Garden Styles for Permaculture Attractive Gardening

Attractive Gardening Ideas in Permaculture

Hey there!  Are you looking for garden ideas to put into place, so you don’t have to revisit the same old every year?  Garden styles for permaculture could be your answer!  Permaculture literally means, “Permanent Agriculture.”  Permaculture seeks to utilize resources you have and reduce your waste.

Garden styles or designs used in permaculture focus more on polyculture planting instead of the typical farming practice of monoculture crops.  Think of it like this, everyone (plant) in the garden is a member of a team with different skills, yet working together.  Some are building soil with nitrogen or phosphorus, others attract pollinators, some throw off pests with their scent and taller ones provide shade for the heat intolerant.  A beautiful picture of teamwork.

Permaculture utilizes some garden designs that not only have a function, but beauty in their shape.  Let’s look at some of these designs, shall we?

Beautiful Permaculture Gardening Styles

Keyhole

This is one of my favorite garden styles for permaculture!  This garden design resembles a keyhole.  You know, like in the old fashioned doorknobs.  A circular bed with a path in the center which rounds out at the top of the path.  Very popular for kitchen herb gardens, but I also want to use this style for some veggies and flowers.

This is an attractive garden design that maximizes space.  This style can also be used in a raised bed.

Parabola

The parabola, or boomerang shaped garden, is a large long-term design of permanent plantings curved to move wind around areas .  The trees and bushes planted here not only block wind, but can dually fix nitrogen or provide food for you and the chickens.

We planted wind breaks to protect our garden from damaging winds.  You would use this style to make sitting areas more enjoyable or maybe you have animals being pounded by strong winds that the parabola garden would benefit.

Plantings in the parabola are going to be layered.  Meaning, there will be a progression of sizes.  Taller trees in the back, next will be understory dwarf trees, large shrubs, then bushes.  The succession of sizes, along with their width block winds protecting whatever it is you’re wanting to shield.

Vertical

Vertical style gardening is perfect for anyone with a fenced yard or living in an apartment.  Not enough yard to garden?  Go up!  But it’s not just for those with little space.  Vertical also works great with trees.

So, what does a vertical garden look like?  Vining plants, plantings in pockets on a wall, pallet gardening and hanging pots are all examples of this aesthically appealing style. Our featured image on this post is a beautiful vertical garden using reclaimed recourses. We’ll be using vertical gardening this summer.  All of our vining squashes and beans will be trellised.

Hügelkultur Bed

Hügelkultur garden beds are set up to fertilize itself!  What?!  Is that not awesome?  The foundation of the bed is logs or pieces of wood which decompose and fertilize your bed.  There are two ways to build this bed.  One way is digging a hole and then layering wood and soil topped off with mulch.  Second, the traditional way and a personal favorite, is to build the bed on top of the ground.  Layer wood and soil topped off with mulch.  We built a raised bed out of landscape stones and made it a huglekultur bed (actually it was Shaun).

Food Forest

The food forest has become the most identifiable permaculture planting style. This method simply tries to mimic a natural forest using varieties of trees and plants that work together well.  In other words, Companion Planting.  Companion planting groups crops together that help each other and avoid group plantings of crops that hinder each other.  Grab your Free Companion Planting Chart below!

Try to picture the following plants stacked/layered in your yard:  overstory trees that provide nuts or lumber, understory trees for fruit or nuts, fruit bushes and shrubs, vining fruit, and edible or medicinal ground covers.  These are the makings of a food forest!  Food forest are usually planted somewhat dense and involve mulching to build your soil and keep down grass.

We will still have areas reserved for planting seasonal yummies like squashes, beans, and tomatoes. But just think of the abundance that will be available with little extra work each year! The popularity of permaculture is continuing to spread!  Are you going to give it a shot?  Let me know in the comments what you think about permaculture.
Some great resources for more information on Permaculture!
Edible Paradise: How to Grow Herbs, Flowers, Vegetables and Fruit in Any Space

Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening

Thanks for stopping by!  It’s fun having more people around, JOIN our community at the bottom of this page and share with others!

Talk to you soon.

Shaun & Alisha