Permie

I began with a tiny urban house built on a small lot. Most homes in this neighbourhood are on small lots, and built close to their property lines, with minimal yards in front and back. This home was so small, the yard around it appeared larger. The long narrow house has room for trees on three sides, a walkway on the fourth. It was previously planted with ornamentals by small-families of residents, ever since it was built in 1906. One neighbour thought it might have been farm-labourer dormitory on a plum orchard here, which was then on the outskirts of the city.

I want to describe how I thought about the project, because I imagine writing this for others wondering about how they might do something similar, or to learn from my mistakes.

For personal reasons, I was astounded at having the opportunity to take on the project. I thought the place's problems were benefits to a do-it-yourself-er (more about that later). I studied the place with a sense of awe. No plant or odd shaped corner of the yard was too miniscule to get my attention. Without changing anything, I drew, imagined, and generally designed all aspects of the improvements within the reach of a do-it-yourself approach.

To maximize the garden potential in the long narrow spaces around the small house, one thing I decided early was to prune all existing vegetation into espalier shapes. For example, where flowering camellia and elder-flower shrubbery were globular, round and impinging on head-level spaces near fences, I slowly pruned them each year till they had long flat shapes. They then grew tall and thick along the property lines, but were also pruned back away from human spaces. I conceived of each shrub as part of either an exterior or interior wall in an outdoor room. The walk-way surrounding the cottage passes from one room to the next, through archways of overhanging tree-limbs or vines. This separated long narrow spaces into small courts, each one serving a cottage window or door.

I decided to not clear away the ornamentals, but to instead honour and shape them in their correct seasons, so that within a small number of years they created a more private and shaded oasis from summer heat and busy side-walk eyes; a living fence. I hoped to slowly replace them with equally or more tall edible plants, but only as those plants grew up between them. My first priority was an edible landscape, but with no scorched earth. I didn't want to cut everything down, just because it was not my first vegetation choice. I decided to keep the shade, keep the soil health, keep the greenery and air freshening, and shade, and visual screening while giving special favour to edibles, as they grew large enough to fill those niches themselves.

So this is how I created a living-fence style of green outdoor rooms around a little cottage. From the street in the summer, it looks invisible, as if it were merely a hedged side-yard to another house next-door. When entering the front gate, visitors' first reaction is surprise, because what appears to be a thick hedge over hanging the sidewalk, presents its self as an outdoor room with flowering walls roof, and arched pathways in each direction. The pruning is done carefully, without obvious signs of chopped wounds. From the hot tarmac and concrete sidewalk, they enter a cool, shaded place, where the word 'micro-climate' comes to life to them in a single passage from one side of the gate to the other.

#permaculture, #garden, #pruning, #urban, #design

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