Permaculture offers a rich framework of ethics and principals for regenerating our landscapes. By creating a water retention landscape with zero runoff, we are on the way to restoring the functionality of our ecosystem. Capturing rain recharges the groundwater, providing fertile soil for the many thousands of trees we’ve planted, accelerating the succession to a closed canopy forest which produces abundant food, biomass and habitat.
Water Harvesting Landscape
In this area of Spain, the trend is for less frequent but very intense rain events which cause damage through flooding and erosion. It has become increasingly important to capture the water where it falls, slowing its movement, spreading it across the land, and sinking it into the ground where it can support the growth of forests that capture carbon and generate a cooler microclimate. We achieved zero runoff in 2022 and we are now experimenting with ways of accelerating growth by adapting techniques such as Miyawaki Tiny Forests and syntropic agroforestry, working towards a closed canopy landscape.
Regenerative agriculture and fertile earth
We are exploring ways of working with the land to produce food for our kitchens and for the other creatures that live here. Our mandala garden and syntropic beds use mixed, intensive planting schemes and we will be creating a forest garden in 2024, as well as designing ways of integrating drought-resistant, perennial food crops into our closed canopy reforestation process.
The land has communicated its desire to regenerate by building a deep living soil layer. We recycle nutrients via mulching, composting and compost toilets, as well as working with nature’s farmers like worms and microorganisms to create a wild, living world underfoot.
Restore and protect biodiversity
In the last glaciation (in the early Neolithic period), La Janda was an oasis of biodiversity from which life re-emerged to repopulate Europe as the ice retreated. Our dream is to preserve the natural resources found here as a tool against mass extinction. In our reforestation efforts we use native trees as well as potentially useful species from dry climates elsewhere. We are creating windbreaks and green corridors to connect our land to neighbouring fields and providing water and varied habitat through ponds and seasonal wetlands. Our Life Cairn provides us with a place to acknowledge our grief at all that we are losing, so we can return with space in our hearts for the wild to fuel our work.
