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Permaculture expert shares how he transformed his average yard into a 'food paradise'

It's amazing how much you can grow on 1/3 of an acre.

Andrew Millison/YouTube

Andrew Millison's yard went from average lawn to abundant garden.

Fifteen years ago, Andrew Millison's yard looked like most average suburban American yards with a row rose bushes, a few trees, and a basic green lawn that had to be mowed and watered—good for running around and picnicking on, but not much else.

Today, it couldn't be more different or more productive. Where there used to be grass, now there's a "multi-layered permaculture food forest" that serves both Millison's family and their neighbors. In a video tour of his property in Oregon's Willamette Valley, the permaculture expert shares the five strategies he used to design his edible landscape.

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But first, what does permaculture mean?

Permaculture refers to sustainable agricultural and design practices that work with nature rather than against it. Permaculture practices include observing and learning from natural ecosystems and creating purposeful systems that emulate them.

For instance, huge fields filled with neat rows of all one kind of crop might make planting and harvesting more efficient, but nothing in nature actually grows that way on its own. Agriculture that goes against nature means having to work hard to keep away pests, manage water distribution carefully, etc. Permaculture aligns human action with the diversity, stability and resilience that make healthy landscapes productive and self-sustaining long-term.

Here are the five strategies Millison used to do that right in his own yard:

1. Create productive edges

Edges of yards and gardens are usually decorative, but Millison's yard edges are almost entirely made of trees and shrubs that produce fruit or other food. From cherries to blackberries to fennel to grapes and more, he created "a solid corridor of food" for him and his community to enjoy. He even has an apple tree that grew out of a crack in the sidewalk. As neighbors walk by, they can partake of the abundance.

Andrew Millison at the edge of his yardThe community benefits from the food growing at the edges of Andrew Millison's sidewalk.Andrew Millison/YouTube

His cherry tree is grafted with four different varieties so they ripen at different times throughout the season. He also has a fig tree that he planted in the south-facing part of the yard to take advantage of the increased heat reflected off the sidewalk.

2. Plant food everywhere

We're used to thinking of a gardens as a distinct part of a yard, not the whole thing, but why? Millison makes use of the land he has by planting food literally everywhere—front yard, side yard, back yard, all of it.

Millison has perennial plants like his artichokes, which means he doesn't have to replant them every year. He also has an annual garden patch, growing things like lettuce, zucchini, broccoli and more, which he harvests from every day during growing season.

flower gardenFood and flowers and native foliage fill the landscape.Andrew Millison/YouTube

3. Diversity of plants

Hyperdiversity is an important strategy, says Millison. Flowers and native plants are a big part of the food-bearing ecosystem, not only attracting pollinators but also supporting insect predator and prey relationships, keeping pests at bay in the garden.

"So I not only have the cultivated ecosystem of exotic food and flowering plants, but I have the ecological matrix of a native, intact system as well," says Millison.


bees on a honeycombMillison's bees help pollinate the whole neighborhood.Andrew Millison/YouTube

Along with the diversity of flowers, Millison also keeps bee hives. The bees pollinate the garden and provide honey (which he puts in his tea he makes with the overabundance of fresh mint he has growing). And because their range is about a mile, the bees from Millison's hives help pollinate his neighbor's gardens as well.

4. Chicken rotation system

Bees aren't the only animal Millison tends to in his permaculture garden. His chickens also play a big role in fertilization, weeding and tilling of the soil, thanks to a rotation system he uses season to season. During the summer, they stay in a paddock where their activity prepares the soil for a winter crop that will be planted there. After the harvest in the fall, they move to the main garden area where they do the same thing, preparing the soil for the next summer's planting.

"Having the chickens move back and forth between these gardens creates a wonderful synergy where the chickens take care of a lot of the important garden work so I don't need to do it," he says.


Chicken paddockChickens take a lot of the work out of soil preparation.Andrew Millison/YouTube

The chickens have a coop that can be accessed from either area and which is also connected to the greenhouse, which is part of Millison's final strategy.

5. Create microclimates

Millison's small lot has about 50 trees planted on it, but it's designed as a "solar bowl" so that all of the plants get the amount of sunlight they need.

A microclimate element familiar to most of us is the greenhouse, and Millison's greenhouse is made from mostly recycled materials. It stays much warmer than the outside, enabling him to keep citrus trees, desert foliage and other plants that don't do well with prolonged below-freezing temperatures. (His greenhouse even has a jade plant from a cutting he got from Jerry Garcia(of The Grateful Dead.)


inside a greenhouseThe chicken nesting boxes open up into the greenhouse.Andrew Millison/YouTube

In an example of the whole permaculture design working together, the chickens' nesting boxes in their coop are attached to and open up into the greenhouse for easy collection.

"You know, your quality of life really goes up when you surround yourself with gardens, with nature," says Millison. "I find my peace in going out here and gardening. It's my hobby. I have a lot of creative energy out here as well. It's a wholesome feeling and it's a secure feeling."

Millison says the garden does help with their grocery bill and there's nothing like eating something fresh that literally just been picked. But it's also about sharing, he says.

"I've got a school down the block. The kids are always walking by, they're eating all the berries and fruits on the sidewalk. I've got neighbors coming over—I'm always sharing my surplus. It's a really good way to build community with your neighbors."

Imagine if everyone's yards were used to grow food this way. You can learn more about Millison's expertise and other permaculture projects around the world on his YouTube channel as well as his website at andrewmillison.com.

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Science

People are baffled over this machine that sorts out green tomatoes in a mere second

The automated sorter technology is fascinating, as is watching it work in slow motion.

@fasc1nate/Twitter

An automated green tomato sorting machine is mesmerizing in slow motion.

For thousands of years, people around the world have been honing the art of agriculture. For the vast majority of human history, people planted and harvested and sorted produce largely by hand, gradually developing tools and machines over time that would make farming more efficient.

Many crops still have to be harvested and/or sorted by hand, but thanks to a rather mind-blowing machine, tomatoes aren't one of them. A machine that harvests tomatoes saves a ton of time and labor, but as tomatoes don't all ripen at the same time, pulling up an entire tomato plant results in a good number of green ones getting into the mix.

One solution to this problem would be to have the tomatoes transported down a conveyor belt in a factory while workers spot and remove the green ones by hand. However, an automated green tomato sorter does it right in the field as the tomatoes are being harvested, and a whole lot faster than any person ever could.

How many humans would it take to separate 32 green tomatoes from red ones in a single second? Um, a lot.

We'll get to the technology of how it works in a minute, but first you have to see the sorter work in slow motion. The machine is so fast you can't even really see what it's doing until you slow it down, but when you do, the wow factor is awesome. There are occasional misses, of course, but for how fast it's going, the accuracy is remarkable—and impressive to watch.

As James Vincent put it in The Verge, "It’s sorting tomatoes, but it looks like the fingers of God flicking damned souls straight into hell." Check this out:

So many immediate questions:

What?!?

How?!?

How does it know which tomatoes are green?

How does it work so precisely and freakishly fast to flick them away?

Am I the only one with a sudden urge to play Fruit Ninja?

The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation dove into a few of those questions with Don Douglas, president of Weco, a company that builds the optical technology behind the sorter. Douglas explained that light is used to create a reflection off the tomatoes and a sensor connected to software determines which tomatoes are green using that reflection.

It's actually tech that's been used for decades, but it's obviously been perfected and optimized over the years. Watch the machine at work and hear Douglas explain how it does what it does:

It's not always better to have machines do work humans can do, and there's certainly plenty of reason to be concerned about human labor being replaced by machines. But when that labor is back-breaking and tedious, technology can be a big help. Some inventions are also such prime examples of human innovation and ingenuity, you just have to marvel at them—even if they're just sorting green tomatoes from red ones.


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Culture

A viral reminder that Native people are the historical experts on sustainability

Photo by Anthony Gotter on Unsplash, Screenshot from tumbler

Environmental catastrophes like the recent Australian bushfires and ecological travesties like plastic-filled whale stomachs serve as stark reminders of our precarious relationship with our planet. While many of us call for greater sustainability in all areas of life, we don't really know what that looks like—which is why we should listen to those who do.

Unfortunately, ignorance about Native cultures and history prevents many people from looking toward indigenous wisdom when it comes to environmental issues. Many of us tend to think of sustainability as something new and innovative rather than a way of life that has already been accomplished in multiple places by multiple peoples.

A viral Facebook post from The Audacity of the Caucasity illustrates this point beautifully. A screenshot of a post on tumblr shows three people's posts about how Native people didn't just live in harmony with nature, but actively and purposefully managed the land to meet their own needs while also maintaining healthy ecosystems.

RELATED: Still don't think climate change matters? Here's how it's hitting people where it hurts.

The first, from @downhomesophisticate, reads:

"I don't think a lot of people really understand that ecosystems in North America were purposefully maintained and altered by Native people.

Like, we used to purposefully set fires in order to clear underbrush in forests, and to inhibit the growth of trees on the prairies. This land hasn't existed in some primeval state for thousands of years. What Europeans saw when they came here was the result of -work-"

Then @feministdragon explained in more detail what that work entailed:

"The east coast was all mature and maintained food forests. Decades if not centuries of nurturing and maintenance. When the British arrived, they were amazed that there were paths through the forest just 'naturally' lined with berries and edible plants, like a Garden of Eden. Then they tore that shit down to grow wheat."

Finally, @worriedaboutmyfern shared what they'd learned from their mom, who happens to be an ethnobotanist.

"My mom is an ethnobotanist and getting people to understand this is literally her life's work. A lot of native tribes just had a whole different way of looking at agriculture. Instead of planting orchards in tidy rows near their villages, they went to where the trees were already growing and tended them there. They would girdle trees by stripping the bark in order to stop the spread of disease or thin out badly placed saplings. And they would encourage the companion plants they wanted and weed out the ones they didn't, so that in the end the whole forest would be productive while remaining an ecosystem and not a monoculture. It is still agriculture, but it is a form of agriculture that is so much gentler on the landscape that, as the OP says, the European settlers could not recognize what they were seeing. To them the natives must have seemed to magically live in abundance while they starved."

(The tumblr post also includes many more details about how Native peoples managed the land.)

While it's clear that modern life makes a total return to Native land management practices impractical, that doesn't mean we can't learn from indigenous wisdom. All of us will be impacted by an unhealthy planet, and it only makes sense to consult the historical experts on sustainable living to find solutions.

At the same time, we need to acknowledge that Native communities are disproportionally impacted by environmental issues. Oil pipelines are being built through Native lands. Indigenous people in the Pacific islands are having to navigate rising sea levels. Inuit communities are having to figure out how to move entire villages due to melting Arctic ice. Native environmental leaders not only have generational wisdom to offer, but an urgent need for all of us to take meaningful action.

RELATED: Laws and climate change are harming this tribe's foodways. Here's how they survive.

When prominent activists like Greta Thunberg tell the world to listen to indigenous leaders, we should share and heed that advice. We can learn about and support young indigenous activists on the front line of environmental issues. We can check out the initiatives of organizations like Indigenous Environmental Network and their allies like Climate Justice Alliance.

When we have a collective problem, we look to experts to help solve it. And when it comes to protecting the environment and maintaining a sustainable relationship with the earth, indigenous people are some of the most experienced experts we have.

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Hello Humankindness

Their neighborhood was in poor health. These amazing teens changed that.

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In February 2018, a South Los Angeles community gathered to celebrate some local heroes: teenage agriculturists.

The event was the grand opening of a brand new, state-of-the-art greenhouse on the John C. Fremont High School campus.

This greenhouse is custom designed and optimized with the latest technology for plant growth and education. The vents are computerized. The blinds open and close by themselves, depending on the brightness of the sun.

This facility might sound like something you'd find in Beverly Hills. But it's in South L.A., which has the highest rates of poverty and lowest rates of health in Los Angeles County.

In other words, the place is unlike anything this area has seen before.

The community garden at Fremont High School. All images courtesy of UMMA Community Clinic.

That's why city officials, community organizations, and local residents came together for the grand opening. It symbolized the growth of a neighborhood that was severely lacking green spaces and is now being transformed through healthy food and community.

The greenhouse is the newest addition to Fremont Wellness Center and Garden, which opened in 2012 on an unused lot at the high school. The whole project includes a community clinic, community garden, and small park, and the neighborhood youth are spearheading its mission.

When it comes to resources, South L.A. students and their low-income neighborhoods are overlooked far too often — but not with Fremont Wellness Center and Garden.

It began as a vision for safe and open green spaces as well as quality health services for students and the surrounding neighborhood.

So the Fremont Wellness Center and Garden's creators started the Gardening Apprenticeship Program — or GAP — which teaches students about gardening, environmental science, and food justice.

GAP currently only works with 14 students at a time. But with the addition of the greenhouse, students can participate in a Regional Occupational Program (ROP) as well. About 60 students can take part in ROP, making an even greater impact on youth in the community.

The new greenhouse at Fremont Wellness Center and Garden.

For inner-city youth who would ordinarily have to travel to wealthier neighborhoods for safe, green spaces, this opens up exciting new possibilities.

They learn about the social issues affecting communities like theirs and how they are amplified by a lack of access to fresh food. They also learn how to grow their own organic food, which helps improve their community's health and wellness.

"They learn more about agriculture and learn more about the field and get the professional experience to hopefully, one day, go into this field," says Keshia Sexton, director of organizing at the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust.

And exciting events, like the greenhouse grand opening, allow the students to showcase their hard work for the community.

"It was definitely a student program and a student celebration for this new state-of-the-art resource that's now on Fremont campus," Sexton says of the grand opening ceremony. Presentations included a Fremont High School drill team performance and speakers from L.A. Unified School District, with photographers present to capture it all.

Ribbon-cutting at the greenhouse grand opening ceremony.

The program has been transformative for the youth involved, and one special speaker, Tiani, a GAP student, demonstrated that transformation.

"[She] spoke about how the program impacted her and made her a stronger advocate and gave her the confidence she needs to really succeed," Sexton recalls.

And she is not the only participating student to feel this way. The students' experiences and knowledge provided a crucial perspective on food equity. Their recommendations helped shape the future of their communities as well as offering expertise gained through education and lived experience with fresh foods.

"It's a healing space, and it's a space for folks to enjoy nature," Sexton says. "But it's also a learning space and a civic engagement space, where people are getting activated in being part of the solution for addressing the food inequity."

Fremont High School students at the new greenhouse.

This program helps empower young people to be part of the solution, advocate for their communities' needs, and get healthy food growing in underserved neighborhoods that really need it. And their impact is already significant.

Their South L.A. neighbors now have new resources for healthier living within walking distance.

For example, the community clinic offers medical care for all ages at low to no cost, which will likely help improve overall health of the local population. The clinic is also hosting a free, biweekly farmers market open to the community. Healthy eating plays a critical role in preventative health care; nutritious foods can help prevent things like diabetes and high cholesterol.

The UMMA Community Clinic farmers market.

It's no wonder these students are so proud to show off their work. This is an incredible model that could inspire resources for healthy living in urban areas throughout the country.

In South L.A., Fremont High School students now get to enjoy the fruits of their hard work. They're not only eating fresh food that they've grown themselves, but they're also realizing the impact that they can make on their community.

When imagining what it means to have green spaces in urban areas, most people might imagine a park or garden. But with a model like this, green spaces can be hubs of wellness, community, and education.

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