I’m all packed and ready to head off to complete my Permaculture Design Certificate through Midwest Permaculture!

For the past few months, I’ve been learning through online webinars and the textbook, An Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture by Rosemary Morrow.  I’ve been studying the microclimates, soil, and various energy inputs to my backyard, and have come up with several permaculture designs for the space around my urban house.  My most recent one looks like this:

“Zone 1” refers to the area just outside of one’s house where it is most beneficial to put kitchen gardens and other design features that we will come in contact with every day.  Zone 0 is the house, Zone 2 is typically something like an orchard or another area that needs to be checked on semi-regularly, but that is not as high maintenance as one’s kitchen garden which really makes the most sense to be right outside the door.  If you have to walk a mile to take care of your garden, you’ll probably end up neglecting it, and what good is that?!  Permaculture is all about designing systems that make sense and also result in the least amount of work. If we’re smart about how we design our homes, gardens, and farms we can actually get nature to do a lot of the work for us.

I’ll be living in a tent for the next couple of weeks, so I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting, but I have a few posts that might be easy to send off while I’m there (I know it would get lonely without your weekly doses of Light Footsteps).  And I’m sure there will be some exciting new material to post about when I return!

Interested in understanding what zones are further? Try this!