{"id":988,"date":"2012-02-08T18:08:38","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T01:08:38","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2016-03-25T11:46:31","modified_gmt":"2016-03-25T17:46:31","slug":"chayas-review-gaias-garden-by-toby-hemenway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/articles\/chayas-review-gaias-garden-by-toby-hemenway\/","title":{"rendered":"Chaya\u2019s Review: Gaia\u2019s Garden by Toby Hemenway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note:\u00a0 We do not sell Gaia’s Garden<\/span>.\u00a0 We thoroughly enjoyed the book and would like to share our opinion of it with you as well as some basic Permaculture principles that you can find within its’ pages.\u00a0 If you would like to read the book for yourself, you can find it here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Gaia's<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is Permaculture? Hemenway barely catches his breath when he tackles this question, and I\u2019m rather glad he did in his typical systematic way because I\u2019m asked this constantly in different forms\u2014\u201cWhat makes it different than organic gardening?\u201d, \u201cIsn\u2019t that gardening-for-hippies?\u201d.\u00a0 Just last week I was asked, \u201cIf my mom went to a Permaculture meeting, would she just think it was another gardening club?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cPermanent Culture\u201d and \u201cPermanent Agriculture\u201d have joined to mean an interconnected ecosystem that is rich, diverse, and healthy by stacking the functions of the soil, water, and animal life.\u00a0 Every piece of the garden impacts the other living organisms in that garden and you plan accordingly.\u00a0 For instance, one plant attracts a pesky insect, another attracts the bird that dines on them.\u00a0 You have now created a relationship between two otherwise unrelated plants.\u00a0 Perhaps one of those plants is also known to improve the nitrogen content of the soil, but another needs strong nitrogen to flourish.\u00a0\u00a0 What that means is that the end goal isn\u2019t just food or floral output.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t just about attracting birds or butterflies, nor is it just about preventing soil erosion or even just about rich soil. It\u2019s about all of it\u2014and using all of the pieces simultaneously to improve the quality of the other pieces.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s more of a gardening paradigm.\u00a0 Organic gardening refers more to what is not done to the plants; it does not necessarily encompass the sets of processes by which those plants are grown (i.e., irrigation, recycling, composting, monoculture vs. polyculture, or harvesting practices).\u00a0 Organic principles are excellent and Permaculture utilizes those, but it does not stop there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And as for your mother, would she think it was another gardening club?\u00a0 I would hope she\u2019d bring her experience to the table for others and walk away with a few solutions, a few \u201cnever-thought-of-that\u201d moments, and a few new friends.\u00a0 She would likely see some distinct differences in approach.<\/p>\n

\"Gardening<\/p>\n

This book opened my eyes to both the beauty and purpose to ecological design.\u00a0 It is not about color coordinating flowers.\u00a0 It\u2019s about creating a living, multifunctional, thriving ecosystem.\u00a0 One of Hemenway\u2019s stronger suggestions is to think of your garden in terms of zones.\u00a0 Start right out your door!\u00a0 Zone 1 is where you spend the most time, and so it needs to be logical for you; what do you need most from the garden?\u00a0 This zone is also for those high maintenance plants, like things that will need to be covered and uncovered during those frosty nights, or the herbs that are easily choked out by weeds.\u00a0 If this is out your door, you are far more likely to pick a weed here, or notice yellowing leaves in time to apply much needed water. These are your most utilized plants (if you eat tomatoes everyday in the summer, for instance) and the plants that are the neediest to grow. The zones going out from there should require less care, eventually leading to the \u201cfood forest\u201d zone that only requires minimal maintenance.\u00a0 In this way, you can increase your garden production without enslaving yourself to the garden.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hemenway also focuses heavily upon multifunctionalism, and it\u2019s this emphasis that brings the best charts to this book!\u00a0 You can see the many functions of many, many plants in order to plan your garden for optimal performance.\u00a0 He speaks of \u201cstacking functions\u201d; if every carefully chosen plant provides multiple things to the garden, and multiple things in the garden provide each one of those functions, you will not have a \u201cweak link\u201d.\u00a0 No plant only does one thing and yet many of us grew up gardening that way.\u00a0 For instance I have always loved lavender and used to grow it for the beauty in the garden and as a cut bouquet.\u00a0 Apart from beauty and scent, what role does this single plant play?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A chart on page 278 shows this to grow well in my current zone (yay!) and shows that it\u2019s an evergreen shrub (meaning that it retains foliage all year around and is a woody perennial with multiple stems arising from the base) and it does prefer full sun.\u00a0 Okay, so most gardening books would have told me as much.\u00a0 But continuing on I can now see the multiple functions of lavender: It does have aesthetic uses (as I mentioned),\u00a0 and it\u2019s a wonderfully plant for human medicinal use.<\/p>\n

\"Bee<\/p>\n

It attracts many beneficial insects, it\u2019s a windbreak species, and it\u2019s also a hedgerow species.<\/p>\n

\"Lavender<\/p>\n

So perhaps I can plant it next to species that need pollinating insects, perhaps I can plant that tender partial-shade plant next to it that would benefit from the wind break, and it would make a wonderful border to separate garden areas.\u00a0 This is what garden design and \u201cstacking functions\u201d is all about.\u00a0 Now, \u201cButterfly Bush\u201d has the same windbreak and insectary functions, and would look quite nice interplanted.\u00a0 Why repeat myself? Because if something were to happen to one plant<\/a>, I have a backup plan!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If a chicken is something that only outputs eggs, then it is hard to understand Permaculture.\u00a0 But if you look at a chicken as something that eats insects, and that my garden is an insect nursery.<\/p>\n

\"Chicken<\/p>\n

Consider further that if I require the outputs of both the chicken and the garden\u2014now you can see that stacking the functions is beneficial for every living thing involved.\u00a0 My backyard (whether I realize it or not) is a complex ecosystem.\u00a0 If I address it as such, start stacking the functions of all the components involved, now I am practicing Permaculture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have spent much of my life fighting the natural succession of plant life; I never understood the greater principles at work.\u00a0 Think of plant succession as linear.\u00a0 Bare earth, followed by fast-growing weeds and grasses.<\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/p>\n

These would then be replaced by taller perennial grasses and bushes.\u00a0 Animal and bird life really move in at this stage, bringing life, insect management, and fertilizer.\u00a0 Ultimately, grass lands are teenagers striving for the \u201cadulthood\u201d of forest.\u00a0 This explains all of the thousands of oak saplings I\u2019ve pulled from between my peony buses!\u00a0 Those \u201cweeds\u201d are part of the process of healing barren earth.\u00a0 The roots penetrate hard ground, the weeds die back and compost, and there is now food for a whole host of other living creatures.\u00a0 Left alone that oak would start producing leaf litter<\/a> by the metric ton adding precious organic matter<\/a> to the soil.\u00a0 How do we get this process to work for us?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hemenway does a great job\u2014better than I\u2014of explaining these principles and giving practical application in this Permaculture primer.\u00a0 The photos were inspirational.\u00a0 I have seen mature permacultured gardens firsthand and so I know the wisdom of this methodology.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know quite where to begin myself, though, until Gaia\u2019s garden.\u00a0 I now have a starting point.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Design, water constraints and solutions, extending the growing seasons, utilizing microclimates, building humus-rich soil, balancing the insect and animal life, developing nurse plant relationships, how to interplant for maximum production, and \u201cguild building\u201d\u2014this book was not like the other gardening books I have read in the past.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Negatives<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For those of us who look at this amazing design and see a Designer, we often have to swallow the meat and spit out the bones of the modern evolutionary clich\u00e9.\u00a0 I have heard Hemenway lecture<\/a> with tremendous passion about Permaculture in which he makes great conclusions based on evolutionary assumptions.\u00a0 I would depart with Hemenway in his assumptions, but his conclusions for a positive way forward are largely correct. Moreover Hemenway approaches Permaculture with a heavy hand in science (which I love), so his conclusions are even more convincing.\u00a0 This book does reflect his evolutionary paradigm but is not heavy-handed with it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am naive enough that I did not know where the title came from\u2014\u201cwho\u2019s Gaia?\u201d\u00a0 According to some traditions, she is the goddess of earth<\/a>.\u00a0 Apart from the title of the book, there is no other mention of her.\u00a0 I did see a pagan paradigm come through in the smallest of ways, such as the personification of earth as \u201cmother\u201d.\u00a0 Again, those of us who worship the Creator and not the creation can agree with the large strokes of the conclusions but disagree with the philosophical underpinnings.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I could say that this book, listening to Paul Wheaton\u2019s podcasts, along with the documentary \u201cBack to Eden\u201d have shifted my gardening approach 180 degrees.\u00a0 I think that if you have the least bit of curiosity towards Permaculture, or if you have watched \u201cBack to Eden\u201d but do not know where to start, this book will put feet to that vision!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo credits:<\/p>\n

Gardening pottery\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n

Lavender as insectary<\/a><\/p>\n

Lavender as hedge row<\/a><\/p>\n

Chicken in garden<\/a><\/p>\n

Prairie grass<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note:\u00a0 We do not sell Gaia’s Garden.\u00a0 We thoroughly enjoyed the book and would like to share our opinion of it with you as well as some basic Permaculture principles that you can find within its’ pages.\u00a0 If you would like to read the book for yourself, you can find it here.   What is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[20,230],"tags":[406,584,585],"yst_prominent_words":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Fvks-fW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=988"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}