COVID-19 Community Resilience & Permaculture Course

Session 15:
Zoning as a permaculture design technique

Within the entire permaculture framework, the design of land, ecosystems, communities, and societies is the core within permaculture design and zoning is one important tool to get your design right. After this session you will:

• Know what zoning is

• Understand why it is important

• Get to know the 5 zones and where to place your elements

• Be able to relax more and focus on the important things.

Video: Seeson 15 Permaculture Zoning

In the designer’s manual, Bill Mollison suggests that the systems we construct should last as long as possible and require little maintenance; this is energy efficient planning. In other words, in order to create systems that are beneficial, the systems need to both sustain themselves and those who construct them. The quote that is resonating most with me is 

Zoning helps us to come up with an energy-efficient design of our project.

What is permaculture zoning?

Zoning in permaculture is a key design tool to place elements in an energy-efficient way for your land, community, or society. Zones are defined according to the level of human activity, the efficiency of movement flows within a system, the function of an element, and the level of human effort. Permaculture zoning dedicates certain areas of your design project to special usage.  By using zoning, you increase the efficiency of land use while decreasing demands on personal labor and traveling distances. It is about finding your individual optimum between overall productivity and your personal energy input. 

Zoning in permaculture is about understanding the patterns of human movement within a space in order to place design elements where they will naturally and easily receive the attention they require. It is all about reducing unnecessary travel between areas while giving the needed attention to the different elements. Zoning is a permaculture design technique that positions the elements (like herbs, trees, chicken house) in areas according to their need or our use. The greater the needs or use of the element, the closer to the center of activity we place it.

As always in permaculture the origin of zoning is land-based. Anyhow, the tools work perfectly well for designing land, human settlement, society, or even for your personal growth.

A permaculture site is divided into zones. Depending on your design, your land will be split into 5 different zones. (Although it is important to note that the exact boundaries of the zones are fluid.)

In Permaculture design terminology, zones are typically labeled with the numbers 0 through 5, with certain teachers including a ‘zone 00’ to refer to the designer’s own mindset, experience, and practice. Each zone has a different requirement for maintenance and function. 

Zones 1 and 2 are the areas needing the most attention. Thus, they are placed closer to the home and heavy traffic areas. Zones 3, 4, and 5 radiate out from heavy traffic areas as maintenance needs become less and less.  As mentioned before, the exact boundaries of the zones are fluid, but the basic idea is that zone 1 is the area you visit daily, with each higher zone being visited less. In addition, elements such as crops in zone 1 need regular maintenance while ideally elements in zone 5 may not need maintenance at all.

The graph sums up perfectly why design matters.  In the beginning, you have nearly infinitive options available and the cost to change from one to another option is free of cost (resources, time, and money). With time, your assumptions and/or decisions reduce your options, or the cost of changing them increases. This develops over time. Zoning helps you to place the options you have during your design process in an optimal way and support you to create an energy-efficient ecosystem.

Let’s take a look at each zone individually.

Each design is individual and needs to fit the values, key design drivers, boundaries, and priorities of your permaculture project. Thus, each zone will depend on the analysis you do of the area’s maintenance needs, potential productivity, water, and energy requirements. The following definitions need to be understood as guidelines and ideal world examples. In order to create your tailor-made design, please question the zoning based on your needs and place accordingly.  

Permaculture Zone 0: Home is where your heart is

Zone 0 is the center of the action. It is the residence, workplace, or in general the conceptual starting point of the project. It is the area where you most likely spend most of your time by default.

Examples for zone 0 elements:
farm-house or cabin, housing, tool shed, accommodation, a place for processing harvested food. 
Function:
a place to sleep restfully, prepare and eat food, take care of basic hygiene needs, complete office work, store important documents, and meet family members and friends for informal, small events. 

Zone 1 in Permaculture: High in maintenance

Zone 1 is the area nearest to your center of the action (zone 0) e.g. your home or area of the most traffic. Zone 1 is an area needing regular observation, energy, and harvesting. It is very close to the house or daily pathways to increase efficiency. Elements that are placed in Zone 1 tend to be small and require daily attention, and frequent upkeep or visits from people. 

How to determine you are in Zone 1?

Plants placed here require full irrigation, full mulching, and much human management including pruning, harvesting, and training. Large parts of Zone 1 may be covered by some form of shelter material, including shade cloth, polytunnels, etc. 

• Around 70% of the plants are annual plants.  

• All garden beds are mulched  

Zone 1 is the place for intensive vertical stacking and optimized use of space. Zone 1 plants are often harvested constantly, depending on the season. It is the zone with the highest energy input per area. It does not necessarily need to be the most productive area on your land. However, it is the one with the most valuable harvest.    

Examples for Zone 1 elements:

Kitchen garden, nursery, greenhouses, espaliers, outdoor preparations, and trellises. In addition, car garages, small tool sheds, and the kitchen compost are normally placed in Zone 1 too.  

Permaculture Zone 2: High productivity

As Zone 1 is the most visited of all the zones, Zone 2 is next. Therefore, Zone 2 sits just beyond Zone 1, and in some cases elements can be placed in both of the zones depending on your key design drivers and priorities. Compared to Zone 1, areas are less intensively managed with higher demand for space and more opportunity for bulk harvesting. For the first two zones we should pay constant attention to the water and soil.

How to determine you are in zone 2

Zone 2 installations tend to include commercial, larger-scale versions of some zone 1 elements, as well as several new possibilities that fit the increased land area available.

• 70 % of the plants are perennials

• Zone 2 tends to be the area with the highest output or productivity per area. 

Medium-sized windbreaks to protect your crop from wind. In temperate, wetter climates, it is not necessary to irrigate Zone 2 year-round, but in the tropics and dry climates you might have irrigation possibilities for the dry season.

Examples for Zone 2 elements:

In Zone 2 you will find permaculture elements such as meadow orchards,d food forests, chicken rotation yards, small ponds, wood and metal workshops, and intercropping with staple food gardens. 

Zone 3 in a Design: The farm life begins

Zone 3 is probably what comes to most people’s minds when they think about farming. Most commercial farms that sell food of any kind require a Zone 3 scale to be profitable and obtain sufficient cash crops. On a small plot of land you might even exclude your Zone 3 or have it on a nearby spot. Zone 3 has a more classic edge between our cultivated, highly intensive systems and a wild, self-managing system. Zone 3 will typically be larger than the preceding two zones, so your ability to drastically change the landscape will be reduced. Given the large scale of zone 3, and following permaculture principle, "Fewer changes for the greater effect”, you would want to build your design upon the existing vegetation. Zones 1 and 2 can be modified somewhat, but in Zone 3 you want to match the species to your individual site. 

How to determine you are in Zone 3: 

The area just needs occasional visits. It contains the majority of our seasonal wide-ranging crops such as corn, wheat, rice, pumpkin, or bamboo (both for personal use and as a source of income). In certain times of the year (however limited to a short period) you might intervene in bursts such as planting seasons, harvest seasons, and weekly maintenance).

• Large quantities and annual harvest

• Living mulch is a green cover that we often provide in tree areas. 

Zone 3 is the largest zone to be maintained. Most likely you will introduce local nitrogen-fixing cover crops that are able to compete with weeds and reduce your labor input.

Examples of zone 3 elements:

canals and small dams, water storage facilities, water harvest and management, agroforestry, fields, grains, etc. 

Permaculture Zone 4: Nature takes over

Zone 4 is only partially managed. It is not a completely wild zone like zone 5, it is more about facilitating and interacting with nature in a more experimental approach. You are creating a symposium with nature and your harvest looks more like pick by walking, as many of the wild species in this zone won’t be planted by you and therefore spread over the area.  

How to determine you are in Zone 4:

You visit this area more for checking how nature is developing and only support with minor intervention. You introduce new species and plants very selectively. Normally the species growing in zone 4 are very robust, native, and can take care of themselves. Zone 4 should be left to its own devices as much as possible; determine the minimum amount of effort we can put in to see beneficial development. 

Examples of zone 4 elements:

Wild varieties such as wild strawberries and mushrooms. Mostly native plants, forest, grasslands and herb lands, shrubs, wood lots, and large-scale earthworks like berms, swales, and keyline dam 

Permaculture Zone 5: Don’t touch

This zone is part of the fair share approach of permaculture; it attracts wildlife, encourages diversity, and is beneficial to the designed parts. Zone 5 is a completely wild ecosystem, a great place to observe and learn from nature. It is a no-touch area, most of the time. No form of profit-based intervention is recommended here. Any sort of intervention you may take in this site is best done with an attitude towards regeneration and letting nature take its course. If you would visit this land, come as an observer for the purpose of leisure and learning.

Zoning in short:

Let’s link the zoning back to our SADIMET process: Zoning is part of the analysis phase, still, before you are actually starting your design Zoning is one tool to analyze the optimal placement of elements from one perspective.

Elements that require the most input and attention should be nearby to where you stay, and those which require infrequent attention and little management should be further away. Thus you are splitting your permaculture project into 5 zones around your house. Zone 1 is the area surrounding your house or along your daily paths while zone 5 is the wildlands that you are not maintaining productively. The boundaries of each zone are flexible and not fixed or static.

Learning exercise

Go out to your land and see if you are able to define some zones within your property or at least try to determine which element would be a zone one, two, three…. feature. If you are in a city you can also do zoning for urban areas for your shopping, mobility, and other parts of your daily life. Just imagine how to do it.