This is part of a new series of blog posts for beginner gardeners. These posts may be a little shorter and more specific in nature.
Many people feel intimidated when they first hear about Permaculture.
There’s so much to learn! Pathways, water capture, biodiversity and tree guilds, even the placement of dams! It’s no wonder that some new gardeners give up on the idea. But Permaculture is a design system, not a PhD thesis, and we need to let go of that pressure to get everything done perfectly. Nature is constantly evolving and changing, and even if you come up with a splendid perfect design, some plants will fail while others thrive, some new fungus or disease will show up, or a freak freeze or heatwave may set you back.
As you embark on the Permaculture journey, take a breath and give yourself permission to not get everything right immediately. Enjoy the process, learn about the plants, and get to know your land. With each failure you will learn a lot.
Bill Mollison, one of the founders of Permaculture said that the problem is the solution.
This old basket is worn out and useless, but the cats love to sit in it. The problem? A crummy old basket. The solution? A crummy old basket for cats.
One thing to remember is that Permaculture design is incremental.
I did not set everything up all at once. It evolved slowly. When I bought my house, the yard was basically grass, with a few ratty holly trees here and there, and a hill covered with ancient and enormous ivy. We spent most of the first year ripping out the ivy, cutting down an ugly Laurel hedge (which had poisonous berries), and getting rid of various invasive species. The neighbors, who had grandchildren living with them, were anxious about the Laurel, and they offered to cut it down for me. They did the work, and I planted a bamboo hedge, which they had been hoping for and loved. We both increased our privacy.
The only things I planted were a few fruit trees and the bamboo hedges. I had brought at least a hundred potted plants from my old garden, but they stayed in pots that first year. We did get a compost pile set up, and we spent a lot of time walking the property and getting to know where the water flows, where it’s dry, where the wind blows the most, and what paths we naturally take as we walk around.
We started a vegetable bed in the second year, bringing in loads of mushroom compost and fallen leaves, and spreading our compost.
And so it went, year by year. One year, an enormous cedar tree fell down: the empty space became our medlar tree guild. The rest of the fallen tree provided wood for our fireplace. When the venerable old walnut tree blew over in a storm, we built our guest cottage, known as the she shed, on the site, and when an aged apple tree got sick and died, we built an herb spiral on top of the stump. We didn’t start with a fabulous and detailed permaculture design.
This herb spiral was built on top of an apple tree stump.
It took me a long time to find the proper spot for this Bleeding Heart plant.
This apple tree blooms in its new location
You shouldn’t be hard on yourself if you end up doing it in a similar fashion.
Here are some things you should do, roughly in the following order:
Figure out where the wettest spots are, where the sun shines, and what the contours are.
These things will determine almost everything else.
Make a list of trees you want, and start planting those.
Remember where the sun is. If you don’t have a large property (in the northern hemisphere), plant your trees on the north side, so you don’t shade out your whole yard. It’s a good idea to plant the trees when it’s cooler and wetter out, if possible. While you’re listing your favorite trees, think about other fruits and veggies that you like to eat (as well as those you don’t like to eat).
Get a harvest.
That means get some food plants in, even if you don’t have a perfect place for them. Containers work well for a lot of them, if necessary. You can plant in a different spot next year, and you can keep adding veggie beds. If you have a ton of lawn, consider sheet mulching it to make your beds (see my blog on sheet mulching 101 here https://nettlesandrosespermaculture.com/2025/05/24/sheet-mulching-101/).
Get a harvest!
Decide what other elements you want.
A chicken or duck coop? A compost heap? A patio? Ponder where you want to put them. It makes sense to have the compost heap further from the house than your herb garden, and it also makes sense to put your chicken coop near the compost heap – that way, when you clean out your chicken coop, you don’t have to walk far to deposit the chicken manure on the compost heap. You can also plant some greens nearby, to grab and give to your chickens.
When you plant your trees, consider making a tree guild for each one.
This is an association of plants around a tree, with each plant contributing to the well being of the others. Have a look at my blog articles on tree guilds. https://nettlesandrosespermaculture.com/2024/06/20/what-makes-a-tree-guild-work-hint-biodiversity-of-relationships-not-just-species/ ,
Here's a graphic of a tree guild, just one sample.
Medlars from my medlar tree, which is planted where there used to be a giant cedar tree.
Don’t forget flowers!
You’ll want to attract pollinators to your garden. They’ll give you a bigger harvest, and they’ll need things to eat. Here’s an article about planting for pollinators: https://nettlesandrosespermaculture.com/2024/09/01/what-to-grow-in-your-garden-for-pollinators/ And there’s nothing frivolous about having beautiful flowers in the garden. We all need some beauty in our lives, and quite a few flowers are edible. I just had some nasturtiums in a salad tonight! I have a few articles about using flowers as food, one on violets: https://nettlesandrosespermaculture.com/2024/04/05/violets-in-permaculture-forage-a-feast-for-the-senses/ , one on elderflowers: https://nettlesandrosespermaculture.com/2022/06/15/the-magic-of-elderflowers/ , and one on conifers: https://nettlesandrosespermaculture.com/2024/02/13/foraging-conifers-an-unexpected-friend/ .
If you let your leeks go to seed, you'll not only get seeds for next year's planting, but you'll also feed pollinators.
Now that you have your trees in, plant the shrubs that you want around them.
These could be currants or blueberries, for example. Include your mulch maker plants (like comfrey), some herbs, some pollinator plants, and pest repellent plants such as southernwood. Chives and onions (especially walking onions) are great pest repellents, and you can eat them. And walking onions are a gift that keeps on giving. They’re basically perennial.
Put the shade tolerant plants on the north side of the tree, and try to include some native plants in your tree guild.
Walking onions repel pests, taste good, and entertain us with their goofyness.
Plant culinary herbs like rosemary and oregano – the bees love them as much as you do.
And don’t forget ground covers around your trees.
I love violets in the shadier areas, and strawberries everywhere possible. My witch hazel tree has a delicious carpet of strawberries all around it. The strawberries serve at least two functions: in addition to being delicious, they choke out the weeds.
Make sure you compost your waste!
You can spread plant detritus and pulled weeds around your plants as mulch. Just make sure you don’t lay a bunch of weed seeds on your beds, or you’ll end up with even more weeds. I don’t worry too much about getting the whole weed out by the root (except for some grasses and thistles); I just pile them on the soil, and eventually they will become soil as they get broken down. This is known as slash mulching.
You can also simply dig your kitchen scraps into the beds, too. A compost heap is great, but you should turn it every now and then.
Mulch around your plants each summer.
The one plant that I don’t mulch as much as others is the pepper. I’ve found that they don’t like a lot of mulch, but that may depend on your climate.
Mulching saves you water and builds soil while it vastly reduces the number of weeds that pop up in your garden.
Explore ways to cook your harvest!
You may just want to eat everything fresh, but consider learning ways to preserve your food. If you get 500 pounds of tomatoes, you will need to get a lot of help eating them, but if you preserve them, you can eat them all year long.
What will you do with all those tomatoes?
As you get more comfortable with the plants and their care, try starting more and more things from seed.
When you trim plants, like currants, gooseberries, blueberries, or jostaberries, for example, use the parts you trimmed off to start new plants.
You can clone just about everything.
I even do this with rose bouquets. Even if only half of the things you try to clone in this way end up surviving, you’ve gotten all those survivors for free! I’ve also been known to do this when out for a walk – if a plant is obstructing the sidewalk, I take a cutting or two and make clones. Once I found a lot of pussywillow cuttings lying on the path in a park – they had just been trimmed – and I rooted them. I now have a huge, lush pussywillow hedge, and the pollinators love it. My mother sent me a bouquet for my birthday, and it had curly willow in it – I stuck the curly willow pieces in the ground, and now I have a huge tree! I’ve also sold a lot of rooted cuttings. Don’t forget that you can do that too!
Start learning to save seeds.
This will save you money and make you feel more empowered. I have an article about seed saving here (link). I recommend you stick to the easy ones at first: peppers and tomatoes are good ones to start with. Just make sure you’re not starting out with hybrid plants, or else you’ll be very disappointed with the harvest you get from those seeds the following year! I enjoy finding seeds on walks and harvesting a few to start plants at home.
I hope that these steps help you get started. My fervent wish is that you enjoy your garden. You may think that if you don’t do it all exactly right, you aren’t saving the environment enough, but just getting some of it right is better than getting spooked and giving up. Focus on all the good things you’re doing, on the bees that show up to pollinate your flowers, on the small animals that find refuge under a bush that you planted, and on the clean healthy food you’re providing for yourself.
I’ve read that replacing half of America’s lawns with native plants would create the equivalent of a 20-million acre park, 9 times bigger than Yellowstone.
As you progress, please remember that if caterpillars eat some of your food, that’s ok. We need to feed the insects too. And don’t forget about your neighbors – the more you share with them, the more likely they are to embark on a similar journey.
You'll have a lovely garden before you know it.
