How I'm creating a food-producing paradise on my small city block 

This summer, I tore apart my backyard ahead of a major makeover to create a food-producing permaculture paradise on my small city block.

The project's massive scale would be rather daunting were it not for a permaculture plan I spent a good year creating with help from a friend.

Understanding a few key permaculture concepts and jotting down a plan has proven crucial to guiding good design choices – and that same process might help you create a great garden, too, no matter how big or small your patch is.

Do nothing for a year – yes, really

The first step is to do nothing at all. Well, nothing more than observe – for an entire year, if you can.

It's about closely observing where the shade falls and the sun glares, where the water pools and the wind whips, which through-lines you naturally walk and which areas you rarely visit.

All of this becomes crucial information to inform your plan, whether you're gardening on a tiny inner-city balcony, a sprawling suburban block, or a modest 478 square metres like me.

I was lucky to rent my Tarntanya (Adelaide) house for four years before buying it, so I had mountains of time to observe its permeations in all seasons.

Record your observations on a simple garden map

During the observation phase, I recorded key info onto a basic mud map of my garden area – you can hand sketch something or print a Google Earth map of your patch.

This is called "sector mapping" in permaculture — essentially, figuring out which energies pass through your garden and how they can best be harnessed to provide a yield.

I documented things such as:

• The direction of north on my map;
• Which direction the wind and rain usually came from;
• Where the hottest spots were in my garden, and how deep the shade fell in winter (this is called sun mapping);
• How much rainwater or greywater I could capture and reuse;
• What type of soil I have; and
• Which existing plants grow well and what seems to struggle or need special care.

Use your knowledge to start making decisions

As I moved into the decision-making phase, I kept one of the 12 permaculture principles in mind: "design from patterns to details".

The principle encourages us to first take a zoomed-out view and broadly consider where any main elements need to be – the backbones of a garden.

For example, while renting, I'd experimented with strategically growing food plants against certain windows and walls as a living air conditioner for my house.

This worked so well that a big part of my new permaculture plan includes building a large open pergola along my home's northern wall, up which I plan to grow grapevines – for food and summer shade, yet deciduous in winter to allow sunlight to passively heat my house.

Year-long sun mapping also showed that half my small veggie-growing space plunges into deep shade four months each year, limiting the food I can grow.

So, my annual veggie beds need moving to a much sunnier spot – a major reshuffle of my garden layout that was sketched into my plan early, helping inform the placement of other things around it.

Map permaculture 'zones' while creating your detailed garden layout

With the broad brushstrokes decided, it was time to get into the detail.

Permaculture has a clever system for working out what goes where: essentially, place things you use often or tend daily closest to your house (in zones 1 and 2), and things you rarely need further away (in zones 3 and 4).

Meanwhile, my compost bays, which I access only once or twice a week, are best placed at the end of my little garden.

In my front yard, where I spent very little time, I created a native butterfly garden that is perennial and largely takes care of itself.

Lastly, as a sanity check and because two heads are often better than one, I brought in a permaculture designer friend to draw my final garden map – incorporating all my ideas into a succinct plan that I could work from.

Use the WASPA acronym when building your garden

I'm now full steam into my garden rebuild and an acronym common in permaculture circles is helping me figure out which bits need to happen first.

So, I'm creating my paths (access) and a new chicken fence and the grapevine pergola (structures) before I even think about planting anything.

To be honest, my garden looks rather terrible right now. Dusty, bare and deconstructed.

But my permaculture plan is helping me keep a level head about what feels like destruction, because I have a clear picture of where I'm heading.

And I know that, very soon, my garden will grow more food and be easier to manage, while hosting far more diversity and beauty than ever before.

Koren Helbig is a freelance journalist who practices permaculture and grows organic food in the backyard of her small urban Tarntanya (Adelaide) home.