Water Bowl by Moira Crossman In Zen Garden

Want a peaceful sanctuary at home? One that incorporates edible and medicinal plants? Here a sunken courtyard for relaxing at the front of the house and vegetable beds, glasshouse, chickens, berries and fruits out the back surrounding a sleep out. The Zen garden theme was used throughout with edible plant forms, colour and combinations used to give a informal but balanced feeling.

“We are so stoked with the plan. I especially like how you were able to get the straight lines and the curves as well – i know the squareness of it was kind of challenging. Very blessed thanks.”

“Front is beautiful now and when trees and garden grow will be exquisite. We love your design.”

With exquisite detailing, and using recycled stone and timber, the installation of the front garden was managed by the owner in Winter 2016. We sourced the plants and worked together on planting Spring 2016

Tea Camelia in Zen Garden. Local stone slabs and Macrocarpa seating

Zen Garden Sunken Courtyard

Water Bowl by Moira Crossman

Pink Maple with Pimelia & Hebe

Edible Zen Garden Planting Plan

Making the pathway

Before PHOTO

Edible Zen Garden Back Yard – Yet to be developed

We were commissioned in 2016 create a Permaculture Masterplan for Kowhai Grove, a project run by the Malcam Trust in Dunedin. Annika Korsten is directing the project, primarily as a base for student of the Hands On program that she runs, which introduces 16-24 year olds to farm and horticulture work. Annika envisages other groups getting involved with specific aspects of the project as it develops – contact her if you want to get involved!

Permaculture teacher Peta Hudson fascilitated gathering insights from previous program participants and we pulled this together with Annika’s ambitious vision for a thriving diverse organic horticulture centre.

Annika Korsten – Kowhai Grove, Taieri Plains, Otago

The area to be developed into an intensive organic market garden

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A highly productive diverse permaculture orchard was called for on three sides of this new build in Tarras, Central Otago. We worked closely with the exact contours of the site to lay out orchard rows to fit the landscape while providing many functional solutions. Water runoff from the drive run may be fed into them for re-charging soil water. The linear beds are easy to mow along, provide space for planting support species for nitrogen fixing, accumulation of minerals, producing mulch and feeding beneficial insects.

Planting is zoned with summer fruits close to the house and Walnuts, chestnuts and Oaks further away. A clearing is created in the nut area for picnics. Rows are designed to ripen sequentially for ease of harvesting and to aid post harvest management. Kowhai and other natives are used alongside Italian Alder in the shelter planting. Nitrogen fixing Elaeagnus are integrated within the orchard.

The masterplan shows how the contour rows serve to screen the road and lead you from the house towards the old existing fruit trees.

The orchard site before planting, looking dry in high summer.

Contour swales are shaped in autumn.

Swales are finetuned by hand at planting time.

All trees are staked and trained at planting.

A curve of hazel nut trees form the back of the nut orchard picnic area.

Overview of the planted orchard.

Meanwhile over the other side of the house on a steep dry bank we installed swales and planted olives and berry fruits.

Olives planted in the swale.

We pruned these beautiful old fruit trees to improve fruit quality.

Blossom out at the end of the day.

Winter 2018 fruit & nut tree rows after a pruning and training session. Elaeagnus shrub in the foreground is included to increase shelter in the orchard, provide winter structure and mulch material from its trimmings

The Orchard Trees on Contour are becoming visible in this 2019 Aerial Photo

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Keyhole shaped raised vegetable beds and herbs are placed close to the kitchen in this steep city garden. Ornamental plantings are inspired by wildflower meadows and are beautiful and brilliant for bees and insects too.

Planting was completed  September 2016 so we look forward to the plants filling in. In early 2015  we completed a full section concept plan for the property and constructed the courtyard, gardens and orchard over 2015-16.

The garden is pretty special, with stone walls, mortise and tenon redwood pergola, corten steel steps, macro keyhole vegetable beds, herbs, ornamental garsses and a micro orchard. The owners were very sad to unexpectedly have to leave “The number one item on our list of reasons to stay was the wonderful garden you built for us, and which we have enjoyed mightily, particularly for the past 3 summers.” Their real estate agents like it too:

Vegetable and Herb Beds: Before (Left) and After (Right). We created these macrocara raised beds in keyhole shapes that fit into the hillside and allow easy all around access to the beds. They also give maximum garden bed area in a small space. Planted as soon as they were completed in November they have been very productive in their first summer.

Here ornamental grasses combine with herbs, softening the front of the raised vegetable beds.

The path to the glasshouse.

Echinacea is an exquisite North American medicinal prairie plant, it combines beautifully with ornamental grasses and is loved by bees and butterflies.

A Redwood & Macrocapa pergola with a built in bench seat provides a sense of enclosure and screening from the street.

Chokeberry – delicious berries and beautiful autumn colour

Sweeping sleeper steps between new stone walls provide a private entrance to the new courtyard. (photo at completion)

Native Rainbow grass and meadow flowers at the house entry – photo one year after planting

A bright and naturalistic meadow garden makes for a welcoming street frontage. Native rainbow grass is combined with rudbeckia, chocolate cosmos, red-hot pokers and anise hyssop, providing food and habitat for bees and birds.

Our Concept Planting Plan

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This dunedin family has a long term vision for their small city garden: to set in place strong foundations for a abundant and enjoyable landscape that is long lasting and resilient.

The resulting design that we completed in 2013 for the whole section (both hard landscaping and a planting plan) includes a native garden for birds, a courtyard surrounded by herbs, a sturdy glasshouse and vegetable gardens integrated with fruit trees.

This project is a good example of the benefits of a staged installation where instead of having to get everything done at once we have been able to:

• Plant in the best seasons
• Utilise economical and ecological weed removal strategies such as: temporary weed matting to kill off weedy areas and weed piles & use biodegradable weed barriers under garden beds
• install as budget allows
• adapt plans as we get to know the site and as the site context evolves

Resilient City Garden Landscape Design – 2013

BEFORE – Slippery, access to the back gardens and sleep out

BEFORE – Sloping grass and rusting glasshouse

BEFORE – A sunny area with good microclimate

Winter 2014 we started intstallation of the garden. To enhance a narrow and neglected but sunny side of the house we created a wide spaced pergola that will support three varieties of grapes. Also enclosing the narrow walk are summer and autumn raspberries. A central path and glass house went in first as good access was needed to the back section and these also act to define the garden spaces around them.

Grape pergola constructed using mortise and tenon wooden pegged joinery by Man Tamang

Three varieties of grapes will grow over the pergola and down onto the sunny wall for easy picking

Grape & Raspberry alley – 2016

The new glasshouse awaits its glass, the paths a finishing layer of self binding lime chip and the gardens, seeds and seedlings…

Beautiful, local, durable macrocapa edging is used throughout. Macrocapa will not contaminate the sourounding soil where food plants will be grown

Weedmatting on the soil surface for one year to kill weeds

In spring 2016 we installed terraces on the sunny side of the main house for kitchen herbs and vegetables. We installed a retractable clothes line with recycled paving from on-site. Areas infested with couch weed were mulched with a biodegradable weed barrier (newspaper) and composted and mulched. We planted what we could at this time, more will be planted in winter.

• Lemon, Feijoa, Lavender, Rainbow grass & Verbena for bees were planted on the sunny bank.
• Uni – Berry, Chokeberry, Salaal Berry, Japanese Ginger, Rhubarb, Perennial Rocket, Lemon Balm, Lovage, Strawberries, Dwarf Comfrey & Feverfew were planted in the shade of the crab apple tree.

This Elm was a long time family favourite. But too big for its space, shading the house and proposed garden it had to go. It as sensitively removed by Onmi Tree and milled for a kitchen table and for garden bed edging

Unique curved Elm half rounds were milled on site by Jelte from Omni Tree for use as terracing

BEFORE – Terrace Garden

Terrace beds before planting

Elm half round terrace garden beds and seating – Utilising on site resources for unique and beautiful results

Path mulching – newspaper and sacking under bark chip, a biodegradable weed barrier and path stabiliser

Newspaper weed barrier used under vegetable beds, saving on digging and weed removal

Planted in 2010 as part of the Dunedin Fringe festival events this living tree sculpture can be experienced during opening hours of Gallery on Blueskin in Waitati, be in quick, it will never be the same again.

In November 2014 at the Waitati Market the trees were successfully woven, we look forward to what happens next.

Thanks to Eveline Mimpen and others who spontaneously joined in the weaving

We are planting a new orchard at Habitate Farm this winter – August 2014

The orchard utilises systems design based on beneficial features of natural woodland ecosystems, to create a productive orchard that produced its own fertility and is climate and pest resilient. It shares many features of food forest design but utilises structured pattern design for ease of management.

It will contain around 25 fruit trees and 20 companion trees and shrubs in an area of around 100m2.

The Layout is of four rows running north south.

Row 1 is a permanent raspberry row from which fruit and divisions will be harvested.

Row 2 is a mixed fruit tree row with support trees, shrubs and herbs

Row 3 is a row of support trees, shrubs and herbs which will be pruned for mulch and nitrogen release to the rows either side

Row 4 is a mixed fruit tree row with support trees, shrubs and herbs

The land is flat, silty river flats. Our climate is Coastal temperate where winters are mild and summers are cooled by coastal breezes. Our median summer air temperature is 14 C and our median winter air temperature is around 6 C. Our annual growing degree days (Base 10 C) are around 450. Median frost free period is 250 days. We receive around 900mm of rain fairly well spread throughout the year. So for fruit growing our limiting factor is summer heat. Our best crops come from temperate berries, apples (a huge diversity of), pears and plums.

The layout and permaculture systems design for this orchard are experimental but have strong and diverse production goals – it has to be viable as a prodcutive element of our farm.

The orchard aims to:

• Produce a range of certified organic fruit for gate and direct sales – it must be quick to crop
• Trial 25+ new varieties (credit to Kristina Hill for variety suggestions and trees). Trialling of: fruit tastiness, disease resistance and suitability to climate. The best of these will find their way into the Habitate – Heritage Fruits Nursery Catalogue and into our local Permaculture Landscape Designs
• Trial fruit tree training techniques, where branches are trained down to horizontal from the beginning, to induce fruiting. One of which will be the commercial orchard techniques used by Stefan Sobkowiak in his film: The Permaculture Orchard : Beyond Organic http://www.permacultureorchard.com/en/the-film/
• A percentage of the trees (possibly every second tree to leave a 4m in row spacing) may be sold and transplanted as 3-5 year old trees, to create space or if our lease on the land ends
• Produce eggs through the rotation of a chicken flock through the orchard – the chickens are an essential part of the maintenance and fertility system of the orchard.
• Trial two methods of orchard establishment (see below)
• Experiment with the question of whether the orchard can produce its own woody organic matter for feeding the silty soil of the site, by planting a central spine of mulch trees within the orchard.
• The design and layout is to enhance the landscape of Habitate farm, the Holistic Orchard will form an edible woodland edge to the intensive organic market garden. Providing a weed barrier and beneficial insect habitat.

Establishment and Management Systems Design

• The management design of the orchard is entwined with aesthetic goals. For example: The supporting nitrogen fixing shrubs and trees planted with the orchard for mulch material and to release nitrogen and carbon via their root systems, will be trimmed, coppiced and pollarded to achieve this. This pruning maintenance is an opportunity to utilise and reference appropriate garden styles to add to the aesthetic appeal of the orchard. I am inspired by English cloud pruned hedges and the clipped shrubs of both Japanese and rural Italian gardens.
• Two orchard establishment techniques are being employed side by side:
• Rows 1 and 2 will be established using weedmat to kill off the existing grass for the first year and will then be planted with a greater degree and diversity of herbaceous support species.
• Rows 3 and 4 will be established with the existing grass sward intact, by planting the crop trees, and the support species into circles of grubbed off grass and then by using a rotation of chicken grazing and rough mulching of weeds and prunings, and seed scattering to convert the ecosystem to dominate the grass and create a woodland type soil ecology.

Species

Cropping: Raspberries, Apples, Pears, Peaches

Support / Mulch Trees: Alder (Alnus cordata), Tree Medic, Elderberry

Support / Mulch Shrubs: Elaeagnus ebbingii

Support / Mulch Herbs: Comfrey (Symphytum x Uplandicum and S. Ibericum), Cardoon, Sweet Cicely, Lovage, Feverfew, Nasturtium

Want to get involved?  We will have further work days on the orchard as it evolves.

Orchard Planting day – 13/8/14

We had some cold South West winds but the day warmed up to allow us to eat lunch outside on the cottage deck.

There was a lot of great discussion and inputs of ideas to the orchard also.

Habitate Farm is an opportunity to have a go at putting into action all of our visions of rich living soils and diverse integrated plantings.

Marking out the two meter spacing for the fruit trees, to the left is the organic market garden

Twelve of us planted 22 fruit trees, 8 raspberry shrubs, 22 support species trees and shrubs, 39 chunky Russian Comfrey divisions, and 39 Dwarf Comfrey plants. And had a long and delicious lunch!

The low end of day sun blesses the new orchard. We also had beautiful little pure black Piwakawaka flitting around us during the planting. I think the birds are going to appreciate this orchard too.

The main entry path to these enthusiastic and playful food growers home plows straight through the best growing area on the property. In this design a combination of beautiful ‘welcome home’ gardens, structural and functional evergreen shrubs are employed to keep the entry a pleasure to arrive home to while also offering glimpses of the delicious fresh food growing in raised beds close behind.

Beauty, aesthetics, outdoor living spaces and yes even lawns are important aspects of creating successful permacuture gardens. Because the more time we spend outside enjoying our gardens the more we will also use and harvest from the edible plantings.

A moveable chicken fence system was settled on, allowing rotation of the chickens through orchard and berry areas, for benefit of both. Chickens will provide maintenance, fertility and eggs, while tilling areas of garden in which some of their own food will be grown seasonally.

and don’t forget to include the clothes line and the kids trampoline!

These were just some of the features that I recently helped a busy young family work into an edible landscape plan for their very steep six hundred square metre section in Port Chalmers.

The final layout integrated and clustered features using permaculture design principles for low maintenance and maximum diversity and yield. The vegetable garden, glass house and chickens, for example, are clustered around the yoga lawn in a funky sun ray pattern.

Three hand drawn concept+ designs resulted: A planting Plan, Hard Landscape Layout and a colour area theme  sketch.

A community food forest is sprouting in South Dunedin. In December 2014 Peta Hudson and Jason Ross tutored a Food Forest Design workshop at the school site. Local participants contributed their ideas in the form of designs for the food forest after learning about the possibilities for the area.

I took these ideas and brought them together into a layout and planting strategy design for the food forest. Planting is planned for winter 2014.

The Bathgate Park Community Garden and Food Forest Project has been driven by Grow South, well done team!

Taste Nature Gardens & Habitate Nursery collaborate on the development of this exciting Permaculture landscape in Waitati, Otago. Owned by the visionaries Mark & Rayna Dickson, this land is both the home of our Habitate Heritage Fruits Nursery and is also their diverse, integrated and intensive small scale market garden that supplies their Organic Shop, Taste Nature, in High Street, Dunedin.

It is an exciting project where passionate people come together to grow high quality nursery plants, organic vegetables, herbs and fruits. It is a team effort, where innovative growing systems are being constantly discussed and improved.

We grow organically and utilise permaculture design for layout and systems design. Biodynamics is used for soil health. Chickens play a major role, being rotated through the gardens using electronet fencing, to clear and fertilise garden beds.

We have our main nursery products (Berries and berry plants, pip fruit and pip fruit trees) certified as organically grown by Oganic Farm NZ – Producer Number OFNZ – 1035

We hold an Open Day mid March each year, which is advertised on our Articles Page and at Taste Nature. Give us a bell if you would like to be on our mailing list for this.

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Before (Autumn 2014)

To keep the maintenance low and the soil fertility up for this couple in Waikauaiti, chickens are playing a key role in our garden design. They have a deep litter scratching yard where they will process weeds etc into compost for the garden. During the summer they will graze in the orchard and in the winter, with the change of a couple of small doors, they will run under the berry fruit bushes in the berry cage. This integrated design has many benefits. The chickens get fresh ground, weeds and bugs to eat, and they help with maintenance by scratching and grazing.

In winter 2014 we supplied the fruit trees from our Heritage Fruits Nursery and completed the planting of them, right down to the companion plants.

John (pointing, the garden owner), describing to our planting team the constructed of the the raised beds and berry cage that he completed himself in the autumn months

This full garden design was created for a lovely family who are passionate about not only growing fresh fruit and vegetables but also about Japanese garden style. The solution was a front garden entry through a Japanese garden inspired woodland, dry riverbed and pond, and a back section garden of herbs and raised garden beds near the house and deck and a chicken run and orchard on a steep slope below. A Japanese theme was kept throughout with edible Japanese plants and other edible plants that suited the theme being integrated with the ornamental gardens.