Hi! I am a new member to Permies.com and this is my first post. I am looking for the origin of this attached image of a beautiful mandala keyhole garden. I want to build it or something like it, and before starting from scratch, I want to know if anyone has done this before, if there are instructions, helpful hints etc. I welcome and would be very grateful for any and all advice.
I think with slight modifications to the instructions on this site http://garden.menoyot.com/?p=83 you could easily achieve that design. If you can get a copy of Gaia's Garden, he touches on the reasoning that goes into planning and building keyhole mandalas.
Scroll down just a little, first the writer explains key holes and then goes into assembling them into the mandala.
It depends on your resources and site, but if you plan on double digging you could cut out the shape of your keyhole garden and then cut the interior sod into manageable shovel sized pieces and then turn them over with a garden fork. Alternatively you could deep mulch the area into the mandala shape. If so be sure not to "lasagna" layer but to instead create a diverse patchy mulch that will favor soil micro-climates. Personal experience shows the latter to be less strenuous but a combination may yield the best results.
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