Permaculture is an ecological design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor. It teaches us how build natural homes, grow our own food, restore diminished landscapes and ecosystems, catch rainwater, build communities and much more. (http://www.permaculture.org/nm/index.php/site/classroom/)
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Permaculture Zones
*Source: http://www.small-farm-permaculture-and-sustainable-living.com/permaculture_zones.html
Zones are a way of organizing design elements in a human environment on the basis of the frequency of human use and plant or animal needs. Frequently manipulated or harvested elements of the design are located close to the house in zones 1 and 2. Less frequently used or manipulated elements, and elements that benefit from isolation (such as wild species) are farther away. Zones are about positioning things appropriately. Zones are numbered from 0 to 5.
Permaculture zones can be thought of as a series of concentric circles radiating out from the site’s activity centre.
Zone Zero: The Home
Frequent daily visits – The innermost circle, or Zone 0, represents the focal point of activity in the system. In a small farm this is usually the home. It is the “hottest” area of human activity, symbolized in our diagram by the color red!
If we are going to achieve energy efficiencies it makes sense to place those elements of our system that must be visited the most often within Zone 0: the house, attached glasshouse or shade house, as well as house integrated living components such as pergola-trained vines, potted plants and companion animals.
Zone One: The Home Garden
Regular daily visits – Within 6 meters (20 feet) or so of the house, in Zone 1, should be placed those elements that require close observation, frequent visiting, high work input or continual complex techniques.
The aim of Zone 1 is to yield household self-sufficiency and climate control for the home. Zone 1 is also the first Zone that should be developed on your site:
Start at the back door and work out from there!
Once you have Zone 1 fenced and under control you will be providing much of your needs, as well as having established a pleasant living environment for yourself and your family.
And so, elements such as rainwater tanks, the lemon tree, other dwarf or espalier-grown multi-graft fruit trees, chicken laying boxes, small ponds, culinary herbs, worm farm for recycling of household wastes, intensive, fully mulched vegetable beds of quick growing annuals, seedling raising areas, and small, quiet domestic animals like fish, rabbits and pigeons can be kept very close at hand within the home garden. design
Zone Two: The Home Orchard
Attended every few days – Zone 2 is a little less intensively managed. Suitable elements to place here are spot mulched home orchards, longer cycle vegetables, main crop beds (for trading), and forage ranges for closely managed livestock such as poultry and milking goats or cows. Since they are visited daily for milking, feeding and supervising, the livestock and poultry shelters of Zone 2 often adjoin Zone 1. This Zone may be extended along frequently used paths through more outlying zones.
Zone Three: The Farm of self sufficiency
Attended weekly to monthly – Broader scale commercial crops, and animals raised for trade, along with natural trees, dams, windbreaks and barns belong. This area is managed with soil conditioning, green manure crops and manure from Zone 2.
Zone Four: Managed Forest lifestyle sustainability
Attended infrequently – Hardy, self-care forests and woodlots that are visited infrequently for wood collection, log harvest and wild harvest belong in far flung corners of the property, and can act as buffers to protect Zone 5 wilderness areas. It may also be used occasionally to pasture animals.
Zone Five: Wilderness good life style
Visited occasionally for recreation and appreciation – This is the component of the site left for nature. It comprises natural forest and native remnant and rehabilitated flora and fauna and can be linked to the home garden by a wildlife corridor extension. design
The Zone concept can be applied equally well for the planning of neighborhoods, farming communities, schools and institutions; in fact, any human system. design
Permaculture landscape design for sustainable living achieves resource and energy efficiency through such zone analysis to conserve internal energies, combined with an optimization of external energies using Sector Analysis.
