Growing beautiful, abundant ecologies
Aesthetic patterns for edible, ecological landscapes
Excepted from:
Discussion: can edible,ecological landscapes be beautiful?
Or do they have to be “messy?”
Goals:
To help you find aesthetic patterns for your designs
To push high leverage points for personal and societal transformation.
To make transformative landscapes viral
To invoke old magic
To help you find a more beautiful way of gardening.
To help you on your adventure of becoming a keystone human.
Pattern Design and Transformation
The Garden Growing Wild:
Many gardens are formal and artificial. The flower beds are trimmed like table cloths or painted designs. The lawns are clipped like perfect plastic fur. The paths are clean, like new polished asphalt. The furniture is new and clean, fresh from the department store.
These gardens have none of the quality which brings a garden to life - the quality of a wilderness, tamed, still wild, but cultivated enough to be in harmony with the buildings which surround it and the people who move in it. This balance of wilderness and cultivation reached a high point in the oldest English gardens.
In these gardens things are arranged so that the natural processes which come into being will maintain the condition of the garden and not degrade it. For example, mosses and grasses will grow between paving stones. In a sensible and natural garden, the garden is arranged so that this process enhances the garden and does not threaten it. In an unnatural garden these kinds of small events have constantly to be "looked after" - the gardener must constantly try to control and eradicate the processes of seeding, weeds, the spread of roots, the growth of grass.
Aesthetic sensibilities regulate:
Life goals, identity
purchasing and consumption patterns,
Self perception and esteem
Status and power
Demand for goods and services
community and family character,
core values of individuals and society
How and why we live
Spirituality
Paradigms
Donella Meadows
It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.
“To conceive of your body as the body of a god and make your surroundings as a heaven realm, is old, powerful magic.”
Chogyam Trungpa
Hideyoshi’s golden tea room, C. 1550
Rikyu’s tea room
Wabisabi
Hermitage
Retreat
Solitude
Alone
Stillness
Imperfection
Evanescence
Flaws
Age
Wear
Decay
Urbanite, moss wash,
Recycled copper pipe.
Nowadays Industrialism is making true refinement more and more difficult all the world over. Do we not need the tea room more than ever?
Kakuzo Okakura.
William Morris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Raphaelite_Brotherhood
Emory Douglas, BPP, Minister of Culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_Douglas
https://blackpower.web.unc.edu/2017/04/the-uniform-of-the-black-panther-party/
Vivian Westwood, https://climaterevolution.co.uk/wp/The-Vivienne-Foundation-Manifesto/mobile/index.html
Part 2
Aesthetic patterns
What most of us want to avoid:
Plastics, petroleum, poison and pollution
Terroir
A beautiful way of gardening
Easy, cares for the earth, and cares for people.
Holistic Natural Gardening
Overview:
The Fine Stopper Starter Pack
Theme
Aesthetic zones
Polyculture Plantings, Veggie circles
Formal layout, wild plantings
Hard and soft edges
Color patterns
guilds: the beautiful abundant meadow, tapestry hedges
Repetition and unifying themes
Meta patterns: theme
Jardin de curé
Color scheme,
blues, whites, soft pastels
Form,
formal bed, wild plantings
Color echoes
Spiritual symbolism
Blues and purples
Sea kale foliage
Cardoon
Monarda
Speedwell
Blue aster
Lavender
Roses
Poppies
Chives
Sage
Grape hyacinth
Lupine
Whites
Rugosa roses
Sea kale flowers
Carrots
Elder flowers
Valerian
Yarrow
Radish flowers
Daffodils
Speedwell
Pea flowers
Lupine
Cottage garden
Cottage garden aesthetics
Post wild gardening
Dutch invasion gardens
Piet oodolf
Post wild aesthetics
https://transformativeadventures.org/2016/01/04/gardeners-gone-post-wild-post-wild-edible-landscaping/
Hard and soft edges
Color echoes
Useful Show off plants for repetition
Monardas
Liatris
Coneflower
White umbrellas
Roses
Sea kale
Crambe
Amaranth
Japonica maize
Walking onions
Chives
Garlic
Turkish rocket
Hibiscus
Bananas
Fruit trees
Sunflowers
Cardinal flower
Leeks
Mulleins
Paper birch
Lupine
False indigo
Bulb fennel
Trellises
Artichokes
Cardoon
Plant spotlight, sea kale
Plant spotlight, cardoon and artichoke
An edible aesthetic meadow
An Edible meadow guild
This guild persists in grassland and contains many edible, useful plants. It may even be used as the basis for a slashmulch garden.
Garlic, walking onions, allium unifolium, bread root, camas, english daisy, anise hyssop, Turkish rocket, asparagus, spring bulbs, salsify, milkweed, anise golden form monarda fistulosa, mizuna, foxtail millet, lupine, red clover, tuberous sweet pea, feverfew, Shasta daisy, rattlesnake master, evening primrose, carrots, bread seed poppy, sorrels.
PLANTS THAT PIONEER AND TRANSFORM GRASSLAND
STEPS TO TRANSFORM LAWN TO EDIBLE GRASSLAND
Add bulbs for early flowers, especially in meadows.
Bulb mix for permaculture
Daffodils, bulk, landscaper specials.
Thalias
Grape hyacinth, edible!
Variegated Camas
Wild tulips
Crocuses
Symbolism
Symbolic patterns
Ancestors garden
Stone cairns
Layout
Sculpture...
Use of form, focal points, repetition, unifying elements.
Some general aesthetic patterns
Edible perennials at home in the flower garden
Creating guilds vs companion planting
Aesthetic zones
Hard and soft edges
Low-carbon hardscaping
Focal points/accent plants
Flower forms
Repetition and unifying themes
Color patterns
Flower forms
Umbrella
Flower
Points
Spikes
Sprays
Flower forms
Layers
Why is this beautiful?
Meta aesthetic patterns:
Biophillia
Nature pattern design
Spirals
Fractals
Nature shapes
Planting design
Introduction to guilds
Guilds are the backbone of sustainable landscapes.
Simplify maintenance
Allow easy installation
Reduce costs
Aesthetic guild examples
Examples based on aesthetic patterns
Lillie House Seed Mix
http://transformativeadventures.org/2020/08/16/the-lillie-house-polyculture-seed-mix/
Kate Frey
Orange calendula
Ox blood chard
Peacock broccoli
Red or kale
English daisy
Thyme
Chamomile
Lemon verbena
The vegetable garden guild
A vegetable garden of guilds
PLANTS AND SUCCESSION
Aesthetic three sisters
An edible ecological tapestry hedge
https://transformativeadventures.org/2018/08/28/designing-and-establishing-edible-hedges-hedgerows-and-windbreaks/
Easy guild plants for jardin de Curé colors
Blues and purples
Sea kale foliage
Cardoon
Monarda
Speedwell
Blue aster
Lavender
Roses
Poppies
Chives
Sage
Grape hyacinth
Lupine
Whites
Rugosa roses
Sea kale flowers
Carrots
Elder flowers
Valerian
Yarrow
Radish flowers
Daffodils
Speedwell
Pea flowers
Lupine
A fruit fence for high quality fruits
Alliums:
Greens:
Mints:
Ephemeral:
Lillie House Apple Guild
Guild matrix*
Beneficial attractors:
Mulch makers:
Pest repellants:
Fortress plants
Human attractors:
A fruit tree guild for function and beauty.
A fruit tree guild with stable guild matrix
Guilds and plants for a goth forest garden
Terminator guilds
A warm color guild for full sun
A beautiful productive guild for shade
Shady paw paw guild
Ground covers: violets
Ephemerals: chickweed, sweet woodruff
Repellants: ramps, walking onion, garlic
Sunny edge fortress plants: monarda didyma, field mint.
Human attractors, currants, gooseberries.
Matrix: strawberry, ramps, claytonia, Solomon’s seal, ostrich fern.
N fixer: goumi, ground nut, hog peanut,
Mulch: catalpa.
The eastern woodland guild, with glamorous touches
Eastern woodland glamour guild
(Top right, clockwise)
Variegated Solomon’s seal
Ginger
Claytonia Virginia
Ramps
Sweet woodruff
Variegated full
Ostrich fern
Black cohosh
Monarda didyma
A gorgeous guild for young small fruit trees
Star plants for stunning guilds
Add up guilds for an easy garden that works with nature