(Music: OCTOPUS'S GARDEN, Richard
Starkey) (info./disclaimers) (glossary) (index) (gardening guide)
I'd like to be
Under a tree
In a Permaculture garden in the
shade
Bill Mollison
Knows where we've been
In a spiral herbal garden near a
glade
We would stack our functions you and
me
Designing for sustainability
Complexity
Diversity
In the Permaculture garden we have
made
We'd get some ducks
Use wits not bucks
Raise food with efficiency and grace
Care for the earth
Know that it's worth
Getting more familiar with our place
We'd have some fun inside zone one
No one there to tell us what to do
Plant shrubs and trees
For perennial ease
Through seas of self-sown vegetables
we'd wade
Mindless toil
Destroys the soil
Not to mention spirits and backs
Observation
Cooperation
In a thriving polyculture, nothing
lacks
Masanobu smiles, and Wes approves
Neighbors come and visit with us too
I'd like to be
Under a tree
In a Permaculture garden with you
In a Permaculture garden with you
In a Permaculture garden with you
Comments:
Bill Mollison coined the term Permaculture (a contraction of "permanent
agriculture" and also of "permanent culture"). Stacking
functions (performing several functions with each element) is a basic principle
of Permaculture design. Zone one refers to the "household" zone in a
Permaculture landscape (higher numbers refer to less-frequented zones,
generally more distant from the house). "Self-sown" refers to plants
which readily reseed themselves without human intervention. Masanobu Fukuoka
has inspired many Permaculturalists with the highly productive, nearly
self-maintaining polycultures he has developed in Japan, as described in The One-Straw Revolution, The Natural Way of Farming, and The Road Back to Nature. Wes Jackson's
Land Institute is attempting to develop perennial polycultures ("natural
systems agriculture") to replace annual grain production on our natural
prairieland. The Beetless imply that these different individuals and schools
are united in a common quest, in which everyone, not just the well-known
"heavy hitters," can participate.
Excerpted from The Beetless' Gardening Book: An Organic Gardening Songbook/Guidebook, copyright 1997 by Chris Roth (info./disclaimers) (glossary) (index) (gardening guide)