Susan VonderHaar - Permaculture and its Potential in Your Lawn

[00:00:10] Adam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Green Champions.

[00:00:13] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:17] Adam: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists, this podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Adam.

[00:00:26] Dominique: And I'm Dominique, and this episode is part of a mini-series in partnership with the Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit, which celebrates collaborative climate solutions that are happening in the Midwest region of the U.S.

[00:00:35] Adam: In this mini-series, you'll join us in virtually attending this annual summit and meeting a few out of the hundred great speakers and key storytellers from this year's event. Today, we are joined by Susan VonderHaar , the co-director at the Cincinnati Permaculture Institute. She's a lifelong educator and ecological designer. And she leads Growing Food Champions, a hands-on permaculture initiative that's trained over a hundred people and planted over a thousand edible medicinal and native plants across 20 different food forests in the Cincinnati area. So today we're gonna talk about building local food systems and edible landscapes and how they can restore ecosystems, empower communities, and tackle climate change. So one tree, shrub, and garden at a time. 

Thank you for joining us today, Susan.

[00:01:16] Susan: You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:18] Dominique: We can start with your vision, Susan. So what does Permaculture mean to you and how does it show up in your work at Cincinnati Permaculture Institute?

[00:01:25] Susan: To me, permaculture is a practice. It's a way of being, Permaculture is ecologic design. It's the way to marry the creative genius of human beings with the natural wisdom of the earth. Permaculture offers solutions.

I spent a lifetime studying science and biology, ecology, and worked in environmental research for 20 years, and it wasn't until permaculture that everything kind of fit together at last. Before permaculture, all I saw were problems. We saw how everything was wrong and how we did everything wrong, and how we were so abusive to the earth.

But after permaculture and the more you think about it and realize and incorporate the principles of nature, nature's wisdom, the ecologic principles of permaculture are natural systems, principles. And you see how we can create the solution. In fact, one of the permaculture isms is the problem is the solution.

Now for somebody who hasn't heard of Permaculture before, how is this different from traditional farming? 

Traditional farming, if you're talking about the modern industrial way, obviously we rely on biological resources, not synthetic or chemical resources. So that would be very different from modern farming, but the vision is to create an ecosystem. The farm should be an ecosystem. The inputs of one element should be from the outputs of another element, like closed loop production. And the farm should be self-sustaining is the goal . We can look beyond that and say, "Well, my ecosystem is my community where my neighbor has chickens and I can use the output of their chicken manure and give the neighbor my beet scraps or whatever I'm not using." Thereby, Permaculture has solutions, not just for a garden or a farm, but for communities, for what we call the invisible structures, the social structures, financial, economic, education, law. These principles can apply to any living system.

[00:03:42] Adam: And you alluded earlier to this idea that the problems are the solutions. Can you explain that a little bit more? Like what does that really mean?

[00:03:50] Susan: It's definitely an assets-based approach to life in general and to our specific problems. A classic example is, are these invasive species that everyone's up in arms against, right? Oh, we need to eliminate all this honeysuckle. Well, these plants are filling a niche for better or worse. Number one, to just eliminate them, that's not gonna happen. Nature abhors a vacuum, but we can chop and drop the honeysuckle and use that wood for mulch. We can use it to create a terrace in our, say, forest ecosystem, 

we use that chopped debris, the branches, and brush to create a barrier to slow water. And then you plant whatever you wanna replace that honeysuckle with. We use the brush from the honeysuckle. Honeysuckle becomes part of the solution to slow the water to build new soil by adding carbon to the soil. It's holding water, nutrients are staying in place. And that's kind of a classic example how we look at a native or an invasive plant, how we can actually use so many invasive species.

 Another permaculture teacher in Cincinnati, Doug Crouch says, " We don't have an abundance, an excess of honeysuckle. We have a lack of shepherds that are bringing goats through that are grazing our forests." So that leads us into a discussion of the commons. Like where does your property end and how are we managing the general ecosystem beyond just our property.

[00:05:32] Dominique: Yeah. And that feels like a really good example of what you were saying earlier that like it's a connection of creativity on the human side with the wisdom of nature. You're looking at these are very durable plants, these are plentiful. Like why aren't we just being creative about how we use them?

[00:05:49] Susan: Instead of just wanting to torture them, torch them, nuke them. It drives me crazy. It's you don't think nature has some wisdom? Isn't this better than bare ground? I mean, they're still sequestering carbon, they're still building soil and holding moisture in place and completing the water cycle. If you don't like those plants, plant something else, and find something that doesn't compete with that root zone. 

[00:06:15] Adam: So now you've helped install more than 20 of these food forests. 

Can you tell us what exactly is a food forest and then how does that work in building that in the community? 

[00:06:24] Susan: Essentially we're looking at forest gardening, gardening like the forest. And no one tends to the garden that is the forest, right? It's self-maintaining because it is an ecosystem. The plants support each other and they coexist nicely. So it's a selection of companion plants that are taking advantage of the seven niches, the seven layers of the forest. You might be very familiar with the overstory, the understory, the shrub layer, the herbaceous layer, the vines, the ground cover, the root zone. So these are different morphologies of plants.

So by recognizing the fact that they can and do live together and cooperate and serve each other nicely in terms of maintaining moisture, maintaining nutrients, attracting pollinators, controlling pests. 

 So that's the structure that we're talking about when we say food forest. Now, if it's just a couple trees and some shrubs and maybe some medicinal or pollinator plants, probably more specifically, they should be called a guild. But the guild, recognizes that cooperative nature, that kind of self contained ecosystem.

But at, On a larger scale, if you have a dozen trees, you've maybe got a little forest under production there. And the thing of it is it's a template, it's a footprint that can ultimately be expanded, propagated, repeated, so that you don't have to keep buying new plants year after year. You can actually separate what you have. This system worked well let's move it to this area over here where we can plant or where we can replace that honeysuckle. 

[00:08:13] Adam: Sounds like a lot of experimentation. 

[00:08:15] Susan: Right. Luckily for us, a lot of that's been done already. People have been at this permaculture business for 40 years. So coming into it a little late, you have the benefit of, their knowledge. Dave Jacke has written Edible Forest Garden Volume I and II, and these are just catalogs of plants that work well.

And of course we have our growing value nursery here in Cincinnati, also on the west side of Cincinnati and Price Hill. And we've established some of those guilds. You can go to our website and see some example guilds of things that work, that grow well together. 

[00:08:49] Dominique: We as Green Champions love your Growing Food Champions program for some obvious reasons, but also because of the work that you're doing. 

But can you share what it means to grow Food Champions? And why that really matters in our world right now?

[00:09:02] Susan: A key objective of Permaculture is that self-reliance that making people producers rather than consumers. So we want to help people understand actually how really uncomplicated it is. There's gonna be a good three years of maintaining these new installations and making sure we keep that right balance of human input that's necessary to establish a food forest. But after that, Bill Mollison says, "The designer becomes the recliner," and you get to just relax and let nature produce for you because everything gardens, it's just one more step for that health, people need to reclaim their health. I mean, we could talk endlessly about the lack of high quality food in this country, the wealthiest nation.

And we are, I think, 40th for like a health standard. People love this idea. They love that even though they say, "Oh, I got a black thumb. I can't grow anything." But they want to see it grown and they know it can be done and there is an intrinsic connection of human beings with their environment and producing food for ourselves, the liberation. elevates you to a new like sense of your own power and existence, and then that connection with the natural world. It's just the emergent properties, the product is much greater than the sum of its parts. 

I think that You had on a really good point there that is like a universal positive point is like health. I think the idea that even just connecting sustainability to health has been a topic from like the medical facility side of trying to talk about like why to prioritize sustainability in a space where it kind of is in competition with like safety measures sometimes.

[00:10:58] Dominique: if we can connect doing good for the environment with doing good for people, I think that's a great point too. And I like that you said it's uncomplicated.

[00:11:04] Susan: Right. It goes so far beyond the physical health, clearly. It just rolled out for us when we got the boots on the ground grant moneys and the seeds of change grant money to do this work. It was not difficult to find partners to grow Food Champions.

[00:11:20] Adam: So now many of your plants focus on like native, edible, medicinal, pollinator friendly species. Like how do you decide what to plant and what are some of your favorites?

[00:11:29] Susan: There are certain things that do very well here. If you're looking at the natives, you've got things like paw paws, hazelnuts, elderberry. Lots of different berries, currents and raspberries, blackberries, black raspberries. The decision would probably be in the harvest. What the food champ's looking for, what the grower's looking for. Are children gonna be harvesting? So you may be wanna avoid thorns.

You are looking for a year round harvest. Yeah but if you're looking at a school garden,we had to focus on things that we're gonna be producing during the growing during the school year.

[00:12:07] Adam: Now, you've mentioned natives a couple times, like why are those important and how do you decide?

[00:12:13] Dominique: Well, we know they're acclimated, right? We believe that they're gonna have a more immediate relationship with the rest of the ecosystem. Other pollinators, the wildlife, that sort of thing, if birds or other small mammals are interested in that fruit, they can spread that seed. You do a lot of education, so you've trained over a hundred people, and I imagine you're teaching them a variety of like skills and mindsets on top of what you just explained to us. What does it look like when you are training and educating people? What are you mostly focused on?

[00:12:44] Susan: The Cincinnati Permaculture Institute itself is an education organization. Our main function besides the nursery is the Permaculture Design Certification course, and we roll that out three times a year in three different formats. While all 20 different sites were different some of the same basic foundational things had to come to play and that's soil building. It all starts with a healthy soil. Some were able to build soil on site. We always have to bring in some kind of soil amendment, compost to get the roots well established. But some sites we set up compost activities onsite. Another permaculture expression is first you plant the water, then you plant the trees.

So sometimes sculpting a land form helped to provide the water. A swale is a very popular permaculture technique that holds the water in place. And you plant on the contour as the water's caught in the ditch and you create a ditch and a mound on contour and you plant on the mound and the water's collecting in the ditch. So we did do a couple of swales installations. Always mulch, mulch, mulch, thick, at least six inches. And continue to mulch. Mulch with wood chips when you've got woody plants, because that's building the fungi in the soil that are so important for woody plants and, holding that water in place.

[00:14:15] Dominique: What usually brings people to these? Are they usually taking on new garden project? Are they just personally looking to learn more? What do you find is just like some commonalities in the people that you are training?

[00:14:27] Susan: Well, everyone's excited about foraging food. So everyone wants fresh food. They recognize the value of fresh food. They also see that they're establishing ecologic diversity, their ecosystem. That's another commonality. This forest gardening is all about the diversity about filling these niches to create these ecosystems. We didn't have to convince anybody of the value of this, they came to us. 

[00:14:56] Adam: We're not averse to annual plant production, your vegetable gardens. But we do kind of like we have to pull people over to that sometimes 'cause their first thought is, tomatoes and peppers and it's yeah, that's great, but if you put in some trees and shrubs you'll never have to do it again. 

 And to enlighten people with things like good soil fertility and getting carbon into the soil, to create this sponge. And a couple people were introduced to the value of biochar, which is a another soil building technique. 

[00:15:29] Dominique: Can you offer a quick 101 on what Biochar is and why it's valuable? 

[00:15:34] Susan: So biochar is a way to energize your compost. Biochar in itself is not the end product. You use biochar to stimulate and activate your compost. So activated carbon, you might have heard that term before. So carbon loves to make bonds. It's the building block of life. And so when you have an activated carbon source, you can attach all these microbes so you know, give surface area for the microbes so they can explode into providing nutrients for your plants.

And you create biochar through a process known as pyrolysis, which is a way of burning the fuel, burning wood without combusting it. When you combust wood, you see the smoke go up and carbon dioxides release into the atmosphere. But through pyrolysis, it controls the burn so that you just mineralize the carbon and charcoal is the product of a biochar operation. 

[00:16:43] Adam: You put it into your compost and again, maybe four months of treating. And then, it becomes this great fertile soil amendment that holds on to nutrients, it holds onto water.We need to rebuild the soil. We need to rebuild it for just growing wild trees on our hillsides to keep these landslides under control.

[00:17:04] Susan: Cincinnati's plagued with landslides. Did you know we pay more per capita than any other city in the country in controlling our landslides 'cause of our steep hillsides. Which is why Honeysuckle is doing a great job. It's holding the hill up, if we wanna replace that, we'll need to rebuild soil, biochar would be a great way to do that. So we're talking about ecologic restoration now. Obviously, Permaculture has many solutions for that. 

[00:17:32] Adam: I was blown away when you started off and you were kind of applying this idea of permaculture to society and like how we collaborate with each other through the example of a, you take somebody's manure from their chickens, using that to fertilize and then giving back, "Hey, your beet scraps to feed the chickens." I mean, I'm just curious like how that evolved or what sort of community Permaculture with like people that you've done?

[00:17:55] Susan: Right. Well, that's something I try to stay keenly aware of- building the community and how the community interplays and for a real deep dive on social permaculture, I would refer you to Adam Brock, who is a social permaculturist. His website, Regenerate Change, his book, 'Change Here Now.'One of the many essences of permaculture is what we call pattern language. We see in nature, when we're designing our ecosystem, our food forest, our homestead, we see how the patterns of nature can apply to inform us how to do this. 

And his book goes into a discussion of many patterns and how they can be applied. And I mentioned commoning earlier, if we could just graze goats through this hillside of honeysuckle. You know, that space would be a commons that we share and as opposed to just, this is my fence line and this is my property. The ecosystem doesn't end at your property line. 

[00:18:57] Dominique: That should be a bumper sticker.

[00:19:03] Susan: I like it. Yeah, it is. Our marketing director will love that.

[00:19:07] Dominique: Yeah, honestly, that's a really, I'll be your first buyer. I, I feel like you shared a lot about like the things you want to see and honestly, we slipped a little bit earlier into kind of some of the problems, but around our food system for example, I think it is very jarring that we are a leading nation and yet we do rank so low when it comes to the way we think about our food system and our health and the way the standards we set.

 in. This world right now where things seem to be sliding backwards, where do you personally find hope when you think about land use, food systems, permaculture, you can pick. But where do you kind of get that feeling of, " we're going in the right direction"?

[00:19:47] Susan: I believe in people. I believe in nature. I believe the earth is abundant. This is was a revelation to me when I began this permaculture directed assets- based thinking. The sun comes up, the rain comes down, and bam, we're eating. And it's that simple. It really is. I mean, it's complex but not complicated. 

[00:20:11] Dominique: I personally struggle with when I think big, I sometimes feel small, honestly. But I like that spin of the world is big and it has been big. And anything we do now I think has chance to create a positive ripple effect. But there's no need to be catastrophic 'cause we've come back from other things and change has been bigger than us before. So that's a fun way to frame it.

[00:20:33] Susan: Right. Don't undervalue those small acts. A friend of mine had a quote, "he never made such a large mistake as he did nothing because he could only do little." We can all make our contributions and you guys are making yours with your podcast spread the news. Spread the good news. It's all good. I mean, people love this.

I think the best thing we did was to go into and contact established organizers in the neighborhood. We didn't try to go in cold to, "Oh, here's a meeting at the library. Come if you're interested." No, we went to people who are already working with their neighbors and said, "Hey, think you can find people who could do this, 

they come up with five. So yeah, it went beyond what we originally projected and we hope to keep the project going with a new roll out of mentoring Food Champions to make sure we get the first three critical years well established for harvest and production of our forest gardens and forage gardens.

[00:21:37] Adam: I think in a world of more problems that are coming up all the time. It's also very interesting to think about the fact that what you said around the problems are the solutions. So how are we looking to Permaculture to inspire the solutions that we need now.

[00:21:51] Susan: Yep. Permaculture has answers.

[00:21:53] Dominique: Thank you so much for chatting with us. This has been really interesting and I think a lot of the things that you shared are gonna sit with me for a while. And I really want your bumper sticker. think 

that's good. 

[00:22:05] Susan: Right, Right, right.

[00:22:06] Dominique: I think in a very individualized society that is the US I think that is such a great way of phrasing that. It doesn't like begin and end with your lawn, there's more to it, and that feels like it speaks to a broader problem than just permaculture education. But it helps remind you just that like you gotta step outta your own property and care about something bigger.

[00:22:29] Susan: Yeah, we say the water leaving your site should be cleaner than the water that came to your site. we could learn some tricks from community building organizations and that is kind of a focus for me to how to grow that larger community. 

[00:22:43] Adam: I like that. How can people connect with you and support the work that you're doing? 

[00:22:48] Susan: Yeah, visit our website, cincinnatipermacultureinstitute.org. Our marketing director does a fabulous job of keeping the recent events up to date. We're publishing the plant list from the nursery. you can see our list of activities. So stay current. We're on Facebook and Instagram. Cincinnati Permaculture Institute. And if you have ideas, if you think that we're a good partner, we can promote, we do an inputs and outputs newsletter where we're sharing the bounty and offering, many offerings within the community. 

[00:23:26] Adam: so hopefully people can have their own ideas to inspire us and tell us how we can help them and how we can grow together.

[00:23:33] Dominique: Well, thank you for chatting with us. This has been awesome.

[00:23:35] Susan: That was fun. Thank you.

[00:23:37] Dominique: As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We're here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change.

[00:23:48] Adam: You can find our episodes and reach us at thegreenchampions.com. If you want to stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform.

[00:23:56] Dominique: Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Special thanks to the Green Umbrella, host of the annual Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll be digging into a our sustainability success story in our next episode. 

​