Desert Garden Tour

Geoff is back at the Greening the Desert site in the spring of 2023, and he’s giving us a morning tour of the garden. There is a lush, green herbaceous layer still present from the winter rains. Deciduous trees are putting their leaves back on. Fruit is on the mulberries, guavas, and citrus, while the olives and date palms are flowering. It’s a beautiful time of day at a beautiful time of year in Jordan.

Date palms have been pruned and look “smart”. Nitrogen-fixing legumes have grown back since their chop-and-drop in September, and it’s just in time for them to provide shade in summer. The plant systems have been established over winter, and new gardens and trellises are in place. Purslane is growing as a fantastic edible groundcover.

We pass a collection of fruit trees and support species: pink shahtoot mulberry, leucaena, date palms, papaya, tipuana tipu, albizzia lebbeck, Kei apple, pomegranate, olives, custard apples, guava, Brazilian cherry… We also have useful herbs and shrubs like cotton bushes and marshmallow. A row of citrus lines the back fence, and a groundcover of Singapore daisy is spreading beneath it.

Crops like tomatoes, eggplants, fennel, and celery are growing where the chicken pen used to be, and the chicken house has been converted into a carpentry classroom. Two Subpods (in-ground worm farms) are cycling nutrients into the soil.

A renovation of the old toilet and shower block is making a three-bedroom accommodation building of mudbrick. The driveway has been paved, and grape trellises erected over it with new grapevines growing up each post. The reedbed is being reworked and has a new micro-swale coming off it. Beehives are thriving.

More and more applications of permaculture are within. Citrus is everywhere. Birds are everywhere. There is hope for a sustainable way to live, even in the desolate Jordanian desert.

Key Takeaways:

- The Greening the Desert Project garden continues to thrive and mature year after year as the infrastructure around it is adjusted to accommodate change.
- Not only is this a beautiful picture of a beautiful time of day in a beautiful time of year, it is a picture of what a sustainable future can look like.

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About Geoff:

Geoff is a world-renowned permaculture consultant, designer, and teacher that has established demonstration sites that function as education centers in all the world's major climates. Geoff has dedicated his life to spreading permaculture design across the globe and inspiring people to take care of the earth, each other and to return the surplus.

About Permaculture:

Permaculture integrates land, resources, people, and the environment through mutually beneficial synergies – imitating the no-waste, closed-loop systems seen in diverse natural systems. Permaculture applies holistic solutions that are applicable in rural and urban contexts and at any scale. It is a multidisciplinary toolbox including agriculture, water harvesting and hydrology, energy, natural building, forestry, waste management, animal systems, aquaculture, appropriate technology, economics, and community development.

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