Perennis Permaculture offers the following services:
Permaculture Garden Design and Consultancy
Plant Expertise
Demonstrating Permaculture in Action
Garden Management and Maintenance
Gardening Coaching
Courses and Teaching
Talks
Please scroll down to find out more.
Permaculture Garden Design and Consultancy
Permaculture Design goes beyond conventional garden design, not only focusing on plants and outdoor spaces but integrating those with your entire habitat and lifestyle. In considering aspects such as food, energy efficiency, water and waste management, your social life and recreation, and many more, permaculture design can help you increase the useful output from your garden (be it food, blooms, beauty, or enjoyment of wildlife) while making maintenance less laborious, to help you lead a more fulfilled and sustainable life.
Experience in both permaculture design and teaching means that we can offer anything from doing a full design for you to coaching you in exploring permaculture and creating your own designs. If you choose the latter path, we can also direct you towards a range of courses and workshops in permaculture and related areas, to set you on your permaculture journey or boost your confidence and skills. See below which courses we offer.
We are happy to engage to any extent, from designing your whole garden (including interactions with its surroundings) to advice on particular plants to fill a vacant spot. In this, we rely on our extensive botanical and horticultural expertise and experience.
Plant Expertise
Plants are key to any successful garden, whether grown purely for their beauty or with other things in mind. We can advise on the choice of pants for the specific conditions of your garden, based on the plants' cultural requirements and growth habits, and their interactions with other plants and animals. We are also happy to recommend plants based on other functions - ornamental qualities in different seasons, food uses, as companion plants, pollinator attractors, soil builders, etc. etc. We are particularly fond of (and know and grow a lot of) unusual edibles such as perennial vegetables and 'edimentals', which we can recommend and on many occasions also supply.
Experiencing Permaculture in Action
To experience permaculture design and gardening for yourself, contact us to book a tour of Nenya's 15-year old suburban forest garden in south Edinburgh, or explore Permaculture Association's ScotLAND scheme for a range of demonstration sites of urban and rural permaculture, from small gardens to farm-scale.
If you'd like to try your hand at permaculture gardening, we may be able to fix you with some volunteering at various sites across Edinburgh (and beyond). Let us know what you are after!
Garden Management and Maintenance
We offer garden maintenance with a difference – informed by ecological awareness and understanding how nature works, and the ethos of organic, low-impact gardening. We approach every garden as an ecosystem, and aim to treat its health and problems holistically. This means that rather than attempting fast fixes to exterminate the troublesome pest or disease (which would only leave a vacancy for another one), we suggest solving problems by increasing the diversity of life in your garden (from bacteria and other micro-organisms under and above ground, to insects and birds) to achieve a healthy balance, which in time will bring any troublesome usurpers back in check.
In practice, earth-friendly gardening means:
- Feeding your soil and its creatures through mulching and compost, because only a healthy living soil can support healthy plants.
- Using locally available resources, which would normally be considered 'garden waste', to boost fertility and diversity through mulching, composting, and creative landscaping - for example, leaves make excellent mulches which feed soil life; tree branches can be used as bed or path edgings, wildlife habitat or water-stores (when buried), or chipped for use on paths or as a mulch or compost ingredient.
- Lowering the maintenance effort through optimising the planting and year-round management (for instance, mulched borders with fewer gaps between plants don't leave much space for weeds, and need a lot less watering, even in dry weather).
- Limiting the use of power-tools and promoting more naturalistic landscapes, such as flowering low swards rather than conventional lawns; planting shrubs and trees which do not require constant trimming through informed choice of species, cultivars, and correct rootstocks; using natural depressions which gather water to establish bog gardens etc.
- Avoiding the use of toxic chemicals and synthetic fertilisers.
- Encouraging people's greater engagement with and enjoyment of gardens teeming with life, colour, and a healthy diversity of plants.
See the Gallery for examples of our work.
While some find our approach too much of a departure from neatly edged regimented borders, lollipopped shrubs and manicured lawns, many of our clients are quickly converted to see the beauty in the thriving natural habitats, often packed with food for people and other creatures. You don't have to go the whole hog at once, anyway - try us out and see the effects on a small part of your garden.
Gardening Coaching
If you like gardening but feel that you lack confidence or knowledge, we can help you build them up by gardening alongside you while explaining what we do and why, and answering your questions. If you are after more comprehensive knowledge, a range of courses can be of help - see those we offer below.
Courses and Teaching
Regular events and courses offered by Perennis Permaculture:
- Plant identification and foraging walks and workshops (some include lunches cooked with foraged ingredients!)
- Botanical excursions and field trips
- Workshops on homemade botanical cosmetics (balms, moisturisers, shampoos etc.)
Courses offered through NonStuff Industries CIC:
- Forest Gardening
- Introduction to Permaculture
- Full Permaculture Design Course
- Permaculture Practitioner Training
- and other more specialist advanced courses
Check out Upcoming events for dates of courses. Permaculture courses are also announced through Permaculture Association course listings.
Courses can be offered on request provided there is enough demand - let us know if you can't wait!
We are also happy to be booked to do one-off demonstrations or classes, such as seed-sowing for kids, or pruning fruit trees or bushes.
We are sometimes able to accommodate volunteers seeking to hone particular gardening skills or boost their general competence - get in touch if interested.
Talks
We are happy to offer talks and lectures on Permaculture, Forest Gardening, Perennial Vegetables and Edimentals. Please tell us more about your expectations and requirements.