The idea of designing and building a garden from scratch
can feel pretty daunting,
especially when the only gardens around you are fully established.
So, today I'm going to show you through a relatively young garden
to explore its layout and structure
and get you started on designing and building your own.
This is the home of a friend of mine, Michelle.
You've already planted the fruit trees down there?
Yes. Yeah.
And a few years ago, I worked with her
to design this as a permaculture garden
that could be really functional.
It's almost one year old now,
and it's sustainable and beautiful.
It's about 600 square metres,
which is generous, but a fairly standard suburban block.
If you're planning a new productive garden,
there's lots to think about
before you start getting plants in the ground.
They'll vary a bit from site to site
but there are a few constants.
Water is life, which is lucky,
'cause there's plenty of it around today.
It's also one of the first things you should consider
when you're designing your garden.
This includes researching how much rainfall you get in your region
and how it moves across your landscape.
This property was a steep slope,
so rain was shooting off it,
leaving the top dry and the bottom wet.
So we did some earthworks,
creating some terraces to slow and sink water
deeply and evenly into the soil,
passively irrigating the plants.
To retain the terraces, we went for these gorgeous, large boulders,
which will last forever.
They also double as seating
and provide nifty pockets of soil to plant into,
creating a living wall.
Also, think about putting annual veggie patches
that require more watering and irrigation
closer to the taps, for maximum efficiency.
It's important to work with your garden's existing microclimates.
For example, this house casts solid winter shade
all over this area,
but instead of ignoring the space,
we've planted some deciduous fruit trees and shrubs
which don't need any winter sun at all
and can still flourish in the abundant summer sun.
At the other end of the garden, we have a different extreme -
lots of sun, except not today.
(LAUGHS)
To address this in a relatively quick and efficient way,
we've built this funky pergola here.
We've got some beautiful grape and kiwi vines to grow up and over
to eventually provide some nice summer shade,
while still allowing all that winter sun to stream through
when they drop their leaves.
Now, remember, we started this garden as a clean slate.
We're pretty exposed here to lots of elements,
including some gnarly winds from the south.
To soften these,
we're gonna be planting some nice evergreen natives behind me
and a mixed orchard down below.
This will provide food, beauty, habitat and increased privacy.
A permaculture principle
or, really, a central design principle
for many gardens
is creating spaces and structures that are multi-functional,
meaning they're doing more than one job.
For example, these chickens don't just lay eggs.
They also eat lots of food scraps
and green waste from the garden.
And as their chook run is running along this boundary fence,
they'll stop any weeds creeping in from neighbouring gardens.
Plus, they also create this beautiful deep litter compost,
with the straw absorbing all the poo and rain,
which will eventually go back onto the veggie patch.
And this is not just a seat.
It's also a worm farm.
This is where you can send your kitchen waste
to turn to yummy food for your garden,
simply made out of an old bathtub in a timber frame.
And, of course, no garden is complete
without compost.
Up the back is a large compost bay for bulk green waste,
complete with this handy path to make it easily accessible.
There is some steam coming up there. It's beautiful.
Look at this. Oh, yeah.
Yeah! It's beautiful.
Yeah.
There's also some worm towers in the annual veggies,
where lots of worms like to hang out.
A worm tower is simply a bucket with holes drilled into the sides
so worms can come and go.
It makes sense to compost where you're going to need it most -
in the food garden.
In a well-designed garden, there's no such thing as waste.
Everything is put back into the system,
as every last scrap has value.
Making some time to do some planning
before you start building the garden
is really important.
But it can also be a lot of fun.
So, take some time out,
put down that shovel, pick up your pen and paper,
and let yourself do some dreaming.