Observations

 We began with a heavily compacted base of hardcore overlayed with gravel, it had literally been a gravel covered parking area for the cars of the previous residents.... almost all of it. Our initial investigations confirmed what this meant; a spade was a waste of time! Only a pickaxe was able to make any headway & as some of the rocks were very large, they often proved very difficult to shift. What vegetation that did exist had been recently hacked back to virtually nothing, including some beautiful shrubs & some trees that were never to recover.

 To us both as gardeners, the first sight of the garden was one that generated both feelings of dismay & of great excitement for the potential it held. With so much to do, it was hard to know where to start, so we undertook the customary observation phase while we started bringing on the seeds. This gave us time to notice the different microclimates within the garden & begin to decide which elements would best be placed where. There was clearly two really good south-facing boundaries that would make great growing areas. The furthest of them was quite well overhung by a beautiful mature beech tree that was going to throw a lot of shade come the summer, but as it was to the north it would not affect the garden.

 The garage had clearly been placed in a really stupid place. To drive a vehicle into it required that most of the top half of the garden be used purely as a driveway. We immediately decided that we weren't going to use it ourselves, but what about future tenants? The garden was well protected from the wind, so that wasn't going to be a design issue. The shrubs that had been hacked back looked in the main as if they would recover, but the trees looked unlikely to do so as they had been 'pruned' from about 30ft down to only 6ft !

 All in all, the garden was pretty lifeless & it had nowhere for the birds to perch. We could see right across it to the far fence from the back door! A potential future problem lay in the fact that a ten year old Monkey puzzle tree had been planted just 6ft from the cottage, but that wasn't within our remit to deal with. The one dead space in the garden lay in the gap between the south-facing extension wall & a 6ft fence. A rotary washing line had been placed here, but there wasn't much air movement. It was heavily shaded & damp & needed a drastic rethink!

 Our informal 'client interview' discussions ascertained our own needs & wants. The garden was to provide several needs, a place for adults to relax, for children to play, to provide us with nourishment (including beauty as well as food) & for two ex-battery hens (who were due to arrive soon) to enjoy a much improved lifestyle. We were also excited about the opportunity to be creative & to learn more about permaculture as we went along.

Boundaries

 The garden was well enclosed, apart from a 14ft wide ungated opening where cars originally drove in up a slope. This needed to be closed over, but other than that the garden was bounded on all sides by at least 6ft high fences or hedging (or both!) around to the cottage. It was currently overlooked by the upstairs windows over the road, but a bit of growth back on the hedge would soon deal with that. There were two good sections of south-facing fencing that would surely prove to be good growing areas. Our boundary downwards was another matter though. We were told stories of large lorries delivering considerable quantities of hardcore & rollers packing it down. Digging anything in was going to be very hard work. As the cottage adjoined another property to the south, its only south-facing wall was on the kitchen & bathroom extension & only a single storey high. It was quite close to a 6ft high fence & so didn't benefit much from winter sun.

  The siting of the garage created another boundary of sorts. We wanted to dig up & cultivate the furthest half of the garden, but to do so would remove vehicle access to the garage for future tenants. As we were renting & had only just moved in, we were a bit nervous about what we could get away with doing.

 Non-physical boundaries were to do primarily with finance & security. We didn't have much money, although that is always a good incentive for innovation! We were also renting & uncertain about the length of the tenancy (especially after only being able to stay for 6 months at our previous address). We were also considering using a market stall loaned to us by the landlord as a temporary polytunnel to get a lot of seeds started, but we didn't know if planning implications would prevent us from being able to do this.

Resources

 Our main resource was time. We also had access to a number of free materials such as cardboard (local shops), manure (stables down the road), topsoil (several local places sourced through the local newspaper) & so on. Not many plants were available to begin with, but it was early Spring & we did have an large number of seeds. There were good water catchment opportunities from the cottage & the shed & later the greenhouse too.

 Other resources were as diverse as the large amount of space in the garden (a virtual 'blank canvas'), concrete pots & stepping stone seconds bartered from a friend, gravel(!), a large heap of prunings, a market stall frame & of course, our imagination & enthusiasm. Two neighbours were also not using their greenhouses that Spring & we were able to make use of them both as well as the one we bought secondhand & put up ourselves, so as luck would have it we were able to germinate a large number of those seeds that first year.

Evaluation

 Some connections between elements were immediately obvious (i.e. the chickens needed access to the shed & the greenhouse needed a sunny spot), but in order to lay out the garden in the most beneficial manner I decided to carry out a web-making exercise (random assembly) using all the main elements. This would enable me to see how they would all need to be connected to minimise our own inputs & cycle as many of the energies within the garden as possible (outputs become inputs). This will help me to design their layout within the garden (relative location) accordingly, giving priority to those connections that need to occur more regularly (in the same manner that elements are placed into zones).

 The design elements that were going to need the most regular attention (i.e. inputs from us in the form of work) were the chickens, with a minimum of two visits per day, all year round (letting out in the morning & putting away at night). In the summer months, the greenhouse (seeds & plants) was likely to need a similar amount of visits & plants in pots may need watering once a day during a particularly hot spell. The garage may need to be visited for firewood every day in the winter. Therefore it would be logical, with nothing else to consider, to put the chicken shed next to the greenhouse & the garage, with pots of plants along the short path leading to them. Unfortunately, the shed & the garage were already in place & in a different corner from the cottage. They were at least placed next to each other, but they were not in a place where the sun shone much & this was a more important element in the positioning of the greenhouse. Thankfully, in such a small garden, distances between elements are only energy issues if heavy loads need to be moved around regularly (i.e. watering cans).

 The placement of other elements according to regular places visited, led me to making several other choices. The greenhouse was being visited daily during the spring, summer & autumn & a bucket of food waste could be easily carried from the cottage to the compost bin at the same time. The compost was most likely to end up in the greenhouse (where the hungriest plants were grown) & the job of moving a whole lot of ready-to-use compost from the bin to the greenhouse was a big job. Thus it made most sense to place them together, the compost bin occupying an otherwise 'dead' corner.

 Some of the inputs required by elements were the wild energies coming into the site; sun, wind, rain etc. The living elements in the design all need these & in the case of air, very regularly indeed. Thankfully, we can rely on nature to provide these for us & they require no day to day work in respect to this design.

 We do however have to place each of the elements in the right place for them to receive the quantity of these energies that they need & we can use strategies to harness them for extended availability. The easiest of these is the placing of sun loving plants near heat-conserving elements, such as south-facing fences, large rocks or a pond for instance. We can increase the heat trapped by the only south facing wall on the cottage by building a conservatory in front of it & maximise the use it will get by creating a walkthrough from the house by knocking a door through from the kitchen.

 The second strategy available to us in a garden with so many roofs is water catchment. The chickens will need water & their shed has a roof, the greenhouse plants will also need water & again there is a roof right there to collect the run-off from. The chickens are a good example of energy cycling in the garden.

 Their water can be collected from the shed roof, they can forage in the garden, eating slugs & snails for instance & fertilising wherever they go. We can grow plants that produce seeds for them to eat & provide herbs too for their health (they devour wormwood plants every once in a while!). They will even spread the seed of the plants they like to eat most all around the garden in their faeces (everything gardens, even chickens!). We can use their scratching habit to turn vegetable matter (woodchip, Comfrey, food waste etc.) into compost more quickly & they get something extra to forage in at the same time. By containing this in a pen outside their shed, their scratching habit won't distribute it all over the gravel path (making it easier for us to collect up & put where we want it) & the pen can be used to contain them occasionally when needed. Only a small supplement of grain is likely to be needed to feed them during the winter & this could be kept in the shed for easy access. As we all know, healthy hens produce lots of eggs as outputs, but being vegans we wouldn't eat them ourselves.... nevertheless, they do still become inputs... into the dog (who helps himself!).

 There were other boundaries in this garden though as mentioned previously, such as the need to keep a potential 'driveway' free & this was also an important factor in the placement of elements. With the elements finally in position, pathways had to be made to join them together, this created the need to remove a fencing panel in the Final design to accomplish this. Positioning of the living elements then took place in the areas in between the structures & around the paths, with extra paths being made where necessary to facilitate access to plants & trees. The trees could only be placed where they would have sufficient room & good enough conditions to grow & had to be chosen to fit into the space available. Beds then fell logically into place around them, with plants being placed according to their specific needs, including the formation of beneficial guilds where possible. The random assembly exercise allows us to make many more decisions about relative placements, far more than I have room for here. However, I do mention more of them in my commentary on the Final design page.

A few examples from this design process:

Minimum effort for maximum effect: Starting digging new beds on the raised area, it being potentially uncompacted by vehicles. Planting trees to bring in some height, attract birds into the garden, have the roots start to break up the ground & begin to bring up nutrients, providing us with beautiful blossom & fruit in a couple of seasons time. Making some steps from tree 'prunings'. Sowing a lot of seeds so that we would quickly have a whole garden full of plants.... & then we got ill (see Implementation) & the plan went so wrong!

Multiple supply: Holly's play needs (yes, they are an essential component!) are met in many different ways: the playhouse, swing, play lawn, paddling pool, sand pit (all outdoors) & the caravan (indoors). Chickens' diet is supplied by plants (a great variety of leaves & seeds), insects & food scraps. They also have a supplementary grain feed in the colder months of the year. Our own food needs are provided by a variety of different leaves, seeds, roots, flowers & fruit. Garden receives water from rain, water butts or failing both of those, the tap in the cottage (though the mulch on the beds should mean that the last option is rarely needed).

Multiple yield: Chickens provide ground cultivation, fertility, pest control, lawn mowing, exercise (chasing them out of where they're not meant to be!), sweet little burbling sounds & oh yes; eggs! Plants may provide any number of the following: food, scent, beauty, colour, shelter, habitat, medicine, soap, fibre, good companionship, soil improvement, support for other plants, shade. Trees bring in some height to the garden, attract birds, the roots start to break up the ground & begin to bring up nutrients..... didn't I just do this one? Mulch provides, soil fertility, moisture retention, weed suppression & a good breeding ground for worms!

The problem is the solution: Rocks dug from the ground when making new beds become edging for the beds. Logs from the heavily pruned trees become steps on the new path. The panel taken out to make room for the new path becomes part of the fence/gate across the driveway opening. Waste wood & turf offcuts become a playhouse for Holly & her friends. A shady spot becomes a perfect summer salad bed where the plants don't bolt so quickly. A big pile of tree prunings became the basis for our spiral bed. Bricks from the retaining wall, removed to make room for the conservatory is reused to face the new wall. Soil from the same place goes on the garden beds, some of our excess gravel is used to replace it! And so on...

Work out from well managed areas: The most obvious place for us to start when we arrived was to cultivate the raised area opposite the kitchen door. As well as it being nearest to the cottage back door (our usual entry & exit route), it was also the one part of the garden that couldn't have had cars parked on it & so was potentially less compacted. Only when the rest of the garden was cultivated & relatively easy to maintain, was it worth me spending most of my time building the conservatory.

 To find out how I applied these processes, now visit the Final Design page.