heavy mulch means my perineal plants do fine, but  last summer was too dry for them, despite all the mulch.

I love sizable front porches and someday if we ever can own a house I hope we have one.  My porch growing up was big enough for hanging a hammock, which we loved swinging in, it was made from an old fish net.  Down the street 2 houses down though was where the gathering porch was, after dinner there were three, then four, then five, then eight.  Eventually the menfolk would split off and move down to the driveway and the womenfolk (and little me) would stay up on the porch.  I loved talking and listening and observing them because I would be a woman someday and I wanted to know how it was done, such happy memories.  I'd love to be that house someday where multi-generational social action occurs.

Burt Crews
That sounds like my kind of porch

I thought I'd review some of my questions I started with:

1. What do you all think makes a welcoming front porch?
OK, I get it, many of you permies live in the middle of No-where's-ville for a reason. However, that may be a reason for making a front porch into a lovely entertainment space, so you don't feel like you have to invite someone inside whom you'd prefer not to!
Maybe the question should have been, "How do you make a good front porch for introverts?"

Seriously, this is in a forum about making cities better places. Isolationism might be good for the economy because people spend more money shopping instead of playing cards and drinking tea with their neighbors on their upcycled front porch, but I think we need to make cities into small enclaves where people at least know each other's names and look out for each other.

2. How do we encourage people to repair past ills?
I think Pearl Sutton's list above is an excellent starting point. I can't fix something without some good ideas of what would improve it.

3. What makes a front porch a gathering place?
Things that would encourage me to want to linger on a porch would be shelter, good lighting, and comfy chairs. Plants would help too. Several of the fully enclosed porches I met in my past seemed dark and damp. I'd be aiming to avoid that! Having a nice view of gardens and birds wouldn't hurt either, but that's another topic - the neighborhood I'm visiting has *way* too much grass in my opinion!

4. Minimum size length and width? I would like to say that the minimum size that is useful would be 8 ft by 8 ft. That would fit a small table and 3 chairs. However most garden chairs are larger than house chairs, so if at all possible, I'd start at 10 ft by 10 ft. I fully approve of people going higher so it can be a genuine working space for semi-outdoor tasks and mentioned by many people above.

Long and narrow is for people who don't want to talk to each other! People need to be able to sit at an angle to each other for conversations to be easier.

Larger and squarer is also easier for adding planters that can actually grow things. Personally, I love having fresh herbs within easy reach and many herbs are happy to have flowers as companions.

I saw at least one *very* large front porch that was added to the east side of a house with a huge porch swing, and a second smaller porch with a smaller porch swing - so I hear the votes for porch swings and suggest we all make the effort! My son would have adored it!

I think it goes beyond the porch.  I've had a porch on my 1850's house always; when I added an arbor near the sidewalk, it signaled that people were welcome to come through and say hello!  I built my first permaculture garden abutting the front sidewalk and driveway.  I didn't want people or dogs to come into the garden proper, stepping on plants like strawberries, which are my groundcover, but mainly, I put it there because my frontage is over 120', which seemed like too much of a distance for people to traverse to get to the driveway and up to the porch.  The arbor cuts the expanse in half.  Since putting it there, people do come over to where I sit on the porch and visit, where they never had before, even when it was just grass out there!  I remember having one little girl come through the pink rose-covered arbor and state that she felt like a princess!  I think of that every time I use it now!

I think you have to make it a welcoming walkway leading up to the porch for people to feel like they dare enter; a porch is part of the house, and they might feel like they are intruding or that they should have a bigger purpose other than just saying hello.

I am a country boy. So, my porch is more for my comfort and my family than a gathering place for neighbors, We should add to this discussion where you live. You city folks without porches should move away from all the people who do not stop regardless of how hard you work on it. Come out of the big cities and into the country were people wave, not just their middle finger, and stop and talk.

I have a resource that would help you answer your questions. I recently purchased and read through many times already and have put to use. It would be too much info to write out the ideas from the book in a post and also be aware the book fluctuates in price quite a bit. If you are patient, you can get a good deal but it sounds like you may have limited time. The book is written in such a way that you pick and choose through different short sections (253 short sections) and the layout becomes personalized to you. That is also a reason I can't post the ideas in the book, they become your specific desires as you read through and move from one section to another.

I have to say it is one of the most interesting and practical books I have ever read. My wife looked at the cover when I got it and after seeing me not able to put it down, she told me she thought it sounded like one of the most boring book she has ever seen. It is quite the opposite, for me.

https://permies.com/t/110164/Pattern-Language-Christopher-Alexander

Here is the main permies thread on Mr Alexander: https://permies.com/t/110164/Pattern-Language-Christopher-Alexander
He's ideas show up in many threads. His thoughts are timeless and very much belong in the "permaculture toolbox"!

Our UK house doesn't have a porch or space for a porch, just a tiny covered area of about 2 feet in front of the main door.

Our Bulgarian house has a front porch, but it's not welcoming or easy to access from the street. Our house is set back quite a way from the road, plus the step risers are so tall even someone 6' would have problems getting up them, little me really struggles! It is accessible from inside the house, but is too hot to use in summer, plus I don't want to disturb the swallows who nest there.  I do want to build a summer kitchen in the yard, with a covered seating area that could play the more social role a porch does.  Two possible locations, one behind the house and not visible from the street, the other to the side of the house, just off the path from the gate to the house.  The backyard one would be better for making a mess where no one can see it when I'm canning. But the side one is closer to the indoor kitchen and will be nicer and more welcoming to neighbours.

US suburbia. We have a nice covered porch on the front, but since there is nothing much to see from it, we don't use it much. It makes a nice place for delivery drivers to drop off packages.

The best use I ever got out of it was when I put a honeybee swarm trap there, and caught a swarm. Somehow, an active beehive next to the front door discourages salesmen!