The Complete Tropical Garden: An Endgame Design
The biggest catch in gardening is thinking that an isolated bed or tree can thrive on its own.
We urbanoids assume that simply planting in soil is enough. But just as a house depends on infrastructure like water, electricity, heat, and communication systems, plants also depend on a supporting ecosystem. A garden planted in isolation is like living in a house without water, energy, food, or access to basic resources. Neither people nor plants can truly make it work under those conditions.
The permaculture systems we have been discussing are more than garden beds. They are integrated practices that build soil, store water, recycle organic matter, and create resilient ecosystems alongside food production.
In this final edition of our tropical gardening series, we will show how these elements can come together on a 10,000 m² property (1 hectare or 2.47 acres) to create a thriving tropical ecosystem.
By applying these practices, you will connect deeply with nature and be completely capable of transforming any tropical site into an efficient and sustainable ecosystem.
In this edition, in 7 minutes or less:
#1 The Permaculture End Game Has Everything You Desire
#2 Break Down of Each Practice
#3 How This Design Works
The Permaculture End Game Has Everything You Desire
- Climatically appropriate house
- Rainwater harvesting system
- Wet food patch
- Herb spiral
- Banana circle
- Palm circle
- Dirty water patch
- Alley crop
- Fedge = Forage + hedge. it is a hedge that also provides forage
- Windbreak
- Chicken, rabbit, pigeon, quail, and guinea pig pen
- Front yard
- Keyhole garden beds
- Fruit trees and nut trees, creating an integrated food forest
- Fenced meadow
Is it crazy to think that all these projects fit inside the space and work like an orchestra?
The best way to use this newsletter is to read it, understand the plans, and then improve them to fit your specific garden.
Let's break it down:
(H) House, (T) Water Tank, and (F) Front Yard
Climatically appropriate house.
All water from runoff is caught or directed to gardens.
Water tank of enough capacity for the household (Strategic Water Reserve Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3).
"A front yard of traditional or showy flowers, if the culture demands it." It can be an extension of the garden and food forest with useful species, like medicinal plants, scents, fiber plants to provide raw material for trellises, and ornamental food plants, like agave or cacti. It should be planned with hardy plants to require less work to maintain.
(A) Wet Food Patch and (C) "Dirty" Water Food Patch
In this previous newsletter, we explained how to start this practice of productive, house-attached patches.
The wet food patch receives clean water and grows wet crops. The bank is planted with dry staple foods. It is placed under partial shade.
The "dirty" water food patch contains no direct food plants and no root crops, only vigorous, damp-tolerant, manure-tolerant green forage crops. They are regularly cut and given to the animal pens as green feed, or to garden beds. More crops can be grown on its banks.
Both food patches take up 250 m² (2,690 ft²) each.
(B) Banana Circle, (K) Palm Circle
Banana circles are smaller than the palm circle, which receives kitchen scraps. They are just the center part of the keyhole design. Check the previous newsletter.
The palm circle contains 6–12 palms. It is almost the same construction as the keyhole garden bed, but it is dedicated to palms. You can plant a variety of species in this circle, like 2–3 coconuts, 2 oil palms, 2 dates, and 1 sugar palm, if you want to diversify from banana. The inside circle is mulched with chopped fronds, husks, wastes, ashes, green hedge material, or other mulch. A yam or vine can be grown in the deep central mulch during the wet season. They take up 115 m² (1,238 ft²), as already mentioned, check the previous newsletter.
(D) Alley Crop, (G) Keyhole Garden Beds, and Herb Spiral
Alley crops are stable intercrop systems. They also produce sticks that can be burned, and can receive hedge clippings from (E) hedges and other mulches, like paper, cardboard, and natural fiber carpet.
The straight version takes 311.5 m² (3,353 ft²), and the round version takes 240 m² (2,583 ft²).
In the Keyhole garden beds, all the preferred vegetables are planted. They are placed near the kitchen for convenience. The bulk of the culinary herbs are also planted in them, as well as in the herb spiral. More keyhole beds can be made if more food is needed.
The "standard" keyhole bed takes 80–115 m² (861-1,238 ft²), depending on the diameter you choose to make it.
(E) Hedge of Forage and Mulch, (W) Weed Barrier
A hedge of forage and mulch is a low, roughly trimmed hedge of forage and mulch species. It is a windbreak and provides privacy. It can also be a food source.
Outside it is a very dense weed barrier.
(Black Dots) Trees, (Y) Chicken Pen, (Checkered) Animal House, (J) Fukuoka-Style Grain Plot
The chicken pens are placed in a way that encompasses the (E) hedge so that it can provide more forage to the chickens, reducing or eliminating the necessity of supplementing the chickens' diet with feed. Animal houses are placed strategically.
The black dots highlighted with the arrows represent tree trunks. The trees' crown spread is also represented. They are carefully selected to provide shade, produce stable fruits, nuts, mulch, and forage. Under the trees, a soft ground cover is planted to help the tree and use the understory. Not only do they create a food forest system, but they also support the creation of a microclimate in your house.
Don't neglect how you plant your trees, because you can shorten their life span in half, or even lose the seedling. For the ultimate checklist for planting trees that thrive for centuries, read our previous newsletter.
The Fukuoka-style grain plot is for planting staple food in a sustainable way (it will become your favourite sustainable practice to grow rice and other grains if you like Japanese cuisine). It is surrounded with dry-tolerant mulch like Centrosema, but can also receive mulch from the (E) hedge and the (K) palm circle. It takes 280 m² (3,014 ft²).
Terraces (Not Shown in the Plan)
Terraces can be installed if your property has a hill. This example shows a flat property, but a terrace can be integrated into the design seamlessly, as explained here.
How This Design Works
- Accept all water and wastes of use, except plastic, glass, and metal
- Creates most mulch (to create topsoil and protect soil life)
- Creates a lot of forage, which, when bulked with house scraps, can feed small animals, like rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, and even fatten a small pig
- Aesthetically beautiful
- For an off-grid hygiene solution, install a septic tank or a dry toilet. The (human-) manure can be put under trees in pits. Toilet paper can be grown in the hedges (Nicotiana and Leucaena)
Don't miss the chance to learn this valuable lesson about effective permaculture gardening practices in the tropics.
The tropics are the region where you have the biggest risk of perpetuating unsustainable practices because they are a very fragile environment. These practices:
- Keyhole
- Water patches
- Terraces
- Legume food forests
are manageable projects that you can implement on a small scale and, with time, transform the region completely. We wanted to showed this garden design by Margrit Kennedy and Bill Mollison so that you have a world-class example of what is possible.
By applying them, you will naturally become super proficient in the tropics. Then, don't lose sight of the fact that you can expand them, individually or by combining them with other practices. From these new projects, you will create new authentic practices. Of course, this is not the end. As previewed in the newsletter, there are other practices, like silvopasture and Fukuoka grain plots, that will be the theme of a future newsletter.
Start small with manageable projects.
Now, you have the power to create transformative tropical gardens.
