shrubs

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Heather Jo Flores I recently received an interesting question from a reader,and it seemed like a great topic for this month’s column. She writes:​“I just bought a house whose lovely raised garden beds are being strangled by invasive bamboo. What can I do?” First off, let me say that bamboo is a grass. And like Bermuda grass, Couch grass, and most other rhizomatous plants, it can be almost impossible to control without extreme measures. A lot of people think that if they choose “clumping” varieties of bamboo, they won’t spread. ​But in my experience this just isn’t true. Bamboo…

Permaculture Womens Guild

There are plenty of good reasons to develop a skill set for growing food in small spaces. By Heather Jo Flores There are plenty of good reasons to develop a skill set for growing food in small spaces. Maybe you only have a tiny balcony with sun for half the day? Or a hot, paved driveway but no other yard? Perhaps you’re in student housing? Or maybe it’s more of a time constraint: You’d like to have an expansive garden but you really only want to work on it for an hour a week. Or perhaps you just don’t really eat…

Permaculture Womens Guild

Why you should be growing marigolds in your permaculture garden By Heather Jo Flores What do you think of when you hear the word marigold? Maybe you imagine those 6-inch-high borders of orange and yellow flowers that your grandmother planted around her rose beds. Did she buy them by the flat, already blooming? Maybe she knew they helped repel insects from the roses. Or maybe she just liked the fact that they were so easy to grow, drought tolerant and cold-hardy, blooming late into the fall, hanging tough through heavy rains to cheer up even the soggiest gardener. When I…

Permaculture Womens Guild

A baker’s dozen of easy to grow and disease-resistant perennial hedge plants. By Heather Jo Flores No garden is complete without a yummy patch of edible, perennial shrubbery! Even a small garden can squeeze in a few brambles, berries or ‘chokes. To create a low-maintenance food forest with a year-round harvest and multiple layers of plants, a mid-sized perennial understory is an essential piece of the design. Shrubs connect the canopy to the ground and create habitats for birds and insects. The shrub layer also shelters smaller plants and creates boundaries and microclimates. ​I picked a baker’s dozen of the best…

Permaculture Womens Guild

group plants together for specific reasons, encourage them to spread into permanent, self-managing landscapes

Permaculture Womens Guild

You need to have the right tool for the job. So what tools are needed for a permaculture garden?

Permaculture Womens Guild

Permaculture approaches to feeding the world in a changing climate, planting trees to feed future generations.