Marginal Space and Time
Use the edges and value the marginal is a permaculture principle that really resonates with Anthea and I. Learning to recognise the potential of challenging spots, or just making the most of the margins can be of great benefit to your garden.
The desire for a ‘down-to-earth’ or ‘back-to-the-land’ approach to living has continued to grow in the face of adversity, and so with an increasing population of people searching for a place on which to grow food, capture energy and restore biodiversity, it seems likely that more challenging sites - the unusual, overlooked plots of land - are the places that will be most accessible for growers to transform.
If you have a place to grow, or are looking for one, observation and interaction is your guiding principle in determining how you might be able to value the marginal. I would note that the idea is not to extract value from the marginal, but to simply value it. It is of course going to be necessary to obtain a yield if you are to eat from your new garden, but you might also be simply hoping to use and value diversity, helping restore the land within the natural ecosystem.
A permaculture site sector analysis of the place, is a map of your observations. It is more of a synthesis of all of the influences coming together on the site, and helps you to design your garden from patterns to details. There are literally one hundred questions or more that you can ask about a place in preparation for interacting with it. We knew that our new south-facing, 33m vertical rising site was marginal (and thus affordable) - it had been unwanted for some time - and taking our time with observation highlighted the potential, and challenges, we might encounter with shade and wind, water movement, hillside microclimates and more.
In a typical garden, the margins are likely those areas that were not filled with beds first. The places with excuses. The shady zones, the dry patches, those exposed to the wind. These can sometimes be the place to put your garden shed, using the least favourable conditions for a structural function, and saving the best for the plants. The marginal places are also the edges. If you have a veggie patch already, using materials for your garden edges or planter boxes is great for holding soil - but what other functions could be stacked with a few modifications? It might be a semi-permanent trellis that provides shade in the warmer months, attached to the edge of the bed. Remember to think in three dimensions and it might just be that the vertical space isn’t so marginal all, but a major asset. The fence lines around your property, the edge around the shed, even the space that is perfect for three months of the year in autumn, and is utilised just at that time, is an example of the creatively using and responding to change principle, with the seasons.
While we are moving with time, consider the marginal and ‘edge’ times of the year. A great way to maximise your garden yield is to identify strategies to grow through the more difficult seasons - in my opinion we are, only just now, making our way out of the most difficult time of the year in the Hunter. Soon we will sit on the edge of summer and autumn, and another shoulder at the end of winter. These edges in the calendar can be amazingly abundant as we make the most of two sets of conditions if we have planned for them. You can also work with the edges when picking varieties and when to grow. Choosing to start early and late tomatoes can be a great way to address fruit fly, avoiding the height of their life cycle in the season. It also used to be quite common for a few fruit trees in the backyard to be of different varieties for an extended seasons, lemons for example chosen for a heavy crop in winter, and smaller crop in spring and summer.
The humble fruit tree is often an edge or marginal growing space that I see overlooked in backyards. Trees growing in isolation with a neat ring of mulch around them. Instead of mowing lawn between them, connect them together and fill the ground below with layers of herbs and flowers. Integrated, not segregated, plants can be of enormous benefit to one another. Choose a good ground-cover and your mulching needs will be gone also.
The edges and margins are not separate from the garden, but highly valuable parts of it, we just have to identify them first.
As featured in the Hunter Organic Growers Society Newsletter - February 2023. For more about their marginal farm, see Will & Anthea’s expanded article in Sowing Seeds Magazine, Issue 4, 2020
February 2023
Paterson