Transforming Urban Spaces: The Power of Permaculture Design with Tree Pittsburgh
We are delighted to share an inspiring guest blog post from Kimberly Bracken, The Giving Grove Program Manager at Tree Pittsburgh, a valued affiliate partner of The Giving Grove since July 2023. In this blog post, Kimberly delves into the fascinating world of permaculture design, explaining how this ancient practice is being reintroduced and adapted for modern urban environments. Kimberly shares practical insights on how permaculture principles can transform urban orchards into thriving food forests, benefiting both local communities and the environment. Dive into this insightful post to learn about the benefits of permaculture and the innovative practices that are reshaping approaches to sustainable urban agriculture.
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Photo Credit: Kimberly Braken, Tree Pittsburgh
Written by Kimberly Bracken, Giving Grove program manager at Tree Pittsburgh
The peach trees are covered in little fuzzy fruit, and the bush cherries are forming. Tree Pittsburgh’s Heritage Nursery now has rows of fruits, nuts, and berries, thanks to joining The Giving Grove as an affiliate partner in July 2023. Our Heritage Nursery sows 45,000 tree and shrub seeds each year that we hand-collect locally. Already growing paw paw, elderberry, serviceberry, and persimmon, we are now introducing a wide variety of edible cultivars into our selection thanks to being a Giving Grove partner.
My name is Kimberly Bracken and I am The Giving Grove Program Manager at Tree Pittsburgh. My background is in public garden and permaculture design, and I have a Permaculture Design Certificate from Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden. Professionally, I seek to create layered, low-input, high-output orchard designs that will feed communities for generations.
Since Tree Pittsburgh joined The Giving Grove network two growing seasons ago, we have donated and planted 182 trees and berry bushes to over 18 different sites, including community gardens and farms, schools, city parks, and existing orchards. We’ve hosted harvest preservation and pruning workshops, a permaculture orchard film screening, and local cider tasting, and we will offer a grafting workshop in the fall and a Permaculture 101 design workshop this summer.
The Benefits of Permaculture in Urban Environments
Permaculture is an ancient practice that was reintroduced 50 years ago by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. One common and increasingly popular permaculture design technique is food forests, which is a way of designing a multi-purpose orchard that is biodiverse, contains mostly edible or medicinal plants and uses companion planting to create guilds (grouped layers of vegetation) that are self-supporting where each plant is nourished by the others. In most urban environments, you may be more likely to find microforest gardens, with a smaller amount of trees, bushes, and understory plants than sites with larger acreage. “Forest gardening uses the overarching strategy of ecosystem mimicry to achieve the reintegration of humans with the natural world, as co-creative participants in our shared health and evolution (Jacke, 1).
Designing Food Forests: Key Principles and Techniques
Planting the understory of a tree with smaller shrubs, herbs, vines, roots, and fungi has multiple functions: weed and pest prevention, pollinator support, added beauty, more food or medicine, less mulching or mowing over time, and more. Guilds should include insectary and soil-building plants when possible. For example, comfrey can be laid under plants as a living mulch. Comfrey pulls up nutrients deep in the soil and provides those nutrients to the more accessible top layers of soil for surrounding plants. Other nitrogen-fixing plants, like peas, beans, clover, and alfalfa, create nitrogen in their natural process and feed those around them.
At the most basic, food forest design places the tallest trees with shade to the north with tolerant woodland herbs underneath. Moving south, beds of sun-loving fruit or nut trees are planted. Tall shrubs and partial-shade tolerant herbs and small shrubs below them. Then you will find full-sun fruits, nuts, and herbs to the far south.” (Jacke, 95)
Credit: www.spiralseed.co.uk/making-forest-garden
Deepening Your Permaculture & Food Forest Knowledge
For those who wish to be trained in permaculture practices, there are many programs offered throughout the world to receive a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC). There are also plenty of books and online resources that share great information about how to incorporate these principles into an edible landscape of any size.
Of the many permaculture books out there, perhaps the most comprehensive in my opinion are Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeir’s Edible Forest Gardens: Volumes 1 & 2 (I referenced this book set many times in this blog post). Another resource that is less dense and more visual is Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway, which is most appropriate for smaller, urban microforest gardens. There are myriad others worth checking into, depending on what you are interested in learning about or the space you are designing.
No matter what your skill level, it’s easy to incorporate the beginnings of a permaculture design into your orchard, and the benefits far outweigh the work needed to do so.
References
David Jacke with Eric Toensmeir. Edible Forest Gardens Volume Two: Ecological Design and Practice for Temperate Climate Permaculture. White River Junction, Vermont, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2005.