Organic Natural Gardening

The principles of the back to Eden garden method follows Mother Nature’s lead. It just makes sense for the best long term sustainable growing plan for the healthiest food and yard and garden ecosystem.

What’s good for us and our garden’s ecosystem is also good for the planet.

Organic permaculture gardening is about creating and adding rather than taking and depleting. The back to Eden garden method adds more to the yard and garden ecosystem than it takes by enriching the soil through cover crops and healthy organic matter.

With natural gardening, you might need to start off investing in a truckload of healthy organic soil or bags of potting soil, but over time, you will be able to create your own soil, beginning with making organic compost.

The Back to Eden gardening method incorporates permaculture, biodynamic and natural gardening.

But first, let’s explore the definition of natural gardening as well as the often interchangeable terms of biodynamic and permaculture gardening.

“Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour; of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system.” 
~Bill Mollison^[1]https://www.permaculture.net/about/definitions.html

What is the Definition of Natural Gardening?

Natural gardening methods are typically synonymous with organic gardening, but may also expand to include permaculture gardening and biodynamic gardening. Those latter two are just coined variations of basically the same principles and goals.

Biodynamic gardening is based on the natural gardening concept of working with nature to establish natural ecosystems using natural products and methods beneficial to nature. The goal of natural gardening is to grow food organically, without synthetic fertilizers or chemical pesticides.

What is Permaculture Gardening?

Introduced to the world in 1978 in the book, Permaculture One, permaculture is a sustainable system of gardening and farming. More than that, permaculture is a way of life and living through the establishment and symbiotic integration of natural ecosystems of land, resources, people, creatures and the environment.

The founder of the permaculture term, Bill Mollison, an Australian researcher, author, scientist, teacher and biologist, has since written several books on the subject.

Permaculture stands for permanent culture and more specifically, the design of ecological systems that mimic nature in creating sustainable symbiotic loops of minimal effort, for maximum energy and production.

So permaculture gardening is the establishing of gardening structures and systems that work cooperatively toward the greatest efficiency and efficacy, with minimal waste and maximum utilization and restoration of natural systems.

Permaculture Gardening Involves:

• No waste gardening modeled after natural systems
• Holistic solutions applicable in rural and urban environments
• A multidisciplinary approach including:
  • agriculture
  • aquaculture
  • community development
  • economics
  • energy
  • forestry
  • hydrology
  • land management
  • natural building
  • technology
  • waste management,
  • water harvesting

Find Bill Mollison’s Permaculture PDF here.

“Permaculture is a persistent system that supports human existence.”

~Bill Mollison, Australian researcher, author, teacher, biologist scientist, 1928-2016

Definition of Biodynamic Gardening

Biodynamic gardening is also permaculture and natural gardening with the added nuance of the more esoteric coordination of the cycles of the earth, moon and planetary influences. Biodynamic gardening takes into account the ebbs and flows of natural cycles for sustainability, including companion planting, crop rotation and herbs and weeds for building the soil.

The term and concept of biodynamics arose from the work of philosopher and scientist Dr. Rudolf Steiner. Dr. Steiner’s 1924 lectures to farmers opened a new way to integrate scientific understanding with a recognition of spirit in nature.^[2]https://www.biodynamics.com/what-is-biodynamics

Biodynamic gardening integrates natural cycles, companion planting, crop rotation and the symbiotic use of herbs and weeds to nourish the garden ecosystem.

Inspired!

We were inspired to establish more natural gardening areas, without soil preparation, after viewing this Back to Eden documentary, (below). Reminiscent of Ruth Stout and also concepts in hugelkultur, Paul Gautschi, takes us on a tour of his garden using principles from nature, which he calls Back to Eden gardening

These are lessons they don’t teach in school… and some, not even in master gardener classes. The results? A bountiful garden of live fresh food each season, growing things he’s been told won’t grow where he is and sometimes in ways that go against what most of us have been taught.

Permaculture natural gardening builds rather than depletes healthy soil.

The Back to Eden Garden Method of Natural Gardening

Tune into the Back to Eden tour of Paul Gatschi’s property in Washington state below. ^[3]https://www.backtoedenfilm.com/ Or through Amazon.

Paul has a spiritual and religious approach to gardening, and likes to quote scripture. His enthusiasm for using common sense and natural gardening is inspiring and evocative of what’s possible, even in less than healthy soil and water circumstances.

You’re sure to be inspired toward a more natural gardening approach after watching this! I mean what’s not to love?

We get more and better results with less work by following Mother Nature’s blueprint.

Back to Eden Gardening Method Pros and Cons

So far, our hugelkultur plants are thriving. It takes some work up front and some time to season, but the low maintenance, high yield makes up for it for years to come. Hugelkultur works best if you live in or near woods with ready access to fallen limbs, twigs, leaves and fallen and rotting trees.

If you’re in or near woods hugelkultur is great because you have ready access to naturally fallen logs and trees to cut into long hugelkultur logs.

In that case, the Eden Garden method or that of Ruth Stout’s no-till, no work natural gardening method might suit you best.

The main drawback some folks have about these natural garden methods is that they’re not as beautiful as say raised bed gardens, or even neat, well-weeded garden rows. Nature, if left to itself, tends to appear unkempt, but there’s an entire cooperative biointensive gardening ecosystem at work under the disheveled entropy.

WHICH NATURAL GARDENING METHOD IS BEST?
Hugelkultur beds are the way to go if you’re surrounded by woods.
If you have a field, try the Eden Garden permaculture gardening or Ruth Stout method.

PROS of Back to Eden Garden Method

• Low maintenance
• Less water
• Less / no weeding
• No tilling
• Follows the principles of nature
• Less work over time
• No chemicals –
  • organic fertilizer instead of chemical fertilizer support a healthy garden ecosystem
  • organic pest control not harmful to humans or beneficial creatures
  • chemical free natural weed control methods
• Compost piles –
  • creating healthy organic compost and soil
  • ongoing composting of kitchen scraps and some paper recycling
• Builds –
  • healthy soil – adding beneficial nutrients to the soil and yard and garden ecosystem rather than depleting
  • the entire ecosystem of the yard and garden, and beyond
  • symbiotic coexistence and cooperation of beneficial insects and birds that eat mosquitoes and other garden pests
• Supports local businesses through shopping locally for native plants whenever possible

CONS of Back to Eden Gardening Method

• Less attractive – looks wild and unkempt, not tamed neat rows
• A large compost pile can look and smell unpleasant
• Organic gardening is always harder when it comes to pest control, (at first)*
• Hugelkultur takes more time and effort to set up (logs, soil & mulch), but less time overall
• Requires more space than raised beds or straw bales

Best Raised Bed Options for You

If you live in a neighborhood, you should probably go for raised bed gardens or aesthetically planned foodscape landscaping, AKA edible landscape. Subdivisions require a more attractive landscape that rural properties, especially if it’s a front yard garden, or if you have a strict Homeowners Association (HOA).

Raised beds definitely have their advantages, especially in accessibility and aesthetics. Of course you can make hugelkultur beds to be fairly tall for better accessibility as well. But if accessibility and being able to squat or bend down is an issue, you’d need to have someone else build your beds for you anyway.

So if you’re liking this topic, you will definitely also enjoy reading and watching about Ruth Stout, mother of deep mulch gardening, as well as reading more about Hugelkultur.

Our Hugelkultur beds are in the sixth year of healthy plants without us having to add anything but seeds and plants! Now that’s a great return on the initial investment of time to set it up!

The hugelkultur garden is perfect for perennial vegetables. That way you have a low-to-no maintenance garden bed, plus veggies that come back each year. Our hugelkultur bed contains asparagus, dandelion, lavender and sorrel annuals as well as some perennials like lettuces and bok choy.

UPDATE: We did have to relocate our asparagus and lavender as it wasn’t getting enough sunlight in our hugelkultur. So we replaced that with more dandelion and perennial kale: walking stick and kosmic kale.

Lessons and Learnings from Organic Farmers

Check out how one organic farmer uses beneficial cover crops instead of synthetic fertilizers. And… you will LOVE this permaculture documentary on “The Biggest Little Farm” for the raw and real journey of one young city couple taking on the joys and woes, trials and triumphs, of natural farming.

If you haven’t already seen it, check out this great permaculture documentary on The Biggest Little Farm. This film follows a young city couple in their journey in permaculture gardening and farming.

See also, this satellite picture of an organic farm – an island of green amidst non-organic farmlands. The contrast is clear.

Organic gardening is observation followed by creativity followed by humility.

SOURCE: Multiple authors and paraphrasing.

A Florida Yard Garden with Exotic Bitter Melon, Moringa Tree and More

Next, a Florida Garden with exotic fruits and a “Back to Eden” natural wood chip mulch garden to mitigate the sandy soil situation there.

John Kohler, the cool gardener of GrowingYourGreens, dives into this Florida yardscape of edible plants. John also touches on the Back to Eden garden method, which models the natural gardening approach of deep mulch gardening.

This method of layering for retaining moisture and keeping ground temperatures from getting too hot or too cold, mimics nature’s way of nurturing the soil and its creatures.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this article and this next video as well!

Find more on the Back to Eden approach by other, such as the Ruth Stout no till gardening, or deep mulch gardening. If you need help on how to calculate how much mulch you’ll need, you can find that and how to get loads of free wood chips for mulching your garden here.

Let’s keep on growing!