Designing a Suburban Food Garden

Just like with building a house, we’ve found putting the time into creating a design for a productive food garden is invaluable. Though it’s always tempting to run with a burst of enthusiasm and pop a fruit tree in here and a seedling there, having a good design can save so much work, time and possible heart ache in the long run.

We spent three months working on our garden design, while we were focusing on green renovations to our home. In creating a garden design, there are many things to consider about the place you’re working with, but we found the most important ones to be: 

• Sun and shade – being aware of where the sun rises and sets in the summer and winter,  where the shadows of trees and houses fall, how you can use deciduous trees near the house to provide cooling in summer and warmth in winter
• Winds – which direction the winds come from (we get fierce westeries in late winter), where there is protection from wind (like on the eastern side of our house), and where you can create protection from the winds (like we did on our western and southern borders)
• Water – how water falls on the property, what areas retain water well, what areas are always dry, how the garden slopes, where is it best to create swales and place water tanks, where greywater leaves the house, how can you best place irrigation...
• Complimentary uses – what things in the garden work well near each other? For example, having the plant nursery, tool storage area, and a sink for washing the veggies next to the veggie garden. It’s also important to think of how the garden and the house can work well together, such as having greywater from the washing machine and showers going to fruit trees. Similarly, what things won’t work well together – like a huge tree right next to the veggie garden that will always be taking the water and nutrients from the veggies.  
• Frequency of use – How often do areas/trees need to be checked or harvested? High use areas such as the veggie bed are best right at the back door.
• Keeping good relations – Neighbours may not be too fond of a chicken house or frog pond right near their back door!
• Council regulations – Particularly in urban areas, there may be restrictions on things such as the number of chickens you can keep, what you can plant on the verge - it’s worth finding out to avoid having to change things down the track. 

Some of the most helpful gardening books we found in designing our garden were: 

• The Permaculture Home Garden, Linda Woodrow, 1996
• Smart Permaculture Design, Jenny Allen, 2002
• Introduction to Permaculture: A Designers Manual, Bill Mollison, 2000 

Just as important as knowing your site, is knowing what plants do well in your local climate, and how to choose a spot in your garden that they’ll just love. We’ve found fellow local gardeners, community gardens, and on-line places such as Daleys fruit tree forum are the best way to find out what plants grow well in the area. Once you know what trees grow well, when selecting a spot for them in the garden, it’s helpful to think about the plant’s water, sun and soil requirements, tolerance for wind, size, and how often they need harvesting.

For a more detailed overview of the landscape design for our property, click the image below and/or refer to the various topics on the sidebar under ‘The Food Garden’.  It’s been really exciting over the last two years watching our design come to life on our 920 square metre suburban block.  Our trees and veggie garden are providing us with such abundant harvests already! 

Happy Earth Landscape Design
(Click to enlarge) 

Comments

[Donna]

Hi guys,

You have alot of water capacity in water tanks. Does your roof space fill both these tanks. Our water tanks are going in next week hurray. we will have 4000ltrs which will be connected to washing machine.

We also will be getting solar panels but there is a 10 week wait for the inverters at the moment. were very excited. This new tarriff is great.

Cheers
Donna.

[HappyEarth]

Hey Donna ... how exciting you are getting solar panels, especially with the new tariff that had been introduced. We are looking forward to our first cheque rrather than bill from our electricity company!

You can never have enough water .. and we wish we had gone bigger. We catch water of the whole roof but they still take alot of rain ~100mm to fill up when empty.

Have a great day :)