Nature really doesn’t like to cooperate with your plans. My revelation today is that the invasive grass and weeds, gophers, hungry deer, weather and other natural things that get in your way and waste massive amounts of time and energy don’t care that you’re trying to do things right. Nature is just a free-for-all of everybody battling for survival, and the toughest things merrily reproduce and do their things while ruining all the nice stuff you’ve planted.
Also, there’s a reason permacultures almost universally look like shit. Because nature is messy, and unless you have a LOT of time, money and help, or you start off with a neatly groomed yard in a suburb with no invasive weeds or “critters” anywhere in the area and create your garden by taking out one small piece of turf at a time. Oh, and it helps tremendously if you live in a place with good soil, regular rain, sunlight that’s not too harsh and at least several useful and edible native species that would love to grow in your soil and climate. You can use those as an easy foundation for your planting while you fill in with things that are more difficult to grow. Otherwise, everything is tough to grow, which is why you so rarely hear about successful permaculture in areas like where I live (north edge of the Great Basin), where there has never been year-round human habitation. There’s almost nothing useful or edible that grows her naturally.
I’ve been at this for four long years, and ready to throw in the towel. Unless you have an entire village of people or army of groundskeepers like Martha Stewart, you’re likely to end up with something that looks and functions really half-assed. Somehow the perma gurus get huge native trees to grow from tiny seedlings in the desert with nothing more than a couple of applications of cow poop and watering once a week. Entire ecosystems are miraculously rejuvenated from dead hillsides with nothing but some free seedlings, saved seed, a bit of manure, some rocks and a bit of elbow grease. I have yet to see any permaculturists discuss what to do when the weeds and non-native grasses, destructive rodents and other pests invade, when the soil is too crappy and sandy to grow anything useful unless it’s amended year after year after year with fantastic quantities of compost, or when veggies bolt and go to seed too quickly to be eaten but scatter all over and come up everywhere in subsequent years. Apparently these are problems unique to me as nobody else ever seems to mention themI’m trying to create a compromise between an overgrown, out-of-control foraging free-for-all that most permacultures are, and something nice enough that you can feel proud when the gardening club comes over. I’m seeing that it takes a LONG time and a LOT more work than one person can do, at least when starting from scratch.My advice? Plant a conventional lawn, and remove it piece by piece as you install your perma plants. Keep your design really simple and focus on small areas each season. Also, think carefully about placement of things (like, I got a piece of equipment INTO this space, but can I get it OUT again when it needs repair? I’ve read a lot of permit blogs and watched a lot of backyard permaculture videos and the design mistakes many people make leave me cringing (like, planting a jujube tree near the foundation of a home 😖). So, there’s a LOT of bad advice out there! Good luck with your pursuits, though, and just know that when you hear people bragging about how fantastic and cheap and easy their perma came together, “other people’s results may not be the same as performance for YOU”!
