Permaculture Thursday: Water Harvesting & Soil Restoration Techniques
Creating a Sustainable Ecosystem
In the Children’s Enchanted Forest at Fifth Dimension
Written by Ava Clennon - Cascadia Eco Retreats
Welcome to Permaculture Day with Cascadia Eco Retreats! This season, we’re creating Earth-healing solutions for the Children’s Enchanted Forest at our favorite Spa Under The Stars - Fifth Dimension. Together we host farm-to-table immersive getaways every last weekend of the month. Our retreats celebrate the seasons year round with healing practices, hands-on learning experiences and joyful relaxation. Daily we make Family Feasts for the collective table with delicacies from our abundant local farms.
Fifth Dimension (5D) sits in a gorgeous, peaceful land outside of Olympia in the South Puget Sound. The region historically was covered in Douglas Fir and thick low-country forests beneath Mount Rainier. It is watery, full of abundant life and still relatively wild. Like most of the region, there has been plenty of logging and clearing the land for farms and development in its last 150 years.
5D holds a lovely remnant of the older woodland with stands of Douglas Fir. The undergrowth in the forest is mostly native, but throughout is the powerfully invasive Himalayan Blackberry. This is one plant that has a real will to take over the world. It’s a beast, with thorny fast-growing canes lacing their way in thick mats through the trees.
We’re clearing out the invasive blackberry for a Children’s Enchanted Forest.
Here’s where our Permaculture story begins!
To clear out-of-control blackberry that has been smothering the forest for years, 5D did what a lot of us would do - the fast and easy thing. A bulldozer was brought in to clear the soil down to the roots in between the trees. This left a patch of bare earth at the forest edge.
Bulldozing stripped the once-rich forest floor down to clay and rocks. The tree roots, accustomed to a cool moist layer of rich decomposing humus, moss and ferns, have spent a very dry season cooking under the hot sun. Now we’re headed toward the watery winter. It’s time to build our forest floor back up again!
Follow along with this story - every week on Thursdays we’ll be posting updates and techniques. Here’s where you learn how to heal damaged lands and create a thriving ecosystem - wherever you may be.
First Things First: Water Channeling & Infiltration
The first step to healing Earth is water management. Water Is Life. We always want to do any in-ground digging before planting over the top. That way we don’t disturb tender roots later on. Our EcoRetreat on the last weekend in September gathered 17 guests. Many were enthusiastic to work on the land and practice permaculture restoration together. A great blessing!
More Than Fancy Words: Permaculture Terminology Hard At Work
As a group we built a water-planting border along the front edge of the Enchanted Forest. The technical term for this is an on contour swale. A swale is a shallow channel for capturing and channeling rain. The “on-contour” part just means we’re following what is naturally a low zone on the land’s contour between the tree roots and the lawn.
Spaced between the tree roots, we dug out a few deeper, wider places for the water to pond. The displaced soil, along with sawed logs, make raised borders on the downhill side of our swale and little ponds. As the rains come in, the water will flow into these structures. At the ponds, we are slowing the water’s motion long enough to seep into the soil.
The technical term for our raised borders is “berms”. A berm is a high place in the landscape. Us clever little humans can design high spots to catch and hold water where we want it. In this case, that’s right at the tree roots so they can refresh themselves with a season-long drink.
Understanding Water Logic
The logic of water is simple: DOWN. Water is heavy (8.34 pounds per gallon / 3.78 kg). In liquid form water moves fast. Its prime directive is to get as close to the center of Earth as possible, so it quickly moves to the lowest place in any landscape.
Understanding this principle, we can begin to move water through our landscape intentionally. What we want to achieve is the slowing of water on the surface long enough for some of it to sink into the soil, rather than running off the top. This technique raises the ambient moisture in the soil, where trees and plant roots can use it.
In-ground moisture, locked away from the wind and sun, continues DOWN. And that’s how simple it is to engineer Earth’s surface to intentionally raise the deep water tables underground.
Replenishing The Water Table Means Our Well Never Runs Dry. But HOW?
Fifth Dimension is a popular regional retreat space and a Spa. It relies on pristine well water that gets heavy seasonal use… especially during the dry season. As humans use water from the well, we’re pulling it to the surface from underground aquifers. That naturally lowers the in-ground water tables over time. When humans drain the below-ground aquifers, that is when wells run dry and desertification takes hold in the land.
But with a little understanding and some simple engineering, we’re going to be harvesting our winter rain with intentional spaces like the border of the Enchanted Forest. These places constantly replenish our in-ground water supply every season, creating an above-ground ecosystem full of abundance. YAY US!
Planet- Healing Terminology In Action
In Permaculture, we call the application of simple engineering the practice of “Planting Water”. Check out this amazing video hosted by one of my fave Permaculture Professors - Andrew Millison at OSU. He’s interviewing Brad Lancaster, who turned his suburban Tucson Arizona neighborhood from dead desert into a lush green food forest:
FREE water was ILLEGAL… He changed that…
Brad started by “pre-legally” engineering the most commonplace streetside infrastructure into a water harvesting oasis. He developed an ingenious technique for planting the desert monsoons, rather than allowing all that precious water to run off the street surfaces.
Look for Brad’s brilliant, subversive solution using the street curbsides as watershed berms and swales. He opens up low-level ponds into the surrounding soil between street and sidewalk, as well as roundabouts at intersections. Remember: water = DOWN. His shallow swales allow water to hold and infiltrate slowly. This sparks the virtuous cycle of Life, providing living things a place to put down roots and thrive. Genius.
Solutions are everywhere! If you’re here looking to heal your own climate anxiety or searching for a sign that Humanity is capable of creating a thriving Eden everywhere, you’re in the right spot.
Fact is, you too can become the change you want to see in the world. Join us at one of our upcoming Farm To Table Eco Retreats and see the magic in action!
