Reading the land

Every design begins long before the first spade goes into the ground. Permaculture asks for patient observation: how the sun moves across a place, where the wind comes from, where water gathers and where it runs off, what grows there of its own accord. This chapter stands here because the principles of the last chapter need something to work on, and that something is the real land in front of you.

The land gives its information to anyone who knows how to ask. Wild plants are a soil report of their own: where they grow reveals moisture, acidity, nutrient supply, light or salt. A block of soil lifted with a spade shows crumbs, roots, earthworms, smell and compacted layers on the spot. Moist earth rubbed between the fingers tells you roughly how much sand, silt and clay it holds, without a laboratory. A laboratory analysis then measures pH, humus, nutrients, lime, salt and sodium, and is best read together with those field tests. In the Mediterranean, the macchia, the dense hard-leaved shrubland, shows what tough plant cover can hold on ground that woodland has lost.

The pages below explain each method. Together they turn a first impression into knowledge you can design with.