Goals and Aspirations

One of my teachers likes to call the society we've developed "maintained disorder". I think its very fitting, especially for landscaping. One gets very mixed signals when observing the landscaping process. We begin by flooding everything with fertilizer, but as soon as it begins to grow we cut it down, then water it more. It's a very cruel torture, and its also a very expensive one. Urban landscaping uses more herbicides and pesticides than agriculture, and we don't even get food from it. But Im getting off-topic. The thing I want to point out is this silly situation we've put ourselves in of setting up horrible ecological systems that need ridiculous amounts of energy to maintain. And they're not even useful (pragmatically speaking), in most cases they disrupt or damage the regional ecology. 

So my main aspiration is to design a landscape that improves with negligence. The fact that this could seem even the slightest be revolutionary or radical is really quite sad. In nature, this is the norm. Ecosystems strengthen overtime, developing greater diversity and deeper integration, producing more and consuming less. There's no reason why this can't exist in our own yards. My greatest adversary for this project will be society. 

Society and my lack of landscaping knowledge that is. An important permaculture principle is that the theoretical limit of a system is potentially infinite and is only limited by the ability of the designer. And I fear that while my creativity is strong enough, my specific knowledge and technical ability greatly limits me. Hopefully I can find someone who can help me improve those areas.

This is a very lengthy introduction. Lets stop being so abstract. 

The first month (this month) is my planning phase. The goal is to have an accurately budgeted plan within half a week of next month (that's a week and a half from now!). Next month I will work my ass off to install everything and create a presentation of what I have done. I will however, have the month of june to finish up anything that takes longer that I anticipated. 

Here is the Project outline I created:

Project: Residential landscape design/implementation with emphasis on sustainability and permaculture principles

Design objectives:

Minimize long term maintenance (fertilizer, water, pruning)

Minimize cost (recycled materials, native species)

Use artistic bed shapes and sculpture to create a flowing and pleasing landscape while also minimizing turf. 

Initial ideas:

Use sets of seasonally sequenced bulb flowers, which are frost and drought resistant, so that flowers do no need to be replanted each year and for continuous blossoming. 

Use mainstream lawn around outside of fence (for public approval). For the inside of the fence I will reseed to natural clover that does not need to be mowed and reduce the amount of lawn with artistic mulch beds and landscape features such as bird baths, chairs, and stone walkways.

Rent a wood chipper and make mulch from foraged wood and fallen trees.

Month 1:

Asses property

Research possible plants and features

Interview local landscapers and nurseries

Locate materials and resources

Create design and digital mockups

Calculate Budget

Plot implementation sequence

Month 2:

Implement design

Implement design more

compile project portfolio

Presentation