Spring is coming. My email is flooded with messages from nursery’s showing off all the wonderful plants just waiting for me to buy them and scrolling through social media I see beautiful lush gardens and bountiful harvests that I just want for myself. My primal urges are telling me to go grab my credit card but as a garden designer I know I must wait.
Gardens are fun and enticing and it’s easy to get swept away into a planting frenzy but I advise you to be patient. A good garden must function well and to understand how things should or do function we must first do some planning and assessing.
Plants Out of Sight are Plants Out of Mind
Many people tell me they can’t garden because they can’t keep plants alive. Then I notice the shriveled up flowers or trees planted mostly out of sight in a lonely patch in the yard, a very common mistake. It’s not that these people can’t keep plants alive they were just forgetting to, because they were out of sight and out of mind.
I always recommend to beginning gardeners to start gardens close to the home. In areas like front entry beds or a herb garden right off the patio, or just somewhere you walk by everyday if not multiple times a day. This way the possibility of forgetting the plants and then neglecting them is avoided for the most part. As your first beds get established and you find yourself motivated to be outside in the garden enjoying the fruits of your labor you can begin to expand into other parts of the yard. Think of the snowball effect, start small close to the house and as things establish, expand.
Now that you know where to start your garden you may be thinking, what should I even plant? And that is where the concept of “Zones” comes in to play.
The Garden Zones
In permaculture, Zones refers to a system of organizing your garden to function based on how often different areas are visited and the maintenance requirements. Essentially it works like this: your most high maintenance plants or things you use daily (like herbs) should be in a place close to the home, where you go everyday or multiple times a day. While hardier plants and less used items can go somewhere you don’t visit as often. We label zones 1-5, with 1 being the most frequented and 5 being the least.
Your zones start right outside the home with zone 1. This may also be a office or other central area where people congregate depending on where you are gardening. Zone 1 is the most visited place of the yard, somewhere you visit at least once or multiple times a day. Zone 1 is the best place for the neediest plants or most frequented elements like herbs, vegetable gardens, lawn, patio, thirsty ornamentals and etc. This is also a good place to put things like your most frequently used garden tools so you can pick them up on your way through the garden and for your compost so you don’t have to carry the kitchen scraps far.
Next is Zone 2, this is somewhere you might visit once a day, here is the best place for things like berries, perennial crops, dwarf fruit trees, ponds and chickens. Maintenance in zone 2 is not as intensive, occasional spot mulching and occasional deep watering.
Zone 3 will be visited even less visited and is a good spot for large fruit and nut trees or other plants that are rarely pruned and maintained. Harvesting is typically done here only once or twice a year.
Next is Zone 4 and 5 which typically only apply to larger properties. Zone 4 is a semi wild area, a good space for grazing animals, firewood and timber trees, and foraging for wild foods and supplies. Zone 5 is a completely wild zone that we let it be. It is a place for play, thought and for observation of nature and learning so that we are reminded to keep in tune with nature when designing the other zones of the yard.
Plan before Plants
Now before you run to the nursery for all those lovely spring plants you have some idea of where those plants should go. When planning your zones remember that zones are meant for guidance and do not need to be followed exactly. Some zones may overlap and some individuals may like to put certain elements in one zone while others may not. I personally consider vegetable gardens as a zone 1 item, while others consider it best placed in zone 2 but it comes down to what works for you since it’s your garden.
Your zones may also be effected by elements like light and access to water. For example if all the areas around your house are completely shaded it will be difficult to grow your vegetable garden there so in this case the zones will need adjusted. Also keep in mind that images demonstrating zones often use perfect circles when in reality that is seldom the case (whose yard is a circle anyways?), your zones do not need to be that perfect as nature rarely is.
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