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Perm 02
Perm 02
"The flatter the floor that you flood, the more water that you get for dollars spent."
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 9.
lease into streams, the water that You will be recognizing it every- these are relatively warm. These are
leaves your property, will be clean where; you will be spotting saddle very valuable high meadows, and they
water. dams out of your car windows. are valuable for wild life. They break
Now you may not have the space to Right around here, and north and up the canopy of the forest and give
do all that, but, believe me, you don't south of here, and increasingly as we essential edge conditions for high
need much space. In a mini-system we go north toward Canada, you have productivity.
can do all that from here to the win- very low grade landscapes with ice So the landscape, I believe, dictates
dow. In clump, clump, clump, I can built bottoms, that have very slow in a very logical fashion how you
take you through a rice patch or a water movement through them. They treat it. If you just ruminate on this
very high nutrient demand patch, or are basically marsh land. They are profile and its thermal advantages, its
the taro patch; next, and algae-eating very cheap water storage systems, water advantages, its seasonal ad-
fish; into a rice patch; into a mussel very cheap marsh systems. Very low vantages, then I don't see any diffi-
pond with watercress. Now what we walls give you very extensive ponds. culty at all in coming to a set of total-
have is fairly clean water running out. Keep your eye out for that kind of ly logical decisions about how you
Then you can let it go off. You can do landscape. It is often very cheap land begin to treat it, or where you had
all that in a space the size of this because cattle can't move around in best place your client within it, or
room. the marshes, and the hills may be where you would advise him to under-
In many places, of course, the key- quite dry. Where people can't run cat- take various sorts of endeavors. As a
line system is not an applicable way tle, land is sometimes cheap. If you designer, you will have one last set of
to treat your water. These are places can buy that land, you can get miles resolutions to make, and that will be
in the Ozarks where people are sitting of water for very little Earth moved. to increase or decrease the various
up in little headwater valleys, away The best design decision, then, is to elements of this landscape according
above any keyline. They are sitting on go into aquatic production, because to your client's wishes. If, as typical-
tiny plateaus. They call it a cove. the site suits to that, not to dry land ly happens, he hasn't a clue, you dic-
Now you ask me, "What is the least production of cattle or corn. We spot tate the proportional break-up, al-
slope you can put this biological net to those sites for clients who want to ways maximizing water and forest,
use on?" There is no such thing as a rear fish or trout or wild rice, or because that still leaves the opportu-
least slope. We have country at home something else. There are also occa- nity open for him to decrease them at
that has a three inch fall in a quarter sional sites where you have a basalt any later date.
of a mile. That is a least slope, and dike across the landscape, which in I will now deal briefly with minor
you can still use this system perfect- geological times formed an ancient form of water storage at great
ly well on that. At that point you can lake. Then the waters broke through heights that can be hand constructed,
swale it. You can actually go below the dike at one point and the river called dieu-pond. These are very in-
the surface, dig out ponds that are be- went on out, and what you have left is teresting and semi-mystical small
low grade, that do not perch on top of an extensive marsh with a very nar- catchments, dotting the British land-
the ground at all. The main volume is row exit and very steep shallows to scape. Mainly monasteries construct-
below the surface. the exit. ed these little catchments. They are
Just to summarize, I will run The value of these high lake sys- said to be fed by 'dieu." It is the god
through it again. We first gathered tems, saddle dams, and high meadows Himself that sends down the rain.
clean water at the highest point for is well known. They afforded the tra- Now they are normally sited where
domestic uses. We added nutrients to ditional rich summer pastures used there is a mini-catchment, maybe a
water that we ran through our plant extensively in Switzerland and all little cup-shaped area in the hill.
system; then we ran it off into cold climates as summer grazing They are hand dug, and therefore not
marsh, carrying food from the natural meadows. Here is an excellent reason machine compacted. They are often
productivity system to the trout; af- for opening up the flat ridges there. clay tamped. But they need not be.
ter converting nutrients to biological As you get closer to the coast, in- They can be dug in perfectly good
forms, we release clean water back creasingly alkaline conditions com- holding conditions. Moreover, the ma-
into the stream. We can accomplish all monly occur. Then you get a copper terial removed from them is laid out
this within a vertical drop of six feet, deficiency in animals. Their hoofs fall on the catchment so that we have the
going from zone to zone to zone. So off; they aren't thrifty; they get lame least vegetation there, and conse-
we are not talking necessarily about quickly. Just shifting them temporar- quently a greater run-off into the
giant systems--we can be talking ily up to those mountain pastures is dieu-pond. Dieu-ponds never dry up.
about real little systems. Once you good husbandry. All the young people They can range from about three feet
have worked out a technique for this go up with the herds to little huts. to a maximum of about 20 feet in di-
form of landscape, you will find your- Everybody loves that move. These ameter. Two or three people can dig a
self hitting this situation repeatedly. are really delightful times. If proper- dieu-pond in a day. Nothing to digging
It is the classical humid landscape. ly surrounded and broken up by trees, holes. You are laughing? Well, any-
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 10.
keep the area just below our three or
four terraces vegetated with perma-
nent shrubberies, small fruits, bram-
bles, and pumpkins, and things like
that. The little terraced ridges are
hand-patted and shaped so that the
way, they dig this little hole so that to farm the lowlands is that we will water does not run out of this area
its walls are three to one, which is probably be continuing to erode the very easily. Rain falls, and there is no
about the resting angle of normally uplands. Therefore, these are impor- runoff over these 40-foot ledges.
strong soil. Now the reason they don't tant areas. Very often, our design Now the client can still be in trou-
dry up is that as they evaporate, the may keep them out of permanent uses ble, especially the lady client. The la-
surface area decreases. They will al- into croplands. You may not see a tree dies carry all the water. They have to
ways have some water. These ponds crop that is appropriate to them; and get water on to these high sites with
are the traditional high country wa- you can often reserve them for main no chance of a catchment up hill, un-
tering points for stock. They do need crop purposes. They are important less they have a friend and neighbor.
cleaning out occasionally, because areas, and becoming increasingly You, as a designer, can give them two
that little point at the bottom does fill important. water sources. You can provide for a
with silt and leaves. It is an infre- We need to deal
quent renewal. In very low summer briefly now with
periods, it pays to hop in there and mini-terraces. We
drag the leaves out. may, at times have
It is necessary to give the animals a to site the client
stone access, or walk them into it on where we don't want
the low side. They will of themselves to. You have clients,
cause some collapse of the edges of it. quite affluent people,
For normally humid uplands, this is an who buy site unseen,
eternal water supply, depending only subdivisional areas.
on the number of stock watering it. It often becomes
The builders of these dieu-ponds necessary to estab-
would never tell anybody how to build lish a terraced sys-
them. Old dieu-pond builders used to tem for the garden.
pass their secret one to the other. Design this in a series of planting are- catchment tank for water collected
The secret is, you taper it. I never as of about waist height, two feet from the roof of his house.
knew how they worked until I took wide at the top, and maybe three or Now from our water holding system
physics. I just knew they worked. I four feet at the base. The base of each we dig a little diversion drain and run
have seen them all around the world- tier is a walkway about 12 inches it very gently across the hill, and
little sloppy catchments. They work wide. Mulch the walkway and put maybe even drop a little bit of down
because they don't evaporate easily, mulch on the terraces as needed. We pipe in it, directing the water on the
and they fill from rainfall. don't recommend more than three or trenches. We are not going to get a
To the ordinary person, they look four growing tiers in a series, and we silt flow, because we have this area
rather marvelous because there is no don't recommend that they be any mulched, and when the water leaves,
run-in, no streams, no springs, and more than about forty feet long. we make it run off on an uncultivated
here is a little pond of water. Today, Your client is on this slope, digging site. All the principles are exactly the
we would hack one out with a backhoe, in, living up there. He has his chickens same as in our keyline structure. We
if not up to using a pick and shovel. above his garden, and the chickens are still running little high keyline
It is very likely that in future times are kicking the mulch downhill, giving dams for him, but everything is
low humid bottom lands, which have him good mulch for his little terraces. small, and his garden is small, but it
the lowest potential for soil loss, par- The terraces are along the hill. We is productive, very productive!
ticularly if treated in some of the let moisture flow down in very fine There are two ways of managing
ways we will be discussing, will be discharges on these paths. We only chickens in this situation. You can put
the most valuable agricultural land. permit him three or four terraces, the chicken house down at the bottom
These areas may be in production long and we don't let them come in a line, near the terraces, or you can put it up
after we have lost all sorts of other we stagger them so that we get a at the top and the chickens will kick
soils. This is also where eroded soil staggering of runoff of excess water. this mulch down to where it stops
accumulates. So those low-lying lands It comes off at separate points, so we against this bottom fence. That will be
have a large amount of resilience. The get several little runoffs spreading the place from which we collect the
only reason why we will be continuing over quite an area of hillside. We will mulch for the garden. This is what I
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 11.
call the kickdown system. We plant terraces, we can indulge ourselves in steep slopes, you might even backhoe,
this area with chicken forage trees to water terraces, much more simply or drag line one of these out.
hold the slope. constructed. We can set up nutrient It is handy to put a fence on the
Now we will go to a relatively brief flow systems that are catching, in- upper side, if you are going to fence,
discussion of terraces and paddy field. troducing, and removing nutrients at so that you can use relatively low
You can make those on slopes as different points in the cycle, using fencing.
steep as you like. You can do a Nepa- land animals for nutrient input, and These are things called delvers,
lese terrace, you know, in which you the land plants to mop up the last of which resemble joined double plows,
get a square foot for every 10 feet the nutrients in the water, while wa- which can be towed behind bulldozers.
you terrace; but normally you make ter plants and water animals do their They have two wings behind them, and
them on easy slopes. I looked out of parts in the cycle. We are into slight- they throw out a V-shaped drain,
our bus once in Nepal. We were turn- ly different games here than those while the soil is spread out to the
ing a corner and the back wheels were which we will talk about in sides by the wings. They are low-
hanging over here, and there was aquaculture. slope systems. These delvers are
about a 3,000 foot drop. Out there Another thing that you can recom- sometimes mounted on graders, and
were two little terraces. There was a mend to clients as very pleasant work you grade across the landscape, delv-
gentleman standing on one foot, a hoe is water gardening. You can go into ing away at the same time. Graders
on his shoulder, looking up at me. Oh, this form of terracing, or into dry can be used to grade out low profile
God, I thought. All he has to do is to terraces fairly fast. They are rela- drains. So, well, you use whatever
lean back! Also, not far away there tively easy to make and are very machinery you have. For very small
was a tree growing up like that, and a stable situations as far as soil loss systems, you can use just a single
big branch hanging out over empty goes. furrow plow, turning out a turf; and
space--no terrace below. There was a Now we will consider the mechanics you can double plow. The farmer can
little girl on the road, and she ran up involved. On very low slopes, where travel along the hillside with his chis-
the trunk of the tree and sat on the we want to make diversion drains el plow or his soil conditioner. Then,
branch without hanging on. My God! I and channels, and in deserts, we make fixing a light blade on the tractor, fol-
can't stand to look at that! Forget use of a thing called a spinner, which low along removing the loosened soil.
those. is simply a very large wheel ripping This is a system that is useful when
What we will discuss now are broad around behind a tractor. This wheel we are dealing with horticulture.
diversion and irrigation drains. You has little cups on it, and you just It is normal to grass the spinner
work right in them to see-saw your drive across the landscape and this drains, just as part of the field.
water across landscape. You usually wheel revolves and chews out a gen- We will go to dam wall construction.
have a little lip on the outer slope. tle channel and throws the dirt way This is something you need to know,
The drains fall across slope, and up here, so there are no banks. The without ever having to do it.
they may be very irregular in their ultimate result is a sort of drain For dams up to six or eight feet
width. There is no need to make them through which the water runs along, high--these are small walls--you
regular. We may be leading these di- not really visible on the landscape ex- don't fuss too much. You give it about
version drains from a nearby creek, cept in low-lying conditions. You can two and one-half to one slope; on the
letting this trickle of water into them. drive vehicles and tractors across rear side, three to one. You make a
We take this trickle of water and lead the landscape and they just enter and very broad crown. That's your dam.
it into an agricultural situation. leave it without a great deal of fuss. The broad top should enable whatever
This is not European gardening. You The width of the drain depends on construction machinery you need to
won't find anything about this in the how big your spinner wheel is, nor- roll along it. It should be over a car-
British gardening book, because it is mally maybe four feet wide, and a width wide. You can have a little bull-
not straight, but has wavy edges on foot deep. These are very gentle dozer running back and forth while
it; and it just isn't traditional. drains for low slope systems. On the big one scrapes it up. Avoid in-
Take a brisk look through world lit- steeper slopes, the most common cluding rocks in the soil you use to
erature on the subject, and you will form of drain is made by using a tilted build your dam. Rocks don't shrink and
find 60 to 80 common, very high blade. The tractor goes on slope here, expand like other materials, and they
yielding plants that grow in marsh or and blade is on tilt so that it will make for many leaks. So when you
water. One whole group that may be scrape with a very gentle back slope, strike rocks, bump those to one side.
of interest is the bee forages that and that gives a little wall of Earth on Tamp every foot of your wall as you
grow in or near water. We will deal the outside. If it is wide enough, it is build it up, using your machines to roll
with them later, when we go into also your road, contour road, and it backwards and forwards, so that you
aquaculture. can be grassed. If you have much land have a rammed Earth wall. Up to eight
On more gentle slopes than those and a great big project, and you are feet, nothing much is going to happen
upon which we constructed our mini- meeting all sorts of slopes, including to that. So it is fairly non-fussy.
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 12.
What we have done is to re- likely to get much vegetation
move the top soil, get rid of all except right at the edge. The
the sticks and duff. If there is steep bank of Earth at the rear,
good clay soil underneath, we which can be eight or nine feet
push this up, roll it down, push high, can have trees in front of
it up, roll it down, roll it back- it. You are in a tropical climate
wards and forwards as we go. there. If you want to be fancy,
"You pack the whole core of the dam with selected clay"
That's it! You can drive across you can glass that off and you
these dams. You will normally use That is how you make dams that will have a fantastic situation, with
them as low valley crossings, or to stand above the surface. Many dams winter reflection of sun giving maybe
drive across gullies. don't. There are many different sorts as much as 60% additional heat. You
Your spillways need to be broad. of dams. This is a barrier dam that will have absorption of direct sun-
You have your dam across the valley. goes across the valley. These are light--a good heat-up situation. If you
You cut a spillway into the solid part dams that run along contours. They want to put bamboo up on top of your
of the hill, wind it out along contour, are usually rolled Earth dams, and Earth bank, you have maybe as much
letting it shallow out and fail. You they are called contour dams. These as 60% to 63% additional heat. The
don't bring it around down below. If are the ones you build up on knolls and Earth bank itself stores heat.
you are going in towards a continuous slopes. Then there are dams below There are two basic forms of bam-
stream flow, you might very well do grade. On very flat lands, the way to boo. One is called monopodial, and one
one of two things. You can either bring hold water that runs in is to excavate is called sympodial. Most of the bam-
it out and pipe it down here and give the dam out, and throw the soil up. boos are monopodial and form clumps.
that a splash area, or you can put a They are more properly called tanks- Sympodial bamboos are more or less
pipe in the system, an overflow pipe, -Earth tanks. A spinner drain might runner bamboos. You can put them in
which you lead out. These are small lead into one of these Earth tanks, so here and they go out under the road
systems that we can handle in several that a very gentle flow is coming in and come out on the other side. No-
ways. That is your typical dam. below ground level. There is no way body uses sympodial bamboos because
When you come to building a dam that these things will ever bust out. they are all small bamboos, seldom
200 feet long and 20 feet wide, you
have to do all this very cautiously.
You make a trench here at the base of
your dam site. You go down four or
five feet until you strike very good
clay at the bottom, then you start
rolling. You pack that and the whole
core of the dam with selected clay.
Otherwise, the procedure is the
same as for smaller dams. You do
this, and hope for the best! The larger
dam is a more serious job. The height
of the back of the slope may be about
eight feet, with an eight foot down
wall. If you run into dry rock, you can
lay it on the wall where you would
expect some wave splash, if it is a
shallow containment. Keep rocks out
of your dam structure. On larger
dams, you don't want any leaks. Line
the whole vertical center right to the
top with good clay. That will be a to- Now when you are building Earth exceeding five feet in height. They are
tally impermeable dam. Most soils, tanks, you can do all sorts of inter- good for making arrows. So if you
however, will roll down to an im- esting things. You can sharply pile-up don't need arrows, forget them.
permeable soil. If we are working in a the removed soil to create a sun trap. Now the monopodial bamboos are gi-
granitic country, with course sand, When your pond fills, you have a good gantic bamboos, sixty to eighty feet
we are not going to get a dam unless growing situation. Animals can come high. Some have big trunks on them.
we do this core. The core stops the into this. You can pave that section They are slow growing, with nice ten-
water, and this is what gives the dam with stone, if you want to. The deep der edible shoots. They never become
stability. edge is very abrupt, and you are un- rampant. A monopodial bamboo will
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 13.
form a clump as large as this room if when it rains, which rapidly dries off. ing a small amount of water down hill
no one is eating off it. If you are eat- You can put a little concrete sill in instead of a lot of water uphill.
ing it, it won't be very big at all, be- your wall and have a sliding door, Another use for mini-systems is
cause you eat the shoots. called a floodgate, which you can pull when you go to broadscale quail or
If we are only going to grow plants up and let all those twenty acres of pheasants. You drop these little ponds
in it, we can make our Earth tank water out into a chiseled two or three through the landscape every 150 feet
about three to six feet deep. If we are acre area. The floodgate is just like a or so. Just make little holes.
going to hold fish in it, we need to board in a groove, a simple little If you have a lot of pear trees, you
kettle them out a little area, a fifteen thing. You can make those by hand. may want to rear frogs to get rid of
foot hole somewhere, which you can They all leak a little bit. Expect pear slugs. You then place these little
backhoe in. It only needs to be a couple everything to leak a little bit. Even ponds all over the system.
of feet wide and maybe six feet long those lock pipes leak a little. That is Well, we have covered the keyline
for about fifty fish. Your pond does normal. Dams leak a little. concept, and in with that falls all your
need that additional depth unless you We may run this water through our lower slope control. And you have this
are going to stock it with fish. irrigation channel only twice a year, bold idea of storing water right up on
These Earth tanks fill from diver- or something like that. Most of the the top of the hills.
sion drains. There's no need to find a time we let the water go, and there- Only as a last resort do you dam the
spring for your water source. We just fore we have a normal spillway over valleys. You only do that in emergen-
take a whole big runoff section. You the dam. cies, or for the creation of productive
can normally ignore springs in favor A dam may have these four things: systems. Large-surface, relatively
of an excellent, cheap site. Of course a diversion channel leading in, an irri- shallow, easily constructed, cheap
if a spring comes sited well, that is, gation channel leading away, some de- lower productive dams are very good!
if it is at the back of a plateau, we vice for releasing the water--either a In dry areas, and in areas where
could run a very cheap contour dam lock pipe or a siphon over the top-- you are growing very intensively,
and tie in the spring, and we would and a spillway. you might design some form of drip
have a double hit. If the spring is on a Now when you come to look at the irrigation. Drip irrigation systems are
steep slope, then you would need a dams--and we will look at a few on very modest with water. For high
contour plow. In that case, I would this site--the spillway may not go value tree crops, they are critically
simply ignore the spring and bring the past the dam at all. We might be important for establishment, but
water round in contour to the dam. At working on a site in which we have probably not thereafter.
the spring, you could do something undulating country. We might take a There is another form of water con-
quite different, which is the small, spillway from the back of the dam and trol that is very interesting, given
usual spring house with a small tank in lead it into the next valley. There are that we have some water uphill, and
it, something totally different from all sorts of games we can play. given that we have established an or-
the large storage. If you are lucky, Contour dams are very cheap, no- chard on the hillside down below our
and your spring is above your diver- fuss dams. They are dams in which glasshouse, which is bermed into the
sion drain, you can bring it in to the the actual dam follows the contour hillside directly above the orchard.
dam. If you have a stream running and then swings back to ground level. We will grade little shelves almost on
through your Earth tank, it will just Basically, the construction is the true contour all the way down, at
give a slow circulation to it. same as for other dams, but usually about 40-foot spacing, which is about
Sometimes you will need to use you put contour dams on pretty flat correct for orchard trees. Down the
pumps while the bulldozer is going, if land, and you grade them up pretty hill we go, grading these little plat-
you are down below the water sur- quickly. They may be six feet high. It forms out and leaving the area in be-
face. We have to use them intertidal- doesn't matter if you get a bit of tween them in grass. We will then
ly, too, when you have to put in 12 grass or rock in them sometimes. plant our little trees in the outer edge
hours of fast work--otherwise, glub. They can be a little rougher. Just roll of our swale. We have a pipe from our
When you are digging these, you move them down tightly and they will hold. water source, which is uphill, and we
your days around to night, if you are There are all sorts of reasons for bring it down and stop it.
digging a big one. And sometimes it little mini-ponds. Never neglect the We can lay a hose in these systems,
rains. little pond. When you are planting or we can do another thing that is in-
Lock pipes, you can purchase. Those steep slopes with trees, you might teresting. We can bury a pipe that
flags you fit in the ditches, you can put a little well at the end of your comes up in the next system below
make them out of a bit of pipe and paths. On a steep slope, it pays to dig for reverse siphoning. We can have
canvas, and a piece of dog chain. these little wells, and line them with these little reverse siphons going all
Sprinklers you can buy commercially. plastic, or drop a tire in, which is the the way down the slope. In that way
On a flat site you can grade up a quickest. Then when you have to wa- we only need to run the hose in up
wall and get maybe 20 acres of water ter the slope, you are always carry- here. The water enters the highest
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 14.
around contours, and along to other
flat fields. It is a cheap, simple sys-
tem, consisting of many short lengths
of pipe and plugs that you carry with
you.
This is not a trickle-flow system.
The whole thing is running like blazes.
When we need to irrigate, we go up
and open our floodgate, and the main
water channel comes down and hits
that little channel, and we stop it here
and it fills up, floods out; then we
"We can bury a pipe that comes up in the next
move on and the next section fills up
system."
and floods out, and so on. You let a lot
of water go, and you thoroughly soak
swale; it runs along and soaks up all of the field. The side channel has a lit- it. Then you plug the whole thing up by
the Earth, then enters the reverse si- tle fall to it. We block off the side closing down your floodgates.
phon and runs down to the next level, channel at intervals, and through You can dig those trenches with a
and so on. One person can water hun- these blocks we put short pieces of little crawler tractor, just a small
dreds of trees in about an hour. four to six inch pipes. We have a plug machine, or you can do it with shov-
Then you can do something very in- with a handle on it that fits into those els. The best way to dig a trench with
teresting. You can plant this swale to pipes. When we let the water go into shovels is to use two men. You get a
a highly nutritious crop, such as white this side channel, it fills up to the very broad shovel, with one man on
clover. Then you mow the grass strip first block, which we have plugged so it. Around the neck of the shovel, just
and throw all the grass on the swale. that the water cannot go beyond this above the blade, you put a rope, and
When it is looking all rich and good, barrier. We have also done something then you put a toggle on the end of the
you run along and regrade it, bringing else. Leading out through the side wall rope. One man puts the shovel in and
that rich top soil up to your trees. of this main drain, we have many lit- the other pulls, and you get a rocking
Your trees will get bigger. You grade tle two inch pipes directing water out motion up. They can throw up banks
again, cutting it back a little bit. You into our field. Our side drain conducts about as fast as we can walk, very
do it two or three times. By that water through these little pipes out easily, no arm strain. One man is just
time, you have a great mound of black into graded channels running down the moving sideways and putting the
Earth, tree roots growing in it, and a lengths of that field. There are trees shovel in the ground, the other pulls,
well-defined walking platform that on little banks between the channels. and away you go. Little Earth banks
you can walk along, and an easy wa- Again, this area has been planted with appear right across the country just
tering system. No problem with that grains, and can be graded up to either like that. If you have to empty a load
one. bank. So we have banks made up of of gravel and have no dump truck, use
You stagger your trees down slope. loads of clover and topsoil, with trees that method, with one man standing on
You should also alternate species, on them. the ground pulling, and another just
putting your narrow leafed species up When all those little pipes are con- putting the shovel down in the middle.
at the top--peaches and apricots--and ducting water down over the first Painless. That is the way the Turks
your broad leafed species down be- section of our field, we pull the plugs and Afghans contour enormous
low, because it is getting wetter all from the first barrier, and plug the acreages of very shallow country.
the way down. second barrier. When that section of They will build and rebuild those con-
That is a very easy way to run an the field saturates, we move our tours every year, miles of them, just
orchard, and a very easy way to set plugs down to the next area. There a couple of men. Ho! Ho! Ab-do!
it up. That is real Chinese style, can be four or five or even six or One of the advantages of the keyline
building up the richness in your paths, seven of these little two inch pipes that very few persons see is that if
and then scrape your paths off and put leading the water in an even flow you have a diversion drain above your
that around your plants. But always from the main drain to the irrigation fields and household systems, that
keep your stems free. You also have a channel. We can irrigate hundreds of works just as efficiently to remove
nice little garden path in which to set trees with very little effort. That's excess water in winter as it does to
your ladders for picking. It's a gener- for flat lands. direct water into your drains. A well-
ally sensible little set-up. If we want switching systems, we keylined and combed landscape that
When you get to very flat land with put in another one of these barriers, has been soil conditioned doesn't get
hardly any fall, you can make a and we just pull the plugs and let the boggy in winter and doesn't get dry in
trench, a side channel down the side water go down. We can direct water summer. People forget that the same
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 15.
drain that diverts water off the hill- the pegs; the bulldozer follows you. houses. It can be a remarkable envi-
side also prevents bog situations and If you strike clay, leave it narrow, or ronment! The swales are probably
seepage situations below. Once your else deepen it. As a rule, in clay, never less than two feet deep, very
storages are full and your soil is deepen your swale in profile, and in gently shoaled edges on them, great
charged, you can direct a winter run- sandy and gravelly places, widen it. places for children to run in the
off into a creek if you want to. You Along the swale, where you think it storms and hop into them. Then when
can take it off the landscape through will hold, you have little ponds in the storm ceases, the water, because
this system, just as easily as putting clay. Where you think it will soak into you have broadened the swale at plac-
it on. We often run a descending di- the ground, you widen the whole wa- es, seeps away within a day or so.
version around the valley slope just ter system so the surface area is The swales will then contain water
to keep the drain bottom dry in win- large. Rain, particularly storms, only in the over-deepened clay areas,
ter. The same diversion drain, comes down the swales, too. The wa- the little ponds that we made.
plugged, will irrigate the valley in ter finds your widened areas, which This system exists nowhere that I
summer. are free, and soaks in, and thus know of except in the village project
Now when you are wandering around charges your ground water instead of at Davis, California. Here they sit on
with this diversion drain, bringing it going down the hill and off the proper- a plain near Sacramento, and because
down to your dam, and taking an irri- ty. In three or four years, you will of swales the place is an oasis in a
gation canal out of your dam, if you have 17 to 20 feet of fully charged desert of disaster. Nothing quite like
come to a little gully or something, soil. Your forest, just above your Davis has ever happened in America,
you can easily make a little pond there swale, is alive and has access to this and is not likely to happen until we get
as you go. It is quite easy to do that. water. Your forest will be alive when out on the ground, 300 or 400 of us.
Another way to go about bringing your neighbor's ground water has The trouble with America is that
more water into the landscape, stor- flowed away out of sight. these things that people have been do-
ing water on the land, is to run broad If you ever have the chance to de- ing have been just with their own
swales. This has a particular applica- sign a suburb in a place where there homes, keeping it to themselves. In
tion in urban areas. A swale is a criti- is a semi-dry climate and storms, Davis, you have the benefits of design
cal technology for winter-wet Ameri- particularly summer storms, sudden orientation. A whole set of low-
ca that is not much used. It is also a rain rushes, this is how you do it: You energy systems are demonstrated
very useful technology to use when run a hard-top road, swales, little there. More of your urban areas
laying out forests. bridges, houses that are back to back, should be permeable to rain so your
You cut shallow blade trenches on footpaths, down pipes. This whole street trees would remain healthy.
true contours, with no movement of system is swales, with double rows Ordinarily these urban swales will
water along the trenches. The trench- of houses sitting between the swales. end up nowhere--start nowhere and
es are quite broad, hardly ever less All the roof run-off is going into the end up nowhere. However, if you do
than four feet wide, and often much swales, and all the road run-off is go- think there are going to be very cat-
wider. You wouldn't do this on a steep ing into the swales. There is no gut- astrophic rains, then you can lead the
slope, just a moderate to shallow tering, no curbs. The swales some- end of the swale out of the situation
slope system. You walk it out along times pass under the roads. into a more normal drainage system.
An immense variety of treatment is But in moderate rainfalls, the swale
possible, such as little block stepping can hold it all. The efficiency of the
stones across swales, little rocks absorption in swales increases as
across swales, little graveled areas, they age and as trees grow along
little ponds in swales, frogs croaking. them, because the trees penetrate the
You set your trees out along the subsurface and carry water down. I
swale edge, but not in front of the think Davis initially absorbed about
house, not on 40% of its water, then 85%, and now
the sunny 100%.
side of the Now it is absorbing water from off-
site into its swales. It collects run-off
from off-site and gets rid of it on its
site. So that is very good. The older
the swales get, and the more the tree
roots penetrate down into the swale,
the better they get rid of water.
These swales do not have to be re-
newed. I think possibly if they de-
cayed badly, you would probably have
"Swales have a particular application in urban areas."
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 16.
to just chew them a bit, but it is not a I will show you an unusual tech- Next scene: You have a dry hole?
big job. You could do it with a couple nique, just throw this one in. You will Just leave it dry. There are all sorts
of kids and a spade. No work repairing discover these situations. Here is a uses for dry holes. In dry climates,
drainpipes; no pipes; no gutters; no little house that looks like a granite you can hop down in them and mulch
curbs--cheap! boulder. Its occupant is a rock freak. them, and they are shady, an extra
Swales can also be quite useful We have rock freaks in Australia, good growing situation.
growing situations. You might be able houses that just disappear in the Or you can do something else. When
to raise ginseng up here in the swales. rocks, and they look like a rock. All you see you are getting a fair amount
Your swales are obviously ideal sites around this great granitic dome there of leakage, you can strew rich hay all
for certain useful plants that like this is 40 feet of course sand, so good- around the edges of your pond. When
moist, rich, highly mulched situation. bye water. You also have all sorts of the water turns green with algae, if
Blueberries! You swale below a pine granitic slabs and surfaces. So you there is a leak through cracks in the
forest, grow blueberries in the run chicken wire around your granite, clay, the algae glue it up. You are
swales. There are many techniques and go around with some cement and gleying it, but with algae.
you can use with water in landscapes. sand, constructing gutters, and you But in midsummer it dries out.
There are other good reasons for lead them into tanks. We have done a Didn't work. So now we are getting
constructing swales. In a forest, lot of this. Some of those granite down toward the final solution. We put
many leaves will arrive in that swale, slabs are big. You bring the water green sappy material right across it,
and they rot quickly there. It is a down, and put your tank at the bot- six inches thick. We gather the mow-
moist site. Your little salamanders tom. You have to be able to use your ings from the golf course, and any-
run around in there. You can deliber- eyes. You look at that slab and say, thing we can obtain. We pack it down.
ately add to the leaves in the swale. "A roof! a roof! and it is uphill." No We chip green leaves and sappy mate-
It is a long composting system on site. keyline is possible, but in these condi- rial, second cut hay. We cover all this
Occasionally, you can take from the tions building concrete works well. with sand or plastic or old carpets or
swale for the garden. Suppose you dig a little Earth dam a combination of all of those. Then it
Swales greatly decrease the risk of up on a hill. It rains. Nothing happens. starts to ferment. You can find out
forest fire because they collect a lot It keeps on raining. Nothing happens. when it does, because it is slimy. As
of fuel and rot it very quickly. Swales You have a dry hole. Bad luck! soon as it goes slimy, you fill it with
make for a far more moist forest than A friend of mine had an open under- water and it fills without any trouble,
existed before. It is amazing how few ground stream that ran like fury. He and will never leak again. It is called
trees you have to remove to run a hired contractors to dig a dam. It gley. The only reason why it might not
swale in an existing forest. However, should have worked. But he went a work is if you didn't do it properly. So
it is a good idea to swale a forest be- foot too deep, and--glub. You can't you then go at it again, and find the
fore you plant it as a forest. Some predict these things. spots you didn't do properly, and do it
trees can stand in the swales. Well, you now have two or three properly right there, because the rest
Another reason for swales is that things you can do. What we have up of it is permanent.
you are in an isolated place and there here on the hillside is a big hole. We If it is a very big area and you have
is no chance that you are going to be have a dry place. So we put a couple a very rich client, you run across it
able to go out with your Land Rover of sills there, and raise a roof, and with bentonite, which is a clay that
and bring in mulch material for your pour a floor. We are in business. Nice swells up to 14 times. You spread a
garden, you can swale out from your place! Good barn, good storage, cheap! bit and roll it in hard, and then you fill
garden, and mulch into your swales. The only thing you have to make is a it. That seals it. But it is costly. This
Now you decide the sort of mulch roof. It's a good place for cattle in is by far the most satisfactory
you bring in, because you plant trees winter. Haul in your hay. Trap door solution.
above the swale to give you the mulch right up here, throw your hay down, There are many solutions that plug
you want. We get alkaline mulch from wheel it out. Take advantage of having small holes, such as a sheet of plas-
western cedar, acid mulch from oaks, a dry hole. tic, or concrete. But gley is the best
and so on. So you treat your garden Now, change the scene: The hole solution. You can make a dam in a
from a continuing input from the ma- fills, either because you pump water gravel pit with it.
ture system, thus reversing the axi- in, or there comes a rainstorm. So it You would be lucky to dig a very
om that maturity exploits immaturity. is not a real dry hole. Stand by the dry hole, because usually it is on a
We make immaturity exploit maturi- bank and throw in three packages of slope. You can ordinarily get an entry
ty, because maturity is exploitable. water dynamite. Boom! It bumps the out at slope level. Roofing it is easy.
It is also a great accumulator. Left bank, and any cracks in rocks are Nice and sound-proof in there.
alone, the forest will exploit the gar- sealed with great water pressure. There was a big one that a friend of
den; but with us in control, the garden You might do it two or three times. mine made. It should have worked, but
can exploit the forest. That is fast, and often works. it didn't He stuck in sides to it and
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 17.
turned it into an indoor auditorium.
You can get in there with a rock band
and not annoy anybody.
Once you set the water systems,
you also have set a lot of other sys-
tems. Wherever possible, your fenc-
ing and your access roads naturally
follow your water systems, and can
be well integrated. Both assist the
water systems.
If you are wandering around with a
curvilinear fence, you run a series of
approximate short fences, because
the only fence you can build is a
straight fence. So your fences, and
your tracks, your on-farm tracks, all
follow that system. Then, if you do
that, your animal tracks turn into
keyline tracks because they follow the
fences, and animals will also have
beneficial effects on run-off. If you Structuring a biological dam.
don't do that, then your animals al-
ways walk anti-keyline. They always
walk ridge down to valley, and ani- We take some of our excavation catchment, make shallows and bar-
mals can become a major erosive in- material and make an island in our riers and islands--all sorts of useful
fluence. If you set your fences valley lake. If we have fierce winds across things. You can put little pillared cot-
to slope, your animals walk your water, we make a barrier islands, so tages out on those islands, little con-
fences, and all their tracks will key- that we have a quiet patch of water in templative places, quiet spots, little
line where you can't get. front of it. When we put our island in retreats. You can put little stepping
Everything follows from that. Your the lake, we have increased our stones out to those places. We have
forests follow. Your forests grow shoreline. We may, if it is a bad fire done that.
above those channels. They are them- site, in an area where people keep Put in some underwater stones. This
selves very water-conserving and in- getting burned out every four years, makes it a very lively place. Water
sure steady water-flow systems. put our client out here on a peninsula birds nest on those islands. They are
Your forests that are of high value, in the lake. We might do that for other fox-free, except in winter, when they
your constructed forests, are below reasons, too. We give him a deck out are not nesting. The shelving along the
those lines. You can irrigate these. there and a little dinghy. Instead of edges gives a very broad planting
There are special sets of trees that leaving all our shoreline as a gradual spectrum. You can align those shelves
may go on the ridges, very hardy shelving system, we might grade in at different levels, specifically for
trees that don't need irrigation. You here, making somewhat extensive, certain plants, eighteen inches to
will need to determine for your area but constant-level marshes. three feet for wild rice. You can make
its ridge-top planting set of hardy, If we know that we are going to be marshes by grading off, away from
drought-proof trees. drawing quite a lot of water down the edge of the dam. Those marshes
So far, we have only been talking from this, if we know that we might come out of little low mud walls, so
about the water characteristics of pull four feet off it sometimes, then that they marsh up.
your system. I would like to look more before we make the main dam, we If your dam fails, you still have
closely now at any one dam that we throw up low dams across easily your marsh for arrowheads and other
build, and see what structures we dammed sections that flood at high duck fodder. If you do all that first,
need within it to have a biological in- water. In this way, even when the then flood the situation, you have
put into the dam. There are only about other water is four feet down, these created something that looks very
three or four things we would need to dams hold and preserve the shoreline good.
do. Say that we put in a six foot val- flora. Many small animals that live When you draw off water, your is-
ley dam for a lake. We pegged it all along the shore continue to have ref- land sticks out a bit higher. Your shal-
out before, so we knew exactly where uge. As the water rises again, it cov- lows are mud-dammed, almost at wa-
that shoreline would be, and we may ers the whole area. ter level, so that the main water
have logged it out before we built the What we have done in there is to rises over them a bit, going through
dam. play around with the edge of the them in pipes near the surface, and
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 18.
when it falls, your little mud walls hills and mountains because it is a ro- their roofs can supply very cheap
come out and hold the shallows. You mantic place where they can look out tank water. Put all tanks up on the
don't bother about sub-surface dams on the world down below. They want slope above house roof level, if you
where you have constant level pro- to be up there. You can use larger can get them up there. You never fill a
ductive water. Your larger fish can't shelves to get people down a little be- tank from a house roof, if you can
get into some places that are too shal- low the ridge. You can get water to avoid doing so. Of course, on the other
low and too weedy. They provide ref- them from the saddle dam above. You hand, a friendly neighbor might do
uge for quite a lot of fry. We intend to can also use shelves for their garden. that, add a tank to his roof for the
make a biologically active system out Some of their wastes can add to benefit of somebody further down hill.
of our water storages. that system. You can run off water to That can happen. There might be some
What we are giving you is classic orchards further down. Then when cases where we supply them with wa-
solutions, ideas that you will have to you get down deep here into these ter better than they could supply
adapt to individual circumstances. valley systems, you can create wet themselves.
Slopes give us a very great advan- forests, we will call them, that will The diversion drain falls to the sad-
tage, and I pay a lot of attention to block fire out, keep it from running up dle; the road probably falls out to the
slopes, to how a system can be laid slope easily. slope; the garden should fall out from
out on slopes. When we have this You have water control on slope, the saddle, so the water comes down
gravitational advantage, it is possible and you have fire control on slope. from the saddle to the garden. So you
to do all sorts of things. Get your clients to build their storage must decide which inclination you give
This is a section of a ridge, and units up high, units that themselves these various shelves as you work
there is a ridge running along. We do not use water, or use very little down the slope. It is obvious that if
could put a little saddle dam here, and water--the garages and the barns and we can get water doing its work down
it would collect water from all around the workshops. We don't have to sup- slope and across slope, we are in a
the higher area. People often go to ply these buildings with water, but good position.
start your planting work. The swale bank in flat landscapes. You can use Achieving privacy and insulation
works perfectly well. The fall here water effectively for cooling. Flat ar- against noise can really be a problem
was very minute across the site. eas are often hot. In general, you can in some flat areas.
We did a diversion off our roadway. use Earth banks in two ways. They In flat land, you often find fairly
The water came in and around the give you a racing start in windbreaks; eroded gullies with little steep banks.
pond and went out again. Part of the and they provide a very good live- I will tell you of another real situa-
annual garden is water garden. Access stock shelter with quick growing tion. It was a flat site, eroded gully.
from the living area to workshops and plantings on top. Those plants can be There is only one place to build here
vehicle areas comes in through the things like pampas grass and bamboos. to get away from fairly noisy condi-
bank. Earth banks are excellent radiation tions. The client had made a dam
We planned for a single story house shields from fire, and they will de- across the gully with provision for
surrounded by Earth bank, and a tall crease noise, particularly traffic draining it. What we did was use a
barn with water tank. That is the so- noise. backhoe to dig a cave under the house
lution to the water problem in flat There is one main rule to follow. site. He built his house over the top of
lands. You have to make your slopes, From the crown of the road to the top
throw up your roofs, and throw up of the Earth bank, we want to deflect
your tanks, while you keep your house in a straight line so that we clear the
low. Or, you can put up a high dwell- roof of the house. Vegetation does not
ing, but these upper rooms must be do a lot for noise reduction unless you
bedrooms, and the lower rooms, your can get a hundred meters of it. It
service rooms. In that case, the house takes a lot of vegetation to absorb
roof also becomes of uses as a water noise. Street noise is just like that. A this cave. The cave extended beyond
collector. That is an elegant site now, well-insulated house with an Earth the house at both ends. It opened out
a highly admired site. bank protection can be near a fairly to the pond at water level. We just
Don't be frightened to use Earth noisy system and be quite quiet. trellised the top of it there.
Pamphlet II Permaculture in Humid Landscapes Page 22.
dener. He is also the director of parks
and gardens in Melbourne, and a land-
scape architect. He hired me to fix
this place up.
This man wanted a windmill, a rath-
er odd thing with all this water com-
ing down across the site. Still, he
wanted a windmill. He got a windmill.
He was sort of fanatic about
windmills.
I pointed out to him, though, that we
could at any time raise the Earth bank
with a tank in it, and we could run
water off his roof for him. He knows
that. He just wanted a windmill. He
liked it. He sits and looks out of his
window at his windmill.
His sole purpose in choosing a two
"He built his house over story house was that he wanted to see
the top of this cave." mountains, which were on the shade
side. So he had to get up above the
Then at the other end of our cave, We put his house, which was two trees. It gets very hot there in sum-
we glassed the top of it, making it in- story, up on this high peninsula. This mer. We gave him a shaded veranda on
tegral with the house structure. It is a high fire frequency site, with a his second story where he can sit and
was very cheap to do, and very fire about every fifth or eighth year. look at the mountains in the summer-
quickly done, because it was an allu- So we put the client on this peninsula. time. This gets him up above the
vial plain. So he now has an under- We got him up high enough so that trees, rather than clearing trees to
ground glass house in which we also from the second story he has a good obtain a view. A two-story house is a
made a shower. view of the mountains. Surrounded on very efficient structure for
He is proposing to grow bananas three sides by water, he has all the insulation.
there. The cave end next to the pond advantages of light reflection. As he Here are three totally different so-
is his cold cave. So he has good heat is a good fisherman, we put fish in his lutions to flatland situations. One so-
control. He can bring heat up through pond. lution defends from noise, and does
the ducts anywhere within the struc- We ran two very low Earth banks to something for privacy and cooling.
ture. The cool end of the cave is good deflect the down-flow of flooding The second one deals with a situation
for storage of root vegetables. rains away from the garden site. We near a gully in a flatland. We gave the
The whole thing opens out on the directed all the water from off site client an interesting house with low
deck above, under the trellis, over- into the dam site. When this water is heat and a cool place to go in the sum-
looking the water. His cave is dry as a flowing across landscape, it brings a mer. In this last situation, we gave
chip inside. It is about a foot above the lot of silt and mulch. These Earth our client a very sophisticated sys-
dam level. It is a beautiful place in the banks we have thrown up accumulate tem of water control, plus a mulch
summer time, down, out of every- leaf and silt that we transfer as collecting system. I can't tell you how
body's sight, by your own little lake, mulch to the garden. That works very to deal with flatlands in any general
on your own deck, which you enter well. It is good mulching material and way. Just study the flora and see
through your cave. very cheap. what your client wants, and what the
So in flatlands, you can do excava- An enormous amount of water di- problems are, whether privacy,
tion on site in all sorts of ways. verts through these Earth banks, noise, water, whatever. You can build
We had another site, an excellent flushing out the lake. Water diverts up a whole set of solutions, and you
wild site, with a lot of excellent trees from the garden at the same time that have plenty with which to do it.
and other growth. But it was a very silt and mulching materials deposit at
bad site for water. After a rain, you the outside of the garden wall. The
could see little twigs and leaves up flotsam stops here and defends the * For more precise definitions of the
against things. We designed a below- dam from silting up. terms used in the Keyline Method, we
grade Earth tank, a lake. There was a The client has a couple of hundred recommend a careful reading of the
lot of excavated dirt with which we acres. We restricted this whole thing latest edition of Water for Every
made a peninsula into the water, about to about two acres. He only wanted a Farm… by P. A. Yeomans, available
9 feet above grade level. small garden. He is a very good gar- from Yankee Permaculture.