Hugelkultur

Adding Dimension to your Landscape

A beautiful layered landscape that I have long admired. It has unique and colorful interest in every season!! This is something lacking in most  landscapes..... the layers. 
7 layers to a landscape:
1. Canopy (evergreens)
2. Understory (deciduous)
3. Shrubs
4. Herbaceous (perennial veggies & flowers)
5. Ground Covers
6. Bulbs, Rhizomes & Tubers
7. Mycelium

A note about mycelium.

If you wonder why mushrooms "suddenly" appear in your landscape, maybe it is because you laid wood-chip mulch down last year, and the decomposition resulted in a network of mycelium that grew and bloomed...... Mushrooms!

This decomposition creates a "vegetative structure of fungi, existing as a mass of branched, tubular threads known as hyphae, ​the branching filaments of the fungi that grow and connect into a network known as mycelium."  

Myecelium composes what's called a “mycorrhizal network,” which connects individual plants together to transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals.

​It's the moldy-looking "dirt" when you dig into an old pile of decomposing wood chips. It's a clear indicator of a healthy landscape!!
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Hugelkultur - transform your gardens!

Hugelkultur is a landscape technique constructed that effectively transforms clay, compacted or wet ground into a usable plantng area, that also absorbs excess ground water. It's great for that yard that won't grow anything!

Berm or Swale?  This method can be used as either a raised bed above the ground or created in a ditch-like depression.

A Hugelkultur not only soaks up excess ground water, but it provides a microclimate as a raised planting bed for trees and shrubs as well as perennial flowers, herbs and veggies! You can tame a wetland, absorb water, create dimension and grow healthy plants!

Planter - in - a - box!

This is a recent workshop I did where participants created a planting bed with the hugelkultur layering method. Afterwards, they took the boxes home and "planted" them. The perennial flowers they planted will grow in the spring with the help of this specialized hugelkultur microclimate planting bed! 

The old-fashioned way of mixing!!  We threw in all the ingredients: straw, a bit of yard soil, leaves, cardboard, pieces of wood, and put compost on top.