Design your perfect biodynamic garden

Design your perfect biodynamic garden

by | Mar 29, 2016 | Gardening With The Moon, Happy House

perfect garden designInheriting a grown-over, derelict garden is a momentous task, even for an experienced gardener. But following these few and easy steps can help you to turn this wasteland into your perfect garden.

The spring is a great time to start a new garden design from scratch.

This task is particularly important if:

– Your  garden is overgrown
– You recently moved into a new house and need to start from scratch
– You want to change most of the layout and planting scheme of your current garden

The Biodynamic garden design is similar to any normal design, except that you use the symbol guide on the LWTM calendar to guide you to the best times.

Biodynamic garden design is best undertaken over the winter months or in early spring, ideally during the Waxing Moon and when you see the LWTM life-style calendar symbol.

 

Step One: Photograph your current garden

It may be the last thing you want to take a picture of – a depressing, overgrown-looking wasteland. But taking pictures of your current garden is the starting point.

Be systematic and photograph every bit of your garden, moving closer to the middle, picture by picture.  It is important that you take pictures in a way that they slightly overlap. Once you have photographed your whole garden from all sides and angles, go and print these pictures out.

Arrange the prints in order, so they show the whole garden and glue them together by slightly overlapping.  Now you have a panoramic view of your whole garden in front of you.

Step Two: What kind of garden do you want to create? 
Do you prefer a formal garden, a cottage garden, a simplistic Japanese garden or some more modern design? A big consideration in all this is:

  • How much time have you got for gardening (formal gardens that need a lot of pruning, lawn mowing take up far more time than informal cottage gardens or minimalistic gardens)
  • What is the prime use of your garden?do you want to grow vegetables, use the garden as a playground or predominantly entertain? 
  • Will you have garden  furniture, a trampoline, sandpit,  compost heap or other garden structures and features

 Step Three: Draw your dream garden
Now place a large sheet of tracing paper over the photo-montage and start drawing your ‘dream garden’.
 At this stage, it does not matter if you get it wrong, as you can just use a new piece of tracing paper. Make sure you add all the garden structures and furniture (at scale) into your drawing. See how much space is left for the plants and possibly other features such as a garden shed, pond, etc.

Add a mood board in the form of snippets from a gardening magazine or pictures from the internet. That is what you would like your ideal garden to look like. Then show your different designs together with your mood board to your family and friends to get some vital feedback (as some of them have to live with this garden, too!)

Step Four: Research plants and conditions
Now you should have a pretty good idea of what you want. Now comes the next step – to see if your ideal design is also achievable and practical? 
Where is the sun? What type of soil do you find in your garden?

Yellow flowers in a shady corner may look lovely on the drawing board, but now do the research which yellow flowers will actually grow in this shady spot!  It can cost dearly and will just lead to disappointment if you plant a  sun-loving plant in a shady, damp spot. It just won’t thrive. The same principle also applies to your soil as well.  Acid lovers need a different kind of soil than plants that prefer alkaline soil conditions. A good way to choose plants is to walk around the neighborhood and see what other people grow and what seems to thrive in your part of the world. Chances are these plants will do well in your garden, too.

Step Five:  Learn about gardening
Gardening is a lovely leisure activity and will keep you in good shape. Good garden design is key to a successful garden that you can enjoy for years to come. 

It will provide you with all kinds of tips form planting, digging, feeding, pruning, weeding to composting and companion planting (which plants thrive next to each other and which should not be planted together).  It is a must-have for all organic gardeners.

 

The secret of Biodynamic gardening

The secret of Biodynamic gardening

by | Feb 28, 2015 | Uncategorized

Place for meditation Gardening in harmony with the phases of the moon has been practised for thousands of years. Its modern version ‘Biodynamics’ has been redefined by Rudolf Steiner less than a century ago. It builds on the concept of organic farming by combining it with the Ancient Lunar planting method and the use of natural remedies, such as soil tonics and natural pest control.

Derived from the Ancient Greek words ‘bio’ (life) and ‘dunamis’ (power), the biodynamic garden is managed as if it was a single complex organism with a resource of energy or “life power” that can be recycled.

The biodynamic gardener prepares the soil in spring with compost, created from the grass clippings and plants from the very same land the year before. During the growing cycle, herbal preparations are added to the soil and crops are rotated and grown by the method of ‘companion planting’.  Garden tasks like pruning, planting, re-potting and more are undertaken at specific times during the lunar cycle as marked on the moon calendar.

The founder of the Biodynamic movement, the Austrian Rudolf Steiner, held a series of lectures in 1924 on agriculture. In these lectures, he responded to a concern from farmers about deteriorating soil conditions and the effects it has on the growing plants. The deterioration of the crop and quality of the soil had accelerated since the introduction of artificial fertilisers at the turn of the 20th century and something had to be done to address this problem.

Soon after these lectures a research team was set up to look into how a ‘living soil’ can keep plants healthy and what methods can be employed to keep the land fertile and productive without the use of chemicals or other ‘foreign’ substances.

Today ‘biodynamic gardening/farming’ is practised in well over 50 countries worldwide and biodynamic farmed food tastes so good that it wins awards all over the world. The University of Kassel, Germany, even has a dedicated Department of Biodynamic Agriculture, which studies the effect of biodynamic food and lifestyle on human health.

Biodynamically farmed products are now protected and labelled by the’ Demeter brand. It was established in 1928 and aims to protect consumers and farmers alike. Similar organisations are the French ‘Biodivin” ( it certifies that the wine is biodynamicaly farmed) and the Egyptian EBDA (Egyptian Biodynamic Association).

How does it actually work?  the tides

We know that the moon’s gravitational pull moves billions of litres of water around the planet Earth every single day. But there is not only water in the ocean. We humans, for example, consist of nearly 70% water, and a lot of water is also contained in plants.

The water circulating within a plant contains vitamins, minerals and other active substances and travels from the root system through the stem into leaves, blossoms and fruit. At certain times during the moon cycle more liquid is concentrated in the root system, at other times more in leaves, fruit and blossoms. On a practical level that is why there are ‘good and bad times’ for certain activities. For example, when you pick an apple and want to eat it straight away, you want it to be juicy and full of vitamins. Therefore you pick a time when most liquid will be concentrated within the fruit. However, if you want to store the apple for a long time, you want to pick it at a different time when there is slightly less liquid in the fruit,  so the apple will keep  fresh for longer.

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