solutions, can help us all adapt and thrive during an age of resource depletion and energy descent. What better place to begin than in our own home landscapes, neighborhoods and local communities. Once you begin, you may just find your life’s purpose and delight in this work. I continue to be appalled by the state of the conventional American home and commercial landscape. They are, by and large, abysmally boring, polluting, resource and energy drains. Our home landscapes have often been reduced to Lawn Order, little green balls around the house foundation, some gaudy annual flowers and a few nonproductive, ill-tended trees. I rarely see people truly occupying these landscapes unless they’re tooling along behind some sort of infernal combustion powered lawnmower, Weedeater or leaf blower. The American home landscapes consume more fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides than all of American agriculture. They are often resource sinks for our time and money with very little reward or satisfaction to show for it. Surely the green homes (and landscapes) movement can do better than this. The important thing is to begin. If you’re an existing homeowner, your task is one of restoration and redesign. First, do your research and educate yourself to fill in your knowledge and experience gaps. Go to the Organic Grower’s School. Take a permaculture course or workshop. Read a permaculture book. I recommend Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemmenway as a good introductory text. If you feel your skill set is not yet adequate enough for the task, consult with an experienced permaculture designer or permaculture-literate design professional who is familiar with local soils, plants and microclimates. Employing an experienced design consultant early on will save you money in the long term and prevent costly mistakes along the way. You may want to contract for a more complete design plan for your property including strategic approaches and timelines that mesh well with your available skill set, free time and financial means. If you need help with the installation, your consultant/designer can help you find a qualified local gardener, landscaper or arborist to work with. If you are considering building a new home, I would strongly recommend that you work with an experienced permaculture designer before you purchase your land or as soon as possible. This will save you lots of unnecessary expenses and assure that you end up with an integrated home and landscape that meets both your needs and the needs of the land. Your designer can help you choose a suitable property, develop your site in environmentally conscious ways, and guide the evolution of your productive landscape and integrated home system. Our landscapes should not be an afterthought of the green-homes movement, but the sacred ground within which we sensitively and humbly embed our homes and communities. From this place, our home life can be nourished on many levels and community resilience can grow. We can truly design our way home again. Chuck Marsh is an elder Permaculture practitioner, teacher, designer and bioregional inhabitant. He is the senior partner of Living Systems Designn (www.livingsystemsdesign.net) a local permaculture design/consulting group, and the founder of Useful Plants Nursery, usefulplants.org, your source for permaculture and edible landscaping plants. Contact him at (828) 669-1759 or chuck@livingsystemsdesign.net.
WNC Green Building Council
wncgreenbuilding.com
WNC Green Building Directory
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