permaculture

[Steve Hart <stevenlawrencehart@gmail.com>]

Great subject..tis wetland ecologies. a field no doubt all good
Permaculture Designers will get their feet wet in at some time early in
their career. I did immediately after my first PDC in 1981..when it
intrigued me how we waste resources so terribly. That took me on a global
mission to all extremes of the subject of sewage and waste water in
general. Many conferences and design reports and court hearings later it is
still as intriguing also disturbing to realise that corporates are
dictating so many terms. Through it all I met many brilliant people doing
brilliant work including quite a few excellent american models from Billy
Wolverton ( Wolverton environmental) and Viet Ngo (Lemna Corporation) to
name only two. Albert Bates knows full well how the system is manipulated
via local authorities. Their system at the farm is an excellent example,
but well over designed due to authorities.

But the best of all was from Romania where two scientists who were senior
lecturers in the subjects and headed a faculty at the university got
funding support through the military (why the military ? thats another
story) to build 8 wetland installations to purify water. They were all in
glass cased pyramids. Now then, pyramid science is yet another lengthy
subject. They researched it understood it and used it to great effect
producing the highest quality water in any waste water treatment plant in
the world by a very wide margin.

Great subject..there are many ecologies to the one ecology. An excellent
subject for Permaculturalists to get their feet wet in

Steve Hart

On 5 July 2015 at 02:53, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 12:28 AM, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I have been thinking about a permascape system for that facility over the
> >> past few days.
> >> 1) Rain goes to concrete basins
> >> put aquatic plants in them - water hyacinth would be ideal; not sure
> what
> >> other floating aquatic plants you have down there.
> >> If you construct some kind of rudimentary floating island you could
> stick
> >> cattails on them and eventually they would send  roots down into the
> silt
> >> on the bottom if that could be allowed to exist, probably a good idea.
> This
> >> would pretreat/remediate the water.
> >> 2) Overflow goes to wetlands and pond
> >> Have the flow pass through an expanse of "lawn", a gradual slope planted
> >> with durable, vigorous weeds and grasses, unmowed.
> >>
> >
> > Plants I have in my yard that would work well for this purpose: vast
> > expanses of Nature's wild bounty: Johnson grass, vetch, greater burdock,
> > broadleaf plantain, grasses, ground ivy or creeping charlie, Carolina
> horse
> > nettle or Jimson weed, red clover, mystery weeds, morning glory, Canada
> > thistle or milk thistle, trumpet vine or campsis radicans, honeysuckle,
> > wild rose, probably some poison ivy, daisy or ragweed or goldenrod, milk
> > weed for the monarch butterflies and bumblebees. If there is room for
> trees
> > include persimmon and wild plum which are amazingly hardy; I think they
> > spread by underground runner as well as by seed.
> >
>
> More on site water remediation, the "weed lawn" filtration, nutrient
> removal, stage
>
> You might think that a diverse random planting of colonies of common weeds
> would become imbalanced and eventually not serve the intended purpose,
> lacking certain plant varieties that are valuable to such an arranged
> ecosystem. I have observed that most if not all of the plants listed above
> return each year, sprout, mature, set seed and coexist with each other.
> Competition for light and shade is a factor in the survival of each. They
> grow in an area irrigated with rainfall runoff with moderate nutrient
> content, so they are well fertilized. Their population densities together
> with accumulated biomass on the ground help conserve water during drought.
>
> Johnson grass, vetch, greater burdock, broadleaf plantain, grasses, ground
> ivy or creeping charlie, Carolina horse nettle or Jimson weed, red clover,
> mystery weeds, morning glory, trumpet vine or campsis radicans,
> honeysuckle, wild rose, probably some poison ivy, daisy or ragweed or
> goldenrod all grow together with variation in individual population
> densities related to shading and crowding. I am looking at this very
> planting out my window now and it is amazing. This is its best year. I
> started trying to establish a fescue lawn which turned out spotty and weeds
> filled in the spaces between fescue clumps. I decided to let become a weed
> lawn. I mow it after most of the plants have gone to seed with an Austrian
> scythe. This tool is the best one to use to mow any lawn, grass flourishes
> this way.
>
> One area I just took a quick inventory of is a well ordered planting of red
> clover, mystery weed, morning glory, fescue, broadleafed plantain, Johnson
> grass, weed crysanthemum and greater burdock, in groups scattered around
> with each other. This is a stable, manageable planting that absorbs excess
> nutrients, returns each year and covers the ground completely. Scything
> keeps it manageable for foot traffic
> by thinning out certain plant types and reducing height on others. For the
> purpose of bioremediation no mowing would be desired and the overall
> planting would sustain itself, continuing to completely cover the ground,
> year round in warm climates. In cold area I suggest installing a large
> number of Hugelkultur mounds on contours across grades, These would absorb
> rainfall and nutrients during the cold months and return them to weeds
> during the rest of the year, keeping the area relatively clean and aerobic.
>
> Establishing a weed lawn with appropriate plants can be accomplished by
> bringing in topsoil containing seeds from these plants or purchasing seeds
> from sources like JL Hudson seedsman.
>
> LL
>
>
> --
> Lawrence F. London
> lfljvenaura@gmail.com
> https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/
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-- 
Kia ora

[image: Picture]
*Steve Hart*
*Ecology Architect*
*Designer, Teacher, Builder of Ecologically Sustainable Resilient
Environments, through Urban Design, Architecture, Landscape Architecture
and Systems Ecology.​*
Skype: tipenemanawa
Phone: +64 220 75 62 11

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The Permaculture College of Europe.
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