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A modern gardener’s goals usually include making the minimum effort
for the maximum output – one of the tenets of permaculture, the system devised
in 1970 by Bill Mollison to counteract the disastrous environmental effects
of monoculture. Mollison began in his own backyard, suggesting that not
only farmers but gardeners could begin to restore the traditional ground
cover. Graham Bell continues with simple steps for cultivation in The Permaculture
Garden (Thorsons, pp 170, £9.99 pbk), that will be ‘high yielding,
regenerative and sustaining’, mixing flowers, herbs, vegetables and shrubs
in the garden. Some of the plans are rather elaborate for a Sundays-only
gardener: recycling the grey water from the bath and kitchen sink through
a landscaped slope of reed beds, ponds and gravel soakaways. But even the
water engineering has inventive twists – powering the waterpump with a children’s
seesaws seems a wonderfully efficient use of energy.