Permaculture gardening, where to start at home

Permaculture gets talked about like it's a whole philosophy you have to sign up to, and that puts people off before they've started, which is a shame, because underneath the word it's a fairly ordinary set of habits about not fighting your own garden. Build the soil, put things where you'll actually walk past them, keep the ground covered, and let the insects do some of the pest control for you.

I'll say the honest bit first, because a lot of what gets written about this promises a garden that looks after itself. It won't. What it will do is take a chunk of the repeat work out, and that's worth having on its own.

Start with the soil, because everything else follows it

Compost is the whole game here. Kitchen scraps and lawn clippings and anything dry and brown out of the garden all break down into something that holds water and feeds the soil life, and you don't need special gear to do it. An open heap in a corner, or four star pickets and some mesh in a square, works perfectly well, and the only thing that really matters is that you mix wet green material with dry brown material and turn it now and then so it gets air.

Mulch is the other half of it. A good layer of organic mulch over the bare ground slows evaporation right down, keeps weed seed from getting light, and rots down into the soil over a season so the bed is better next year than it was this year. Straw, lucerne and coarse bark all work, and the thickness matters more than which one you pick.

Put plants where they help each other

Companion planting is the part of permaculture people usually hear about first. A lot of the specific pairings are folklore, and the ones that hold up do so for a plain reason. Strong smelling herbs make it harder for a pest to find its host plant by scent. Small flowers feed the tiny wasps and hoverflies whose grubs eat aphids. Tall plants shade short ones through the hottest part of the day, which here is the afternoon, because west facing is what bakes.

Perennials earn their spot too. Rosemary, rhubarb and a berry bush go in once and keep producing, so the ground is never bare and you're not raising seedlings for everything every season.

Keep the waste in the garden

Almost everything a garden produces can go back into it. Prunings get chopped up and used as mulch. Leaves go in the heap. Spent crops get cut off at ground level rather than pulled, so the roots stay in and rot in place, which is a no dig idea and it works.

Water is the other one worth thinking about. Roof water off a shed into a drum gives you something to water seedlings with that hasn't come off the mains, and even a small amount is useful in a dry summer.

Work with the insects instead of against them

Ladybirds and lacewings and the small parasitic wasps are doing pest control for you already, and what they need is flowers to feed on as adults. Alyssum, marigolds and anything else with small open flowers will keep them around. Birds take a lot of grubs as well, and a shallow dish of water in the shade is usually all it takes to get them coming in.

Make it low effort on purpose

Zoning sounds grand and it just means putting the things you pick from daily closest to the back door. Herbs and salad greens near the house. Fruit trees and the perennial stuff out the far end where you'll get to them weekly rather than daily. It sounds obvious until you notice how many herb gardens are planted at the bottom of the block and never get picked.

Raised beds and no dig both fit here for the same reason, which is that they cut the soil work down. No dig is worth reading about properly before you commit to it though, because it doesn't fix compaction and it won't hold back running grasses like couch or kikuyu.

Where to start if you only do one thing

Start a compost heap and mulch one bed. That's it. Those two habits do most of the work that the rest of it is built on, and you can add the flowers and the water drum and the zoning later once the soil has started to change.

Shop related products

• Neutrog Whoflungdung Mulch 20kg. A fine composted mulch that feeds the soil while it covers it.
• Easy Wetta Garden Mulch 50L. Mulch treated so water soaks through it instead of running off.
• Naturally Good Mushroom Compost 25L. Bagged compost for getting a new bed started before the heap is ready.
• D.T. Brown Alyssum, 750 seed pack. Small flowers to feed the insects doing your pest control.

Did you know we also stock lucerne mulch, pea straw, garden stakes, jute and sisal twine and polypropylene trellis panels in the shop. Not all of it makes it onto the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf, or have a wander through the garden centre next time you're in.

More from the Garden Haven blog

• How to compost kitchen scraps for a veggie garden
• How to get good bugs into the garden and keep pests down
• Which plants bring pollinators into a garden here

My own version of permaculture is mostly that I got tired of weeding, so if you want to talk through where to start, come and find me in the shop.

Candeece