The Significance of Kinship Gardening to Permaculture

Language we seek is different than the written word. There was along process between the sounds we utter and the identification of these sounds with meaning. Once the connection of our vocal sounds and meaning were established. A further connection was the assignment of symbols to the sounds, Then the correspondence of symbols to sounds allowed for the combination of symbols making words and these words could be written. The words had patterns: nouns, verbs, sentences, paragraphs, books, treatises, symposia.

When we walk in our neighborhoods, take a residential one for example, there are generally many kinds of plants. In the winter the trees with bare limbs and the trees covered with leaves are distinctive and prominent. In the temperate zone these are generally dicots and conifers respectively.

If the environment surrounding the trees is relatively undisturbed, there are many other kids of plants/organisms. Under the black walnuts, there are grasses, borages, mints and columbines,. Under he maples there are mosses lichens, and mushrooms.

Systems of terraformation, the transformation of the surface of the earth, are many and various. From monocultures where a single kind of plans predominates to kinship gardening where each plant is grown as an individual representative of its species, genus, family and order and where diversity is maximized there are many possibilities from which to develop agricultural systems.

In the current era, with the ongoing destruction of native habitats and pollution of our environment, species are disappearing and extinction walks in our footsteps. Hence Bill Mollison and his collaborators have develops an ecological system of sustainable agriculture called permaculture; perennial agriculture. A core aspect of permaculture uses the natural combination of plants to achieve fertility, productivity and sustainability. This is based on the casual and intense observation of natural communities of plants where one finds common themes of inhabitation. Daisies legumes and grasses are frequently co-habitants. These are called guilds.

How does kinship gardening relate to this? There are 22,000-plus species of daises. There are 17000-plus species of legumes. There are over 10,000 species of grasses. The ecological, environmental across section of each place on earth, the combination of temperature, moisture, soil, wind, shade lead to a diverse set of organisms solutions for permaculture. These solutions depend on the resource base of organisms. Kinship gardening makes gardens that provide examples and access to the resource base for permaculture.

In current biology, the organisms on earth form three distinct groups; the oldest microbes or Archea, the newer bacteria or Eubacteria and the organisms with nuclei, histine chromosomes, steroidal membranes called Eukaryotes. Animals and plants are Eukaryotes. So are fungi, algae, worms, slugs, fruit flies, and spiders. For every site on earth, the combinations of these creatures, the interaction of these creatures, impacts sustainability. With many millions of kinds of microbes, mostly still unknown, and with more than 10 million species of animals, plants and fungi, the puzzle of organisms that promotes fertility and sustainability is not yet fully worked our. However at the same time, kinship gardening that generates adaptational gardens with an eye-level view of diversity is the rosetta stone for translating permaculture dreams of sustainable food, shelter and habitat environments into reality.

Authors note: At the 1996 Ecofarm conference at Asilomar, in Monterey California, I had the good fortune to meet and talk with Bill Mollison. The first thing he said to me was, “Thanks for the kinship maps of the plant kindom. It is an essential resource for permaculture.”