I’d love any guidance in designing my yard 😊

Good evening!!!

I’m heading into my second year gardening, but new to permaculture. I’d love ANY guidance with a rough idea to my yard; as well as any resources to help me on my journey as well.

I’m in zone 7b in Georgia. My back yard is south facing and about 1/4-1/3 an acre. There is a significant slope from the east to the west. I’m leveling it with wood chips, but I’m open to sculpting it if necessary.

My yard is currently very shaded, but I’m hoping to cut all the trees down in my yard to make room for edible trees— they’re currently sweet gum and pines for the most part. It also gets pretty shaded from the large trees in the neighbors’ yards.

I’ve got quail and rabbits; I can have chickens. I may get some this spring if I can build a coop and run by then.

I really want to I corporate lots of fruit and nut trees. My dream is for my kids to be able go eat out of my back yard as much as possible!!!

With the trees around you, you'll need to look for trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants that can handle shade. It's going to limit your choices and push toward the "soft fruit", things like currant, gooseberry and others that will tolerate some shade. Permaculture begins with observation, and that never stops. You observe, make some changes and observe more.
As permaculture designers and practitioners, we try to work with what a site has rather than trying to impose upon it what we would like it to have.

A big part of that is choosing our plants to match our conditions, rather than trying to change conditions to suit our chosen plants.

When we had our place in the Piney Woods of East Texas, I had as many if not more trees than you do.

We had a wonderful vegetable garden.

I would not remove those trees if that was my place.

Observe where your sun is in the morning and plant based on that.

I would plant things that you can eat now rather than later while the fruit and nut trees reach the fruiting stage.

Perennial Vegetable makes for a great forest gardens:

https://permies.com/f/384/perennial-vegetables

I know this is a bit unorthodox, but would you consider concentrating on animals? Your plot ids nicely fenced already.
I think trying to plant in shade is a waste of resources. Ripening requires sun. If you have areas with enough midday sun (11  - 16) you can plant those. But under a tree the plants will lack nutrients, water and light.

Jade,

It’s your yard and these are just my thoughts so take what you want.

I would be hesitant to cut down all those trees.  Maybe you could cut down a couple strategically located trees just to let light in, but I would miss all that wonderful shade in the summer.

Maybe you could make raised bed gardens which take up much less space but produce so heavily that they compare with much larger gardens.  I only plant in raised bed gardens and (when I don’t totally neglect weeding like I did last year) they are very productive.

If you want help getting all that garden bedding, I have a technique that can effortlessly give you volumes of highly fertile bedding.

I hope this helps.

Eric

Kaarina Kreus wrote:I know this is a bit unorthodox, but would you consider concentrating on animals? Your plot ids nicely fenced already.
I think trying to plant in shade is a waste of resources. Ripening requires sun. If you have areas with enough midday sun (11  - 16) you can plant those. But under a tree the plants will lack nutrients, water and light.

Ripening requires sun. Yet somehow there’s a whole range of plants that have full life cycles in the shade. It’s always important to choose the right plants for the circumstances.
Hostas thrive in partial shade and don’t in full sun. Fuki is another, needs protection from the sun.

Working in wooded areas you have to learn what thrives in shade and on the edges, where they get partial sun, but not the six hours a day for conventional annual veggies.

Nature grows in sun and shade. So can we.