This easy method for gardening in small spaces or large by a busy mom of four is a gamechanger! Imagine an easy way to know what to plant and where to plant it so that everything in your garden thrives, and that it will be easy to take care of and will thrive on its own. And imagine growing more food in less space with less effort than you ever thought possible.
It’s possible!
Check out the technique described by Nicole Johnsey Burke, a method she calls ´Leaves, Roots and Trees’. She’s used it on thousands of gardens that she has planted since 2017 with great success every time.
I noticed that this idea is very similar to the ideas described by Andrew Millison, a noted permaculture teacher from the University of Oregon, and similar to what he documented in his video of his visit to Senegal where they are reclaiming the land from the invading Sahara desert. Millison calls it planting in ‘nests’ and Burke in the video linked below the photo above uses raised planters to plant clusters of plants. Other avid gardeners also use a similar ‘intensive gardening’ technique with great success, such as Anne of All Trades, who plants all sorts of plants very closely together, using mulch to fill any empty places in the beginning, until the plants grow into the available space. Nature doesn’t leave bare spaces in forests and fields, so it makes sense we shouldn’t either.
Burke describes how she realized how well intensive planting works by observing nature on a hot hike through the desert with her family one July. She noticed that the vegetation was thriving, but only in patches. She noticed that they passed patches of sand where nothing grew, and then patches where many plants were growing together, with no space between them, in a cluster. She counted between 15 and 20 plants in each cluster, with the tallest plants in the middle, medium tall plants surrounding the tall plants, and low plants creeping along the sand at the outskirts of each cluster, often making a low carpet of blooming flowers around the periphery. Everything was a jumble, but all the plants were thriving, with no evidence of disease. The desert obviously lacks water, so this clustering obviously helps all the plants retain water and help each other grow.
This was a light bulb moment for her.
Just look at the proliferation of plants in this absurdly dry and hot place that no one makes any effort to water, fertilize or weed!
Photo credit: Nicole Johnsey Burke, pic of the thriving desert of Big Bend National Park in the video This Gardening Method Changed My Life.
Burke went home and experimented in her own garden. She had been wondering for years why their garden did not produce much, and now she thought she knew why. Plants like to grow together, not in monoculture groups, but in groups of great diversity.
Her experiments worked. She had great results by grouping the plants she grew into three general categories.
- The plants that go in the ‘small’ plant category are what she calls the ‘leaves’, or the plants you grow for their leaves, such as herbs and lettuce greens. This category includes edible flowers.
- The plants that she groups into the ‘medium tall’ category tend to be the plants with edible roots. Potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets and other tubers fit in this category.
- The plants that she groups into the ‘tall’ category are the vines and things that can grow up trelloses, large cabbages, fruiting plants such as beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes.
The great thing about this method is that you don’t have to spend hours researching companion gardening or field guides or tying to find gardening books for your exact climate zones in your yard. You can just group plants by the full grown size.
The next neat trick Burke uses to simplify the decision making process of what to plant where is to use a grid mapped out over a cluster area or raised bed.
In each section, simply make sure you choose to plant one tall, one medium and one small plant. Position the tall plant near the middle of the growing area, and the small ‘leaves and flowers’ category of plants at the edge, where they can grow over the side of the container, raised bed or around the periphery if using a circular ‘nest’ approach. The medium plants go between these two groups.
Easy enough!
Photo Credit: screenshot from Nicole Johnsey Burke’s video “This Gardening Technique Changed My Life“
I think it looks so beautiful, with all the plants and flowers mixed together instead of plants separated and growing in rows.
Photo Credit: screenshot from Nicole Johnsey Burke’s video “This Gardening Technique Changed My Life“And here is what the raised beds look like after a short while.