Growing Things That Come Back: Permaculture For the Rest of Us

There's an old saying that Society Creates the Crime. It could also be said that Society Creates the Trendy Environmental Solution.  

Locally-grown organic food, for example, could only be considered a neat thing by a society which has abandoned locally grown organic agriculture, and then embraces it as a fashionable passion as if it had just been newly discovered. In a way, it's akin to Columbus 'discovering' a half of a planet which was already inhabited by many millions of people. 

'Permaculture' is one of those trendy cocktail-party words that left-leaning publishing houses just can't seem to print enough about. Only a society which had entirely converted to exotic, non-sustainable decorative landscaping, maintained through intensive chemical and labor interventions, could think of permaculture as a trendy new invention discovered by white men from some upscale north-eastern university instead of good-old fashioned practicality. 

For those of us who are not much concerned about how our gardening methods sound to the cocktail-party set, planting things that come back year after year and work well in our local climate and soil is not only common sense, but is cost-effective, environmentally sound, and an efficient means of feeding both body and soul.  Native plants -- in my neck of the woods, mint, sunflowers, black-eyed susan, joe pye weed, Jerusalem artichokes, bee balm, etc.-- and their cultivars make a natural starting place. 

Rhubarb and Jerusalem Artichokes Return Every Year

Locally-adapted, low-care perennial flowers, herbs, fruits and vegetables create a rich and beautiful home environment needing only annual additions of compost and frequent picking. Rhubarb, irises, daffodils, thistles, anise hyssop, rue, oregano, marjoram, aloe, bleeding hearts, elderberry, blueberries, hibiscus, sand cherry bushes, yarrow, echinacea, all come back year after year. 

Self-seeding annual herbs and flowers like sweet williams, cilantro, parsley, bachelor's buttons, lupines, walking onions, multiplier onions, pansies and johnny jump-ups, all establish their own patches and do not need to be replanted each year. Just refresh with a little compost and weed out any intruding grass or other unwanted species to give them a competitive advantage.

Sunflowers self-seed each year, and give goldfinches and other songbirds a place to perch between eating garden bugs. Lilac hedges provide heavenly scent and a practical wind-break. Kale, left to regrow a second season, provides edible flowers loved by butterflies -- and a crop of easily-saved seed to replant. 

The high-end permaculture books would have you believe that this trendy new idea requires consultants, graph paper, earth-moving equipment and a huge financial investment. None of that is true. All it takes is attention to where you live and in the space you have, and to what you want to get out of that space.There's no point planting a big asparagus patch if you can't stand asparagus. Look at what you've got for space, light and soil; look around you and talk to your neighbors about what grows well for them; and plant what works.