I just remembered that there is a concept of 'zones' in Permaculture... I vaguely remember it goes from zone 0 around the house to zone five which is yer wild area..... I'm going to have to look this up so I can remember it in my brain-thing!
Just off the top of my head I think I've actually got FIVE zones on my land.....
- House and boundary - and fire safety zone!
- Veggies and plant nursery - annuals and young plants (bottom field)
- Fruit growing area (fruit tree terraces and olive terraces and sharkas)
- Main olives and grasslands.
- Woodlands and Wild stream area
On the map below you can kind of see this - the boundary is obvious in red, and the house mid right long boundary.
The fruit growing area is the 'swales' and veggies and annuals are immediately below this, almost a 'second home zone'
Olives and grasslands are in pink (zone 4) and then every where else is zone five - woodlands and wetlands, the wild areas.
NB I haven't done most of the water features yet - it's adapted already because of the track that now goes through where the lowest large pond is, but i will get there!
A few thoughts on Zoning....
I know this isn't CLASSIC Zone thinking or planning, I've adapted it to suit what I've got.
But classic or not, it really helps me not only with prioritising, but also with deciding on what to plant..... for example...
1. House and Boundary....
NB NOT the finished look!
This is easy when you're in a Fire hazard area - keep these area clear and raked (sorry Permies!) and plant fire resistant trees (cork oaks/ strawberry trees for example) and Cacti should be fine too.
Besides this it is just fire resistant shrubbery such as Rosemary and anything else I can think of, and maybe a small kitchen garden near the house, just a few beds for the essentials.
Something else that could work well around the edges is water storage, as in concrete tanks - but obviously that's not going to take up that much room!
2. Annuals and plant nursery
The pink area is a great place for growing annuals and having a plant nursery, possibly the later being up on the upper terrace slightly, but somewhere around there certainly where all my young saplings are going to go, under shade in summer and with easy access to the water.
Also chickens down here - my coop is going down the bottom, when I get around to building it!
This is also going to be my main 'compost area' - as in for kitchen waste and hay.
3. Fruit growing...
The main tranche of fruit trees are where the swales are, this would probably be a good place for me to put in a few fruit bushes too, such as blueberries, because of ease of watering.
This is where most of my mulch will end up - so it would be good if mulch material could find its way up here (note to self)
Just above the swales I currently have water storage in IBCs, not a sharka, that's to be built at some point!
The second 'zone three' areas, because I regard them as places that will need more active maintenance, are the olive terraces and around the sharkas, which is from the grasslands up the house.
Although this area is really zone 3.5 I think.
4. Grassland and olives/ upper area.
Olive terraces to the right, between zones 3 and 4 in my mind!
VERY little maintenance required here - the olives only need attention twice a year and hopefully I can get away with cutting the grass just twice a year.
It makes me wonder if I should be sowing SOMETHING in the way of ground cover in addition, maybe in some of the sparser patches, maybe on the first row of terraces as an experiment....?
These are also where I'm planning on building most of my hugel-beds for longer term soil building - Perennial plants can go in various places on the edges of my grassland, in said beds.
My brain thing also tells me that the 400 square metres or so up past the house I should treat as grassland - kind of an area that's spars-ish and generally kept clear, but still with some production going on. Again, maybe this is 3.5, half way between 3 and 4!
5. Woodlands and Wetlands
These are effectively my wild places - just let them be for the main part other than planting some more oaks and various other trees in places to the right.
To the upper left woodland area I need to keep the pine and Eucalyptus thinned - I don't mind either but I want to expand the edges of these areas into a more diverse array of trees.
I'm happy with some small brash piles left in the wild areas, but really I want them all dragged out to zone four!
Thinking in Zones does really help...
This is a crude Zoning model, and not perfect permaculture, but I've had to adapt and go with what I've got!
Thinking in zones does help me vision what I need to be planting where and what kind of things I need to focus on first of all - namely around the house (Zone 1) is first and then I'm onto compost and Mulch building in zones 3 and 4.
Then I've got to get my fruit tree area tidy, zone three, and get irrigation sorted out (still got a month until this NEEDs doing!)
Strimming Zone Four comes into play in early May to late June (hopefully just twice) and just general tidying and thinning out of some but not all dead wood from zone five.
It's going to be a busy the rest of 2022, not to mention rest of the decade!