Hello Permies from the Northwest!
I wanted to get some opinions on possibilities for a project I've been presented with. My family has been living in a second story condo for the last three years and it's been an interesting challenge gardening and practicing sustainability in our limited space. Recently, our homeowner's association has been hiring landscapers to come "take care" of our bark dust, small lawn, and bushes. They've been spraying pesticides and herbicides all along the sides of the building and under the bushes where our cat liked to go lay in the hot days. Behind our building where there had been a think layer of moss which was providing habitat for little salamanders and all kinds of benign bug life, not to mention holding thousands of gallons of water in the soil under the evergreen behind our window -- and just being beautiful to look at -- they raked it all up under the umbrella of "debris," leaving a scared sterilized expanse of dry dirt.
Now, I talked with one of the HOA members who is a little more opened minded about my dis-satisfaction with the job the landscapers did, and told him I thought we could do the job better ourselves with some good ground cover species and some time on the part of some home-owners (we of course would volunteer with much of the help). He sounded like he liked the idea, and so now I have the opportunity to come up with some permaculture alternatives to petro-chemical and destructive practices we're currently relying on.
The problems we're facing which we would like to address with a change in the landscape are:
~ Ground-cover: right now this consists of ivy and bark-dust. Both are a nuisance, and they're providing habitat for flees, creating dust which clings to the buildings and gets in eyes and causes slivers in pets and kid's feet, and ivy is of course is taking over the raked back areas.
~ Erosion & runoff/landslide prevention: The whole property is lined with a steep hill along the East and North ends. Water runs off the hill and pools on several parts of the property, plus the bonus risk of loosing the whole hillside if it looses too much vegetation.
~ Fire danger: the reason sited for the need to rake up all the water retaining mulch was that much of it was dry and the pine needles and leaf litter were creating a fire hazard. I debate the validity to that claim, however I feel like it would also be mute if the mulch was staying moist from ground cover. This being said, we can't have anything too close to the buildings themselves, and nothing the residence would perceive as a fire danger.
~ Pests: the bark dust has made great flee territory, and the standing water grants us big plumes of mosquitoes in the spring. I've never seen it myself but I hear lemon balm, lavender, and lemon grass are some good mosquito and flee repelers as well as sweet smelling and nice to look at -- not to mention aroma-therapeutic.
~ People: Maybe the biggest problem we face are the people. This is not a progressive community of gardeners by a long shot. We've been hassled about our porch and (though they don't enforce it) reminded that the rule for porches is: 1 chair, 1 potted plant, 1 shelf. Most of our neighbor will probably not be interested in the environmental reprocussions of the landscaping techniques, and anything that sounds like extra work, or hippy-crap, will probably get thrown out. I've got to figure out how to present this as no-nonsense practical stuff, what we obviously should be doing because it is genuinely the most advantageous.
I'm really looking forward to some brainstorming! I don't stand to profit anything from this project other than keeping my family's home healthy and poison free, while hopefully taking care of our pests and making it prettier and healthier for everyone. This could be a cool opportunity to introduce some more stuffy-minded people to the practical solutions permaculture has to offer.
Thanks for the help and I hope you're all having a fantastic weekend!
