Improve biodiversity in your garden with permaculture

Permaculture is essentially about diversity. Something that can be found everywhere in nature, unless you look at the places where humans interfere with nature. In many places things go wrong on a large scale, with entire ecosystems the size of a small country being lost, but even in our own gardens, biodiversity is often nowhere to be found. In the Netherlands we increasingly have to deal with extreme weather conditions: drought, heat, or just extreme downpours, but also summer storms in which sometimes whole areas of forest are razed to the ground. Because of these and more developments, for example, the number of insects in the Netherlands has declined by 75% in the past 30 years. Unintentionally, we often contribute to this ourselves: we place stone terraces so that rainwater cannot soak into the ground and we mow our grass and weed our weeds, reducing soil diversity and depriving insects of a place to nest or find food. 

But: it can be done differently. The goal of permaculture is to restore the balance and diversity of nature in man-made environments. When you apply the principles of permaculture in your own garden, you create a garden that is balanced and self-maintaining, where a variety of plants and trees can thrive optimally and where biodiverse life can be found. In the long run, you'll even have a maintenance-free garden that way. 

An arid, barren plain. Burning hot sun, a vast drought. That's what the banks of the Brahmaputra River looked like in 1979. Tree-cutting to make room for farmland, extreme heat and an increasingly frequent flooding river caused more and more fertile land to be washed away. What remains is a hot, dry plain where nothing survives. Fast forward to 35 years later and the same area is now a tropical green oasis. Dozens of native plant and tree species make up a jungle that is home to a diversity of insects, birds, as well as Bengal tigers, rhinos and even entire herds of elephants. All thanks to one man, Jadav Payeng, who could not bear to see his homeland lost to the effects of climate change. 

It's an incredibly inspiring story: one man who, like some kind of superhero, planted trees every day for years until a new, completely self-sufficient ecosystem formed. And all by simply cooperating with nature, the principle underlying permaculture. 

Permaculture was conceived in the 1970s by Australian Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Even then, they foresaw the problems posed by a system based on economic growth. Our current agricultural and livestock system is based on the principle of monoculture: in order to produce crops as efficiently, cheaply and quickly as possible, the same crop is always grown on the same piece of land. This creates several problems. Because only one crop is grown, not only is the soil depleted, but pests and diseases also have a chance to spread at lightning speed. After all, there is an abundance of food, allowing them to reproduce rapidly. To solve this problem and prevent entire crops from failing at once, pesticides are used. These are detrimental to soil diversity and soil fertility. To re-nourish the soil, fertilizer is used. But fertilizers also cause soil diversity to be lost. This combined with the heavy machinery used to cultivate the land results in the soil becoming completely depleted, soil diversity disappears and the land becomes infertile. There is also the problem of water supply: because only one crop is grown and the soil is nutrient-poor, the water table drops. Irrigation systems use surrounding water reservoirs, such as rivers and lakes. This causes dehydration and erosion of the soil. Last but not least, using all those pesticides and growing only one crop causes bee mortality. It is obvious why this is a problem: worldwide, more than three-quarters of agricultural crops depend on pollinators such as bees. 

Long story short: it is a vicious circle, where the natural balance of soil life is disturbed to such an extent that in the long run it leads to the agricultural land becoming unusable. A well-known example of this is the Loess Plateau in China. Due to centuries of overgrazing and exploitation of farmland, almost all vegetation disappeared and a layer of nearly 100 meters of fertile soil was washed away. What remained, as in the area where Jadav Payeng grew up, was a huge dry plain, the size of France, leaving the millions of residents of the area destitute. In the mid-1990s, a program was initiated to restore the fertility and biodiversity of the area. The results have been stunning: within 15 years, more than 35,000 square kilometers of the parched area have been restored. Through the planting of native trees and plants, a restriction on grazing and the installation of irrigation systems, the ecological balance has been restored, a wide variety of crops are grown in the area, and the yield per capita as well as the average salary of each resident of the area has doubled. In addition, the area has become a true carbon sink: an area where more CO2 is stored than emitted. It's such a success story that it's almost too good to be true. 

The story of Jadav Payeng and the Loess Plateau have one thing in common: working together with nature restored the natural ecosystem. Both stories point out that our current interaction with nature is wrong. Permaculture bets on changing our attitude toward nature: man not as supreme, but as part of nature. Bor Borren, permaculture designer: "Permaculture is a multidisciplinary design system that focuses on natural systems, in which everything is interconnected and everything has its own function. We cannot change the laws of nature, but when we understand those laws, we can help accelerate the natural processes that benefit everyone. We have forgotten how to nourish the soil and how ecological systems sustain themselves and correct themselves when they become out of balance due to changing conditions. Once that balance is regained, all kinds of things will begin to grow." 

To turn your own garden into a balanced ecosystem, you don't have to be an expert. The best advice, according to Bor, is to just be patient. Restoring balance takes time, so give your garden the time it needs to grow. Start small and focus on something where you can easily make a difference. Even if you have a small garden, you can make a big difference. But restoring your garden according to the principles of permaculture should, above all, be fun. "A garden should be a place where you can have fun. A place where you can create your own paradise. Permaculture is all about letting go of certain beliefs. Beliefs that weeds need to be removed, grass needs to be cut and borders need to be uncovered. Once you let go of these kinds of beliefs, you will soon start asking yourself: why do we design our gardens the way we do?" 

Bor: "In the Netherlands we are used to flat land, so we also lay out flat gardens. It is a big misconception that we have to level our gardens. Go to a nearby forest and you will never see a flat terrain. In fact, this is a big eye-opener for many people: wind is the biggest enemy in the growth of trees, shrubs and plants. The less resistance a plant faces, the more vigorous its growth will be. A height difference of about half a meter can already create different vegetation. So create the height differences of nature in your garden. Shelter from the wind follows and plants can grow." 

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