home and local food

The avantgardeners, Observer Magazine, 8 April 2007

From flower-powered hit squads sprucing up our city squares on the small hours to the Kew gardeners who thinks like a tree, Lucy Siegle meets five forward-thinking gardeners breaking new ground.

[Actually there were six, and no.5 is:]

PIPPA JOHNS PERMACULTURALIST

What she does Champions a digging-free system to create sustainable environments

‘1 do have one spade,’ confesses Pippa Johns, ‘but I only use it for planting trees: Permaculture is for the most parta spade-free affair, and the little garden that stretches around the her cottage near Lewes has never been dug over. It’s all about maintaining the integrity of the soil, she explains. ‘Preserving soil becomes more important every year. What with erosion and nutrient loss, good soil will soon be like gold dust.’

To create an extensive network of vegetable beds, which keeps the family in winter greens, such as sea beet and Babington leek (which tastes of very strong garlic) during the winter, and all fruit and veg during the summer, Johns spread eight tonnes of municipal Lewes low-nutrient compost over the areas that she wanted to turn into vegetable beds rather than lawn, on top of cardboard saved from her husband’s solar panel business, to kill the grass underneath. She aerated the soil with a fork and then used coppiced chestnut (local, of course) to weave a fence round the beds. Without any digging, the soil and cardboard broke down into vegetable beds.

But permaculture is all about the laid-back, low-maintenance approach; including extensive use of self-seeding plants and perennials. Could this be the most non-interventionist form of horticulture ever? Another core permaculture stipulation is that before designing you need to observe the land for around 12 months, learning which areas get waterlogged, where the sunny areas are, and, for example, where people walk, so you know where paths are needed.

Johns began flirting with permaculture after a period of environmental protesting, including a stint against the Newbury bypass. ‘Afterwards, I felt I wanted to do something more practical, more positive about living sustainably, and that’s when I started to get into permaculture.’ Evidently many of us are beginning to feel the same. The permaculture course she runs has gone from once a year to five a year and even the Permaculture Magazine, previously a deep niche, is now sold through W H Smith. Get for the permaculture revolution.

Try this at home Enrol on a course to learn the basics. See www.permaculture.org.uk. Plan on paper, and follow the steps in the right order. It’s a design process. Leave your spade in the shed – this is a no-digging culture

‘Permaculture is for the most part a spade-free affair, and is all about maintaining the integrity of the soil. ‘Preserving soil becomes more important every year. What with erosion and nutrient loss, good soil will soon be like gold dust’

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