Sustainable landscape design solutions for gardening and climate problems
Earlier this month I was delighted to give a presentation on permaculture design to the Kenmare gardening group at the Gateway Methodist Church in Kenmare Co. Kerry. The church setting was fitting as I had some biblical analogies regarding creation, gardens, fruit, floods and sustainable landscape design.
I put extensive research into this lecture and went as far as to write a whole article on my preparatory thoughts, partly as an exercise in putting my thoughts in order and partly to give an insight to my readers on this process.
You can read this article here: https://permaculturedesign.ie/2025/05/30/sustainability-talks-for-local-groups/
In particular that article focuses on “design” as a cleavage term in society. When we hear that word, some people envisage a something pleasing to look at or behold in an aesthetic sense, while others think of something being “well designed” when it functions well in a practical sense.
The human spirit must transcend every system
While permaculture design is certainly more concerned with the latter – functional design systems – I have since concluded that any system, even a useful, practical earth-healing one such as permaculture or keyline design – can become a burden on the soul if instead of serving humanity it ensnares the human spirit to only function within its terms of reference. I’ve touched on the topic of the “limits of permaculture” before in one of my first blog articles which you can read here:
https://permaculturedesign.ie/2020/04/14/permaculture-and-politics/
I may expand on these thoughts in more articles on the challenges of reconciling environmentalism and a lower consumption lifestyle with our human needs and the liberation of the human spirit.
But anyway back to the lecture in Kenmare!
Kenmare gardening group lecture recap
I was impressed that the group had so many members in attendance, and honoured to share my design insights with them.
In approximately an hour of presenting I introduced how permaculture was born in the 1970s as a practical response to the experience of environmental destruction and protest of the preceding decades. To introduce the principles and design process of permaculture, I relied on images and stories from the development of my own permaculture garden and images from some of my customer designs.
At the end of the talk there were some excellent audience questions that I was quite unprepared for. As is often the case with permaculture, better, more complete answers come with time and meditation, and so the next day I wrote to the group replying in full. I’ll reproduce those questions and answers below.
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Are there solutions to flooding from downpours in urban localities where the drain system can’t take the volume?
Green spaces
An area mostly covered in concrete or tarmac won’t be able to soak up much water into the ground and can easily overrun a drain system temporarily. Having a greater proportion of green areas will help, and the more large trees and shrubs that grow there, the greater the depth of living soil that will be developed that can hold water effectively. The plants themselves store water also. Better again if these are vegetable gardens and orchards with a water demand that may help motivate the installation of rain water harvesting systems.
Rain Water Harvesting
Much of the rain-water will initially land on house roofs. Each home can divert some of the roof rain-water to a rain-water harvesting system to provide for their garden irrigation and non-potable water needs. Indeed this water can be treated in and in many places may prove more healthful than the mains water likely available in urban areas.
Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems
Some areas of impervious hardscaping such as paths and parking could be replaced with materials allowing sustainable urban drainage, allowing water to percolate through the soil beneath.
Keyline Design Including Ponds
Even better though to my mind if feasible is to design the paths as rain water collectors that divert water to water storage ponds which serve as a local wildlife and perhaps swimming amenity and/or water storage for irrigation during drought.
Are there garden design solutions for people who don’t want so much physical work and upkeep?
Small is beautiful
Protracted thought and holistic planning underlies all of permaculture design and one of the goals is less physical work for more abundance and enjoyment. Having said that designing an appropriately sized intense cultivation area always makes sense. Less, but well done, is always better and more pleasing than an unmanageable overly large situation.
Start at the backdoor
Furthermore using zoning to locate this cultivation area (likely nearer to the home back door than we are used to) will make the maintenance easier. In Ireland a good permaculture design will usually include windbreaks or shelterbelts of trees around the periphery of the site and for people with more land than they can intensively cultivate these boundary buffer zones are often expanded as native woodland, which can pretty much look after itself!
Co-operation is the Human Superpower
Another solution is to ally with people who need more cultivation space than they have. In practice this is often the older generation providing the land resource and the younger generation providing the labour. The great design challenge here is a social one, but can be very rewarding for all parties if such an arrangement can be made.
How do you deal with water outflow from ponds?
The outflow of ponds is a natural and necessary part of the water cycle. Permaculture and Keyline Design don’t seek to stop that, but regulate it to a more consistent, gentle, non-destructive flow throughout the year. A design including such water features is often accompanied by native woodland/tree shelterbelts up-slope that further regulate the water flow from the vagaries of weather that we experience.
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Thanks again to everyone in the Kenmare Gardening group for inviting me to present and happy growing!
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About the Workshop Facilitator
Paul Lynch is an independent sustainability consultant, permaculture designer and orchardist based in West Cork, Ireland. He is co-author of the Mayo Energy Audit 2009 – 2020 and has worked in biomedical R&D engineering in Ireland and in the renewable energy industry in Ireland and Spain. Paul has designed and built several off-grid renewable energy systems and has worked on hundreds of permaculture design and orchard projects across Ireland.
Paul’s teacher bio: https://www.permaculture.org.uk/user/paul-lynch
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