Cape Town - There’s always more going on in a permaculture garden than meets the eye. What seems to be an overgrown circular bed hosts a diversity of plants; a newly built vegetable bed is made up of many layers; the wooden structure under the coral tree is an outdoor classroom in process.
This permaculture garden is at the Khanyisa School for Supportive Education in Plumstead, where Tim Ramsden teaches gardening. But gardening here goes far beyond most school gardens. The garden is a finalist in this year’s EduPlant National Schools Competition.
This week Ramsden, and his pupils Martha Nkhata, Eugene Esterhuizen and Cebolethu Ngxumsa, are attending a three-day workshop in Joburg, along with finalists from 59 schools.
Their garden has various sections to it: oblong beds covered with netting; a circular garden that’s to be converted into a labyrinth and planted with medicinal plants. The orchard has a few trees growing along the ridge of a series of trenches. There’s the keyhole bed and a flower garden, which includes clivia and nasturtiums.
I’m struck mostly by the sense of a garden in process. Ramsden bubbles over with ideas and plans, and is only held back by lack of funds. “All the children here struggle to learn – they’re not fully remedial but they’re not mainstream. It’s a private school and three quarters of our pupils cannot afford the fees,” he says.
Ramsden was drawn to permaculture a few years after coming to Khanyisa as a part-time teacher. “I realised there were more important things to do than grow flowers: it was obvious then that we were heading for difficult times, and teaching children to grow food is important.
“I started with an organic approach – no poisons – making trench beds, compost, growing green manure, and planting an orchard.”
But then permaculture, with its vision of sustainability and using every resource, made more sense.
Ramsden’s challenge is how to do the job with scarce resources. “With permaculture you produce on the land all you need. You go for an environment of abundance, according to Bill Mollison [the father of permaculture]. With very little, do we sit down and cry, or see what we can do with what’s here?
“If you do that, you move from despair to excitement. And you learn that you can do so much with little.”
I’m shown the newly prepared beds: whereas organic uses trenches, permaculture doesn’t dig, but builds upwards. Piles of manure, leaves and brown waste, green grass clippings and a compost sand mix are used in layers; straw is placed on top. “This means we’ll only use 10 percent of the water we needed before.”
The beds have been planted with lupins, onions, beetroot, lettuce, carrots and broad beans.
“I have dug into these beds and the quality of soil is palpable. It was originally sand. This method works – the soil is getting better and better.”
The garden flooded this year, and plants are struggling. Most potato plants have sick-looking leaves.
The overgrown look in the keyhole bed is mainly due to the vetch, a nitrogen fixing plant, some of which will be dug back into the soil and the rest used for mulch. A bed of red lettuce has seeded itself.
“We let one plant go to seed and look, it shows that nature provides. That’s exciting!”
Nothing gets done in the garden without the pupils – be it making beds, putting up the pergola or the outdoor classroom. Many mistakes have been made, says Ramsden. “But in retrospect the journey has been perfect. Nature does things nature’s way – we are so used to bullying nature into the form we want it.
“A major challenge has been having patience, but nature teaches us. We want to be self-sufficient and we can become self-supporting. We try to cross-fertilise lessons.
“In maths literacy, for example, we use the garden to illustrate fractions – if a tenth of the crop is eaten by insects, and another tenth by guinea fowl, how much remains for our use?
“And I encourage them to take what they learn in the garden and do it at home.
“[A student], Eugene is interested in growing from seed, and we’ll support him by buying seedlings. Martha and Cebo are very interested in gardens. These three have all started projects at home.”
The outdoor classroom is a reciprocal roof structure, made from wooden poles. “We made a model, then put it up. We’d like to cover it and will need to raise funds for a Bedouin tent structure.
“I try to combine new skills and adventure.”
St Andrews Church delivers horse manure to the school. “We can’t keep chickens because we go away for school holidays,” says Ramsden.
“We work as a team, and we hope the bright sparks keen on the garden will get to take charge and direct operations.”
To alleviate flooding, trenches were dug to divert the water. The orchard has suffered many losses: trees were stolen, the peach trees are struggling, but the plum tree bears well – if only the plums were allowed to ripen. The trenches here will be used to grow green manure, and pumpkins and butternuts will grow along the top.
“We planted an apple tree – and a pomegranate shoot appeared at one side, so it’s our Pomacot.”
“We learn to value our mistakes, and learn from them. We need a new imagination as we move to sustainability and self-sufficiency.”
Plans are for bamboo to be grown for stakes and for making furniture in the wood workshop. There’s a hole that’s a pond waiting to happen, to bring in frogs and explore aquaculture. A worm farm is planned.
Khanyisa was given money by EduPlant for tools, compost and a sand mix. “They’ve been inspirational. Without support we wouldn’t be near where we are. They asked me to enter few years ago, but I didn’t think we were there yet.”
* EduPlant has been operating for 19 years across SA, and is funded by Absa, Engen and the Woolworths Trust, who have committed R12 million to EduPlant over three years since 2009. The winning school will be announced on Thursday. - Cape Argus