Here is a video of our backyard.  More to come!

Our Sustainable Backyard is open to the public. Geoff Hall and Kamala Bennett of Sentient Landscape led a workshop that began in late summer 2006, where we created the foundation for our Sustainable Backyard. Marin Community Foundation and Hal Brown of the Marin County Board of Supervisors provided funding for this project.

Self-guided walking tours will be available soon and we will host film nights in the backyard as well as other best backyard practices classes and workshops.

We are always looking for permaculture enthusiasts to help show off this garden and educate the public.

Join our Docent program.
Contact Pam Hartwell-Herrero.

More photos from the class taken by Michael Dunne at http://photo.archangeles.com/

Our Sustainable Backyard was re-created using permaculture techniques and practices.

This included:

• Sheet mulching to reduce weeds and to build soil

• Creating a water reclamation system that will allow all the water on the site to be absorbed into the landscape instead of adding to the flood system

• Plantings chosen to fulfill a purpose: food, native, habitat, medicine, or plant guilds.

• Created composting bins: worm, vegetative hot pile and brushpile.

• Our natural buliding project was the construction and sculpting of a cob bench-it is an amazing medium that we will be working with more.

Very special thanks to those class members:

Toni Velazquez, Michele Schwartz, Dennis McSweeny, Eugenia Ives, Amy Waterhouse, Michael Dunne, Andreia Bilhar Vargas, Hilary Smith, Dana Pratt and Kevin Bose a volunteer who helped coordinate the class.

What is Permaculture?

A good place to start is Bill Mollison; he is the author of An Introduction to Permaculture and Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual. These are widely considered the bibles of permaculture. He defines permaculture as a design practice that seeks to create mutually beneficial relationships between human environments and natural ecosystems thereby establishing systems that can permanently sustain societies and the environments that support them.

Basic tenants include:

• Observation and learning from nature and your site.

• Stacking functions of each element or plant.

• Zones that dictate use in each area of the garden.

• Connections between all of the elements that benefit each other.

The objective for our space is to demonstrate how easy it can be to increase bio-diversity of plants and animals, increase self-reliance, restore healthy water cycle, grow food, build naturally, divert waste, and make your own compost.

To learn more visit the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas where Penny Livingston and James Satrk are our local Permaculture gurus.

Permaculture Planting

When we thought about what plants we wanted in our backyard, we knew we wanted native species for drought tolerance and to expand our native green belt. We knew habitat for wildlife would be good and we thought about growing food and medicine. We learned that in permaculture there is a design that incorporates all of these in the same way that nature does, but with a bit of help from us. Multi layered plantings that include canopy trees, small trees, vines, shrubs, herbs, ground covers and root level.

We also learned about plant families and the relationships between plants. Many plants in this garden are ‘nitrogen fixing’ which means they make nitrogen in the soil available for use by the plants around them, thereby fertilizing their neighbors. How cool is that? We have created a Food Forest that has many plants working together to serve many functions. We will have ongoing workshops that celebrate our interconnection to the plant world.

Remember the FLOOD of 2006!

We can prevent that from happening again, one house at a time. We did ours, now you do yours. Where does the rain that falls on your property go? The answer is most likely straight into the drains that go straight to the creeks. We have created a system that:

• Routes all of the roof water toward our landscape.

• Saves the water for use in the garden during the dry season.

• Provides a system that will slowly absorb water.

• Creates habitat for moisture-loving creatures.

• Creates microclimates to grow more diverse range of plants.

How did we do that??

• Our gutters funnel rain into our 1000-gallon water tank.

• The tank overflows into our Permanent or lined pond. (Which provides wildlife habitat, food source and beauty, as well as passive cooling)

• The pond overflows into our swales or vernal ponds

We also chose to conserve water by mulching heavily with wood chips from a local tree service and installing a drip irrigation system.

Look inside our Worm bin!

Worms turn our waste into our benefit. Worm castings (i.e. worm poo) can be used directly to fertilize houseplants or garden plants and it can be added to seed starting mix or other soil amendments. Castings break up heavy soils and add essential nutrients. Worm tea is also a great way to use castings.

Worms love to eat your kitchen scraps.

Good things: kitchen vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings, paper towel, newspaper (torn into strips)

Bad things: NO meat or animal products, no dairy, and no oil!!!

 

Feel free to add to our worm bin

Please take note of which side of the bin has more stuff in it and add your contribution to that side and cover with a little torn up paper if you can. One side may look very rich and earthy; it is in the final stages of composting and should not have new additions. Worms are so cuddly, please handle with care. Our interns and volunteers have the job of moving things around. Just make your donation on top and we will take care of the rest. If something seems out of sorts in our box call 269-0721.

What can you make out of dirt, sand and straw?

Our Cob bench! The foundation was concrete taken from a strange sidewalk in the front of the building-when it is reused it is called urbanite, like some sort of stone found in urban areas. There is plenty for the taking at the dump. We put a ring of Sonoma fieldstone around that and started to mix the cob. Clay filled soil from where our pond was dug, sand, rice straw from Fairfax Lumber and water is mixed with your bare feet. The sand and stone came from American Soil in San Rafael and the straw from Fairfax Lumber. We made it in two days with the help of Jay Ma, Just Young, and Devin Slevin. Thanks guys!

Our Herb spiral serves many functions

It is a beautiful pattern taken from nature. It takes a flat planting space and increases the amount of plants that can fit by putting them on a mound; which also makes harvesting the herbs easy. The rocks create microclimates for plants that want more warmth or shade. It gave us something to do with the soil that was removed for the pond. Our spiral provided us with a very natural looking structure for our fountain.

Who do we want to create habitat for?

People, fish, birds, worms, bugs, reptiles… We like people and want them to be comfortable so we provide them with food, shade, a place to sit, and something pretty to look at or learn about. Fish need water and food. Bees need flowers and a house. Birds need shelter and seeds or bugs to eat. Reptiles like piles of broken pottery and stone to hide under. Why create habitat? Good bugs and reptiles and birds eat any bad bugs that might come our way, and then we don’t have to worry so much about pest control. And the pollinators make fruit-yum! It’s part Integrated Pest Management, part just to create wildlife and plant diversity, and part to make our plants bear fruit.

Brushpile Composting

Turn branches into compost or planting medium. When we first cleared this site we had two large piles of green waste higher than the fence line. We have turned them into two brushpiles and a green waste pile. These brush piles are made up of woody material that has been covered with straw. They have become a great medium for planting root vegetables- like potatoes. Overtime we will harvest potatoes and compost from the bottom and add branches from tree pruning to the top.

Green Waste Composting

The green waste pile deals with most ongoing weeds. We know we have rodents that visit our space so we give most of our food scraps to the wormbin. The larger branches go to the brushpiles and the weeds come here. Any compost pile works best when it is moist but not wet, and has a good combination of green and brown. This pile is turned occasionally and compost is harvested from the bottom. Please feel free to add some weeds here.

Vernal Ponds or Swales are Unlined, Topographical, Seasonal Water Features

They are used in this garden to deal with our water runoff-please note the trench with a large tube in it to deal with water overflow from our roof and pond. They also create habitat by offering moist places for reptiles to hide. And they create a microclimate that can grow plants that like wet feet and tolerate winter water. In other applications swale can be used to prevent erosion and runoff on hillsides.