Permaculture Development and Implementation: A How To Guide

After observing the landscape, dreaming of your perfect design, and doing lots of research, it’s finally time. It’s time to start designing! Permaculture design can be a long and involved practice, especially for beginners. But in the final steps of this practice, we get to create the actual design and implement it. For some, this is the best part of the process: permaculture development and implementation!

In this article, I’m going to walk you through the permaculture development and implementation process. I’m assuming that you already understand or have completed the first three steps of the permaculture design process. If not, you can learn everything you need to know about them in this article on permaculture design.

The Permaculture Design Process

The steps I’ve listed below are inspired by Toby Hemmingway in his book, Gaia’s Garden. If you’re new to permaculture, I really recommend checking out this guide. I’ve taken the steps he describes and modified them slightly. The steps are (1) Observe, (2) Vision, (3) Research, (4) Develop, and (5) Implement.

I’m assuming that you already understand and/or have completed the first three steps in this process. Therefore, in this article, I’m going to go over the last two steps of the design process: development and implementation. If you’d like more information about the rest of the permaculture design process, read this article about permaculture design.

Permaculture Development

It’s time to start designing! In this step, we are putting together the actual permaculture design. When we’re in the developing stage, we are analyzing our priorities, creating timelines, creating a layout of the design, sketching out the placements of each element, optimizing relationships and space usage, designing for beauty, and finalizing the steps for implementation.

Remember, permaculture principle number 9 is to design from patterns to details. So to begin, we look at the big picture. In this step, we take the zone and sector map we created and begin experimenting with element placements based on their needs and yield analysis. This is a creative process where we play and continue to shift elements around until they find a home.

Tips for Assembly

• If you’re using a physical map and not a program, it’s helpful to create paper cutouts of each element to scale. That way, you can easily move the elements around without having to continuously erase your map.
• It’s also useful to start with one category or area at a time. For instance, maybe you start with your fruit and nut trees, garden shapes, or animal areas.
• Remember to start big picture. If you know you want an ornamental garden in front of the house, just designate the garden area. Then later, you can go in and fill in the details of which plant species will be planted there.
• Start with the pickiest elements. If you know there are elements that have more needs than others, you may want to place them first. That way, you can place the other less picky elements around them.
• Give this process a few weeks before completing the final design. By finishing it in one sitting, you may miss a lot of details and will have to go back and fix it. I recommend leaving the project out on a table for a few weeks so you can just look at it and move pieces around that you see fit.
• This is a marathon, not a sprint! In this step, we design for the long haul. It’s ok if you don’t have the time or resources to make all of these changes all at once. In fact, it’s better that you don’t! The design you create will be your ideal final design, it’s ok if you don’t achieve that design for 10 years. In the next step, we will determine priorities so you know where to begin.

At the end of this process, you’ll have a completed map. Congrats! Now, you may be ready to put the plan into action right away. Let’s look at the steps of implementation and figure out what’s feasible and what’s not.

Permaculture Implementation

This is where we actually begin making changes to the landscape! But before implementing the design, it’s important to look at what we can do and when. Creating a schedule for implementation will help prevent us from getting overwhelmed and will help us ensure we don’t run out of resources to finish the projects we start. When creating this schedule, it’s helpful to think about these questions:

• What is your most urgent desire? This can be food production, outdoor sitting space, shade, etc.
• How much time do you have to work on the design? Right now? Next month? Next year?
• Is the land in any urgent need of care? For instance, does the land need help with erosion, soil building, or habitat restoration?
• Will the design require outside labor you’ll need to hire? Most importantly, will you need to do any large-scale earthmoving or hardscaping?
• What can and cannot be done in the season you’re in? What can and cannot be done during other times of the year?
• How many resources do you have for the project (financial and otherwise)? How many resources will you have in the following months or the following years?
• Are there projects that are time-sensitive? Are there projects where, if you start them, you need to finish them within a certain time frame?

Once you’ve answered these questions, create an approximate timeline for yourself and get started! When getting started, I recommend following this order (borrowed from Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemmenway, page 66):

Order of Implementation

1. Begin with any major earth moving. If you wait to do big earth-moving projects until later in the implementation process, you risk damaging other elements and causing more work for yourself. This is where you’d install water features like ponds and underground irrigation systems.
2. Lay down any broad soil amendments like compost and mulching.
3. Complete any hardscaping on the property, such as buildings, sheds, paths, fences, barns, etc.
4. Outline beds, lay down sheet mulches, and plant cover crops.
5. Begin installing large, perennial plants, trees, and shrubs.
6. Adjust irrigation systems and do any fine-tuning.
7. Pay special attention to plants as they are becoming established. Give them extra water and care when they need it.

Remember, things aren’t going to go as planned! It’s almost guaranteed that things will go wrong, resources will vary, and things will take longer than you thought they would. It’s important to be flexible and continue to try to see problems as opportunities for improvement. Remember our permaculture principles: we respond to conflict with creativity and we stay focused on the big picture!

The Free Permaculture Visioning Workbook

If you’re interested in permaculture design, I recommend downloading the free visioning workbook. In this guide, you’ll learn about the second step in the permaculture design process (arguably the most fun and creative step). Type in your email and get the workbook sent right to your inbox!

Summary: Permaculture Development and Implementation

In the last steps of the permaculture design process, we create our design and begin to implement it. After completing the first three steps of the permaculture design process, we begin with step four: permaculture development. Here, we put all of the pieces together and create a finished design! We then take that design and complete step five: implementation.

In this article, you learned how to complete both the permaculture development and implementation steps and are (hopefully!) working on finishing your designs. If you want more information on permaculture design, read this article on the permaculture design process. In this article, I go into detail about each step.

Are you creating a landscape design? Do you have questions about the process? Leave your thoughts and plans in the comment, I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading and happy designing!

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