Plants & Trees

We have been planting thousands of trees this year and one question which we’re often asked during our Permaculture Courses is what are the best Permaculture plants and trees? Firstly we should understand that all trees and plants perform functions in our designs, we need to understand what those functions are for all the plants and trees we use, there are no real best plants which stand on their own apart from the other plants in our design systems. While many permaculture designers will tell you, you must have this plant or that tree, you still need to understand why and what that tree or plant does in your system. Also its important to understand where in the world a particular plant is relevant or plausible i.e. is it hardy enough for your bio-region will it tolerate your humidity. So it’s very important to keep in mind while reading through the our new Plants & Trees Category where we have designed and built our system. We are in central France which means we have a warm temperate, continental climate, we have extremes of temperature from 40°C to -22°C, that means we get droughts in most summers and snow and heavy frosts in most winters. Not all plants will tolerate these extremes so the plants we will be discussing were chosen for their ability to do just that.

Some plants we have, are not meant to thrive in our bio-region and we have designed and built micro-climates specifically for these plants or trees, where we have done this we will discus the techniques used and their implications for our design.

Now over the coming months we will post articles about each of our plants and trees discussing the functions, productivity and beneficial relationship of each one in turn.