When I first moved into the mobile home here in Dorset, it was the beginning of December & it was surrounded by nothing more than pasture. There was a stack of pallets by the door that acted as a fairly unsafe set of steps & that was all. After a year of instability & not feeling at home anywhere, it was nice to once again have a space of my own & I spent the first couple of months just getting settled in & starting to make plans for the garden. The photo on the left illustrates clearly my starting point & was taken in the early spring when I had just made my first garden bed... & how lonely it looks there!

 My first job was to clarify my wants & needs from the garden. I had a chance to start from scratch & so there were a couple of new things on the list, but as I had done this a few times before, I was already quite clear about most of the things that I wanted. These essentially boiled down to the following:

• Food (salad leaves & flowers, vegetables, fruit).
• Beauty, colour & scents.
• A place to relax.
• A place to watch wildlife (habitats).
• A place to connect with the Earth.
• Fresh air & exercise (gardening).
• A place to experiment & be creative (gardening!)
• A low maintenance garden, filled with plants.
• A garden that inspires visitors to try permaculture.
• A pond full of frogs & other pondlife!
• A surplus of seeds & plants to share with others.
• Diversity & an abundance of growth!

 The first couple of months I was able to make initial observations about the site that enabled me to draw up this rough design. This incorporates the observations that I had made regarding the prevailing wind & the way it funnels in between the shed & the caravan & the movement of the sun & where it falls within the garden. I had also become aware of the natural flows through the space; where I walked, where vehicles would need to pass & what I looked out upon through my windows. The site sloped gently from west to east & had an excellent southerly aspect with a high hedge to protect it from the north winds. The east side of the caravan got the morning sun & sheltered from the wind it was an early morning suntrap. The area by the door seemed to stay frost free & was home to a very healthy crop of nettles. The hedge contained a good diversity of species; holly, hawthorn, field maple, blackthorn, bramble, elder, hazel, even willow; which had grown from pegs used to lay the hedge a few years previously & now towered above the rest.

 The blackthorn though was suckering vigorously & the bramble doing what it does best, so they were going to need regular trimming. The caravan had good guttering & provided an excellent opportunity for water catchment. A large tank in the yard was also already being used for this purpose, collecting the water off a barn roof & was a short walk of a few yards away. The soil in the field had a high clay content (great for fertility), but didn't drain easily. In heavy rain, the water often ran off down through the gateway, making it a muddy area in time, though the pasture was preventing the soil from washing off with it. The area between the caravan & the shed seemed to be a naturally wet spot & so would be a good place for a pond. The caravan did not at that time blend in with its environment & this needed to be addressed. Sandra who owns the farm had already been using permaculture design on the farm generally (there are some excellent treebogs here for instance) & so I knew that she would be sympathetic to what I wanted to do.

 The boundaries to the site were defined by the three main fixed elements & the need for vehicular access into the field through the gateway on the south side. The primary living element (the one that can accumulate energy) is the hedge. It provides food, shelter, habitats, privacy & biomass, but is a strong competing influence on the plants around it. Whilst it is 'fixed' in one sense, it has the potential to expand into the garden site & so will need to be kept pruned back. The other elements are non-living; the shed has the potential along it's south side to be a good heat-retaining growing space, as well as being a storage space for tools. The mobile home is the third element & effectively cuts the garden into two areas. It has good sun-reflecting surfaces along it's south & east sides & provides a shady summer spot along it's west side, providing a lot more 'edge' in the garden. These elements along with need for access into the orchard for vehicles, effectively define the furthest boundaries of the garden.

 Although the gateway into the orchard could be moved to allow an extension of the garden to the south, doing so would be a big job & the garden feels a good size as currently defined. Also the gateway is in the most appropriate place for vehicle access & moving it would make this a lot more difficult. Going downwards, the clay ground was not going to be easy to dig (though far easier than hardcore!), but then again, I wasn't planning on doing much digging this time anyway. As I have already noted, the ground didn't drain well on this site & was going to need some 'improving'.

 Of the non-physical boundaries, the main one was financial, though as I mentioned before, this can be a good incentive to use all of the available resources creatively. The clear lack of appropriate resource use in 'affluent' countries, where people don't see the need to do so is a clear testimony to this. The other boundary related to me not knowing how long I would be staying & Sandra not wanting to have yet more garden to look after if I was to make one & then leave soon afterwards.

 I made an agreement that if I was to leave then I would return the site to pasture again, but this was in effect a boundary as it made me really have to think about how big I wanted the garden to be. Once I had surveyed the distances & angles between the fixed elements on the site, I was able to draw up the base map (above) upon which I could later draw my final design. I thought that I had given myself plenty of space to do this, but as it turned out, I only just managed to squeeze it on.

 Living on a farm, there were a lot of free on-site resources available to me. There were also free & cheap resources available to me locally that I could also incorporate into my garden, turning pollutant outputs into valuable inputs.

• Large stones - rockery & pond edging.
• Wood chippings - mulch.
• Goat manure - mulch.
• Cardboard - mulch.
• Food waste - compost.
• Compost - mulch.
• Wood offcuts - bed edging.
• Used bottles - bed edging.
• Large blue plastic barrels - water butts.
• Pallets - compost bins & decking.

 I also had plenty of seeds that I had brought with me, friends who were giving me surplus plants & my own ideas, energy & enthusiasm. Finally there was the sun & the rain (which were going to be there whether I harvested them or not!) & the windbreak provided by the hedge on the far side of the orchard.

 These inputs would allow me to create beneficial outputs, that would in turn have their own valuable outputs:

• New beds - for accepting inputs of plants & seeds.
• Compost bins - for accepting inputs of food waste.
• Compost - as an input into the beds & ultimately the plants.
• Comfrey barrel - for accepting inputs of comfrey & water.
• Comfrey liquid - as an input into the beds & ultimately the plants.
• Plants - providing inputs of food, beauty, scent, biomass, habitats & seeds for myself & others.
• Decking - providing growing space, peoplecare, aesthetic improvement & caravan stability & safety.

 The soil was clearly going to need some added elements to improve drainage, such as compost, manure, sand & gravel. I figured that if I added these as a mulch, in time the rain & the actions of plant roots would take them down into the soil below. A layer or two of cardboard underneath would help suppress the existing grasses & other unwanted plants. Putting out plants & sowing seeds into pockets of compost within the mulch would give them enough of a head start until they managed to get their roots down beyond the cardboard as it rotted.

 Building decking around the mobile home would provide a lot of yields. It would create a new growing area for my more vulnerable plants, such as salads & half-hardy perennials, including more vertical space. It would provide a space for people to sit & relax or eat outside (or both!) & effectively double the caravan's floor space in the summer months. It would also be somewhere for me to do morning exercises on dry days. It would stabilise the caravan in high winds & make the doorway (a couple of feet off the ground) much safer too. It would also round off the sharp angles of the caravan within the landscape. I had to decide how big I wanted it to be to fulfill it's purpose.

 Utilising the heavily shaded 'dead' space to the north of the caravan for the siting of the water butts & compost bins would also provide easy access to them from either side of the garden where their outputs will be needed. Siting the comfrey liquid feed barrel here too, between the water butts & the best site for growing the comfrey also makes most sense.

 The damp area between the caravan & the shed would be an ideal spot for a pond, which would also reflect low winter sunlight up onto the shed, making it a particularly good growing spot. The diggings from the pond could make a spiral or a rockery to provide some wind shelter to the elements behind. The pond would also provide new habitats; both in & around it, to bring more wildlife into the garden & create greater diversity with an increase in potentially beneficial connections.

 The metal surfaces of the shed & the caravan are both potentially good growing spots, because of their heat retentive properties (the bramble was clearly doing well there). This could be improved further by painting them dark green & this would also have the effect of blending them much more into their surroundings. Conversely, the plant growth on the outside of the caravan would have a cooling effect inside on hot days, by reducing the sunlight reaching the walls. It would also go some way to softening it's boxiness too.

 Mulching the paths would help prevent the grass from invading the beds & make them less muddy in the winter months. The shed could be used for storing garden tools, right where they will be needed. Making beds in front of the hedges & placing strong plants there will help keep them from 'invading' the garden. Plants will need to be sited depending upon their needs & the different microclimates within the garden; this brings me on to looking at zones & sectors.

 Because of the small size of this garden, it can more or less be considered to be all in zone I, with the decking becoming part of zone 0. There is a gradient of use for the different paths through the garden though, the primary use being to & from the door through the gateway. Visiting the compost bin & water butts (emptying compost bucket, collecting water) happens less often & trips to the shed (tools) less often still. If the zone was going to be split, the back garden would get less through traffic than the front one. Adding a pond around the back would increase traffic there, but it would still very likely be less than the front garden. The hedge acts as a wildlife corridor around the garden & is essentially zone V.

 Then, looking back at the sketch I made of my initial observations, I was able to define the different sectors within the garden.

Sun: The sun hits the eastern side of the caravan first in the morning, it then slowly makes it's way around into the back garden. The western side of the caravan & the front garden hedge stay in shade until the early afternoon. Later in the afternoon, the east side of the caravan falls into shade & gradually the rest of the front garden follows it. The back garden stays in sun until quite late, even in summer. In the winter, the situation is less pronounced, with the sun rising & setting further south.

Wind: The two halves of the garden are affected very differently by the wind. The front garden is well protected by the caravan from the south-westerly prevailing winds & this would become more pronounced with the building of the decking. However, that same wind is deflected by the caravan & funnelled down between it & the shed towards the site for the compost bins. The front of the decking area would get wind exposure, but without it being focussed so much. The decking & planting across the front of it could cut down wind blowing under the caravan & reduce winter heat loss.

Rain: The rain essentially comes from the south-west, along with the prevailing wind. This creates a relative rain shadow along the east side of the caravan. The protruding hedge growth also creates a drip line that keeps the base of the eastern hedge relatively dry. The corner to the north of the caravan door is also a particularly dry spot.

Frost: The same dry corner of the front garden also seems to stay frost-free. The decking structure would also potentially provide more frost protection to plants in pots upon it.

View: The primary views from inside the caravan are clearly looking out over the orchard through the picture window facing south & from the small front window to the west, which would overlook the site of the pond. Views from my workroom & bedroom would look out over the back garden. From outside, the east part of the decking will provide a place to sit & view the front garden, not easily seen from inside the caravan. The south part will again give views out over the orchard & over the pond, which needs to be sited to make the best of this.

Short term:

1. Use trips out to collect free resources (energy harvesting).
2. Mulch first beds near door, ready for planting (start locally).
3. Decide on decking size & cost up materials.
4. Set up roof water catchment (energy harvesting).
5. Make compost bins (energy harvesting).
6. Get my design down on paper.
7. Plant out comfrey roots (energy harvesting).
8. Order decking materials & start building it.

Medium term:

• Finish the decking structure.
• Make rest of front garden beds (expand perimeter).
• Grow on seeds & plant out.
• Collect surplus plants from friends.
• Paint caravan.

Longer term:

• Create beds in the back garden & plant out (expand perimeter).
• Dig the pond & make the rockery or spiral & plant up.
• Paint the shed & put trellis up for growing climbers (expand perimeter).
• Convert the shed for tool storage.
• Share my surplus with my friends!

 Finally I looked at my costings for the design & the kind of timescale I was looking at to implement it all.

Free materials: woodchip (some), manure, gravel, sand, straw, plants, large stones (all on-site). Also woodchip & offcuts, bottles, cardboard, more plants (off-site, needing collection - tie in with other journeys to save travel costs).

Cheap materials: Blue plastic water butts (£5 each), plus fittings (total approx £20 for 3 butts). Pallets (£1 each), need approx 40 (total £40).

Expensive materials: Timber & fixings for decking structure (£280 best quote) - Sandra will pay. Plastic pond liner (approx £30).

Plants (not scroungable!): Water lily (£15), Akebia (£10), Kiwi x 2 (£20), Passiflora (£10). Probably totals between £50 & £100.

Total costs: £400 to £500 (my costs £100 to £200)

 The timescale for the completion of the project I thought to be probably two seasons, which is effectively what has happened, but with more or less a year off in the middle! I looked at the front garden & decking as the first phase during year one & then the back garden, pond & rockery as phase two in the second year. My one concern at the time was being swamped with work at Hooke Court, although that of course didn't materialise. Instead, I obviously found lots of other things to keep me busy during the second year (see my Activities review)! All in all though, I think it was a good estimate for the time I was actually working on the garden structure.

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