Mandala gardens

From:
The International Permaculture Solutions Journal Vol. 2
Patterning

Gangamma's Mandala:
The Tropical Home or Village Garden

Bill Mollison
(Extract from Permaculture: A Designer's Handbook, 1988, Tagari Publications, PO Box 1,
Tyalgum NSW 2484 AUSTRALIA)
(Reprinted with permission.)

The mandala garden provides an excellent example of both advantages and problems of using curvilinear shapes
in gardening. Besides the advantages that Bill lists, there are at least two other major benefits. First, this is a very
beautiful garden. Beauty attracts the garden's most useful
symbiote, the gardener. These gardens draw us in on emotional and aesthetic planes. We may visit to commune
with Earth spirits, but we surely also notice that the parsley needs thinning or that the hot peppers have reached
the fire-truck red stage and need harvest. (Earth spirits expect such observations from us.) Furthermore, this
garden has an enormous amount of edge, which, if properly organized, can magnify yield immensely.
One must learn this method of gardening, however, to locate plants in the correct aspect to shade and sun, to
harvest the benefits of companion planting and avoid excessive competition, to get a feel for planting distances,
root growth, water needs, and other factors, all of which differ from conventional gardening in kind and
complexity – DH

In Taiwan and the Philippines, small (90 square meter--970 square foot), intensively planted home gardens feed
a family of five all year. I have added to these designs my own permaculture "least path" layouts to give a very
concise and effective model of sustenance garden design for tropical and subtropical regions. These can also be
adapted to temperate regions, using suitable species. The overall pattern can be altered to fit almost every site
form, but is presented here as a flat site pattern. Although the building of such a garden is fast and simple, the
theory and design input are sophisticated.
The whole design owes much to the work of the East-West Institute in Hawaii, and the Samaka gardens of the
Philippines, but the layout is purely permaculture. I have named the total layout "Gangamma's Mandala" after
one of our Karnataka (India) permaculture design graduates.

Figure 18. The banana-sweetpotato-papaya circle garden.

Steps in the process are:

1. At the center of a 100-square-meter (1075 square foot) or larger area, describe a circle two meters (six feet)
across and excavate the soil to a dish shape, ridged on the perimeter, and about 0.6 to one meter (two to three
feet) deep from hollow to rim. This is the banana-sweet potato-papaya circle garden, as in Figure 18.
Then cover the whole circle with wet paper or wet cardboard, banana leaves, or any sheet mulch material and fill
the hollow (or over-fill it as a dome) with "rough mulch" of short logs, coarse twigs, hay, rice husks, and
sawdust, or indeed any humus-creating materials. A little scatter of manure, ash, lime, dolomite, or fertilizer can
be added. If stones are available, bank them to the outside of the rim.
Then plant the rim with four to five papayas (a tall variety), four or so bananas (dwarf types), and eight to 10
sweet potato plants. If available, place yams or taro inside the rim. Later, plant beans to climb the banana and
papaya stalks.
2. A circular sunken path 0.6 to one meter (two to three feet) wide is sawdusted or graveled around this central
circle garden, and off it, five-six "keyholes" or indentations are made. The garden now looks like Figure 19.

Figure 19.
A. Mulch or circle garden=banana circle.
B. The annular path.
C. The keyhole paths.

3. Around each 'keyhole,' a bed 1.5 to two meters (five-six feet) wide is first edge-banked with soil 100-200 cm.
(four to eight inches) high to prevent water run-off. Then paper and mulch the beds as for the banana circle. The
garden now resembles Figure 3 in plan. The thick lines represent low earth ridges.
We have thus made six major keyholed beds, each of which is separated from the next by a thin strip of lemon-
grass (Cymbopogon c3itratus ) or vetiver grass (Vetiveria zizanioides ). Just outside the periphery ridge, plant
strips of lemon-grass, comfrey, and arrowroot (Canna edulis ) for a "kikuyu grass barrier," and behind that, a
taller border of cassava/banana/papaya/pigeon pea/Leucaena
/Crotalaria forms a hedge or windbreak. All these borders yield mulch, forage, barrier effects, or food. The
whole mandala is fenced, or has spiny woven hedge boundary for cattle exclusion, if necessary.
The mandala has been earth-shaped and mulched to prevent run-off and to conserve moisture. Now plant, using
buckets of good soil, the following "zones" of plants.

A. On the track edge border of the central path and keyholes, within scoop-reach of the path, plant those
frequently plucked or everyday greens of high value. The placement and selection criteria here are that all the
plant, or most of it, is picked for much of the year. These are the "path side greens." They include all the
chive and shallot species, plenty of parsley, coriander (cilantro), thyme and sage, celery, broccoli, edible
chrysanthemum, chard, and any longbearing or perennial greens, e.g., various perennial "spinaches". This is
therefore a narrow border to the inner side of the keyhole beds, planted in the ridge soils there.

B. Behind or outside the path side plants, we plant a 1 meter (three foot) wide strip of species that are frequently
picked over a short season to a long season, e.g., tomatoes, eggplants, sweet and hot peppers (chilies), bush or
staked beans and peas, kale, corn, okra and so on. These are the "narrow bed" plants, all within reach of a path or
keyhole. As yet, we do not need to step on any beds to harvest.

C. Just out of reach, on the outer borders of the keyhole beds, plant most long-term root crops (potatoes, sweet
potatoes, carrots) or any crop we "cut off and remove" (cauliflower, head lettuce, and cabbage). Thus, for this
crop we step (once) on the bed to harvest and replant, following root crop with fava beans or dahl (dried beans or
lentils).

In the banana circle, we can place a grid or platform of wood over the mulch, and this then becomes an outside
shower or wash-up area. Replant all beds as harvested, and apply a top mulch of straw, sawdust, bark, dry
manure, or chips annually (or as convenient--DH). Feed rabbits, guinea-pigs, chickens, or small livestock weeds,
waste vegetables, household scraps, and forage greens from the border hedge (comfrey, cassava, leucaena or
lemon grass). Cut for mulch vetiver grass, lemon grass, etc., three to five times annually. The roots of vetiver
grass prevent rodents from burrowing from "outside" as do root masses of Euphorbia species.

Plant all trees, shrubs, and tubers before you lay any mulch, including sheets. Then add about 300 cm (a foot) of
trodden-down, wet mulch. Transplant tray seedlings eight to 10 cm (three to four inches) high. Plant large seeds
such as peas or beans, each in a hole scooped into the mulch. Use a double handful of soil in each hole. Thickly
scatter small seeds (lettuce, carrot) on lenses of soil 500 cm (one and one half feet) across and five to eight cm
(two to three inches) thick, placed and firmed on top of the trodden mulch. After broadcasting the seed, dust
them with a one cm (one half inch) thick layer of fine soil. All seed can be pre-soaked. The whole bed needs a
good soak with a sprinkler at each stage.

If the mulch contains no weed seeds, the beds are weed free. It takes nine to 15 months to build up a worm
population and a good soil. Push any surplus compostables under the top mulch layer.

Figure 20.
D. Keyhole beds about 15m across.
E. Hedgerow and barrier plants.
Zones in keyhole beds:
a. pathside greens.
b. narrow bed plants.
c. one-visit crops.

A larger garden, designed for a community kitchen at a rural center in Karnataka state (India), uses a core
assembly of four to five banana circles and has eight to 12 keyhole beds. In this case, a keyhole accesses the
banana circles. Any one of these banana circles can contain a small pond for frogs and water convolvulus (water
spinach - Ipomea reptans ) or taro.

This garden is intensively planted, has very little path per bed area, and easy to build and maintain, provides
everyday greens, minerals, vitamins, allows no water run-off, and can be built on ANY substrate (rock, concrete,
roof areas). We can plant a leucaena or palms for high shade and mulch, at the junctions of the keyhole beds.
The hedge surround eventually provides the annual mulch.
Figure 21. A mandala with combined hexagonal and octagonal arrays.
A. 5 banana circles.
B. 8 keyhole beds.
C. hedge edge and barrier.

We here combine basic nutrition, soil building, rainwater harvest, eventual self-mulching, various weed and
animal barriers, small livestock fodder, overhead shade, non-dig gardening, "least-path" access, direct waste
water dispersal, and a pleasing design. Any improvements are welcome. This is a challenge to your further
revelation or intuition. Try it, teach it, spread it, refine it.
Figure 22.
A. Banana-papaya circle with shower-wash grid fitted.
B. Sawdusted, rice husks, or gravel paths.
C. Keyhole paths as B above.
D. Keyhole beds: a. pathside plants, b. narrow bed plants, c. one-visit plants.
E. Weed, wind, animal barrier-hedge sequence, e.g., (inner ––> outer) vetiver or lemon grass, comfrey,
arrowroot, taller hedge of cassava, papaya, crotolaria, leucaena, pigeon pea and banana.
F. In garden trees are leucaena or palms for shade in hot regions.

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