Brithdir Mawr Community
A community of people
living and working together
in a sustainable way
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Brithdir Mawr CommunityA community of people |
The top garden contains annual beds, perennial beds and areas of fruit trees and bushes, herbs and edible shrubs. Its aspirations are permacultural, including diversity, no-dig cultivation and creating a cycle in which the garden produces all the nutrients and organic matter that the garden needs. How far are these aspirations met? We really need to set aside a large area of the garden to grow crops for mulch. For that purpose, a large comfrey and nettle patch is being created this winter.
There is a small 'humanure' patch of comfrey and jerusalem artichokes (grown using composted poo from the compost toilets) which will themselves be composted and put on vegetables. There are nitrogen-fixing plants in the perennial beds and the annual vegetable rotation includes both overwintering and under cropped green manures. The perennial beds also include many ground cover plants to reduce the need for mulch. The previous gardener was a vegan and gardened on this principle - so for instance no muck from the goat shed was used and our Khaki Cambell ducks who valiantly deslug the bottom garden did not come in here.
So
far we have continued to run the garden veganically, although as non-vegans
we did allow the ducks in last autumn, when the balance of power in the garden
tilted decidedly in favour of the slugs. Brithdir Mawr could be viewed as one
system - so moving manure from the goat shed to the garden would still be within
the same system. On the other hand, there is great value in attempting to improve
the soil condition of the garden without importing nutrients from elsewhere
and therefore denuding the earth somewhere else (in this case, our goat field).
The garden is home to an incredible diversity of plants - edible, medicinal, dye plants and many of them multi functional. This year, along with traditional annual vegetables, the garden produced some more unusual roots - the Roman vegetable skirret and the South American oca and yacon. We also have perennial cabbage and onions thriving, to name just a few of the hundreds of perennials. Alongside the plants is the diversity of birds and other small creatures who share our food from the garden. Our hopes for this year are to feed the people - more food on the communal table - and to entice more of the community and its friends into the garden - either to work, to graze or to simply enjoy.
The 'top garden' gardeners January 2006
