2.4.3. Zones

Zones are a concept and tool you can use to determine where to place elements in the system for efficiency and flow. Your land is divided roughly according to frequency and intensity of use and interaction. Zones depict the amount of human impact on specific areas. You can assess a piece of land by the existing impact, but decide to change that during the design process. 

The zone tool is a very personal tool - it is used to help you think through where to place things so you save yourself some work. There is no one way or rote way to place zones on any site though there are some things that usually make a lot more sense than other things.

How are permaculture zones useful? They help you think through how to organize your impact on the site, your own patterns of access and use of the site, and to create efficiencies that will increase your enjoyment and yield, and the ecosystem integrity on the site.

As an example, while it may seem romantic at first to walk through a convoluted path to the chicken house every day, after five years of doing that, it might not be so appealing. But then again, maybe that will be someone’s core meditation time and will continue to be a very valuable part of their day. This is what makes Zones personal. They are also flexible in time. That walk to the chickens could be extremely therapeutic and desirable the first few months or years. Good! Move the chicken coop if or when it no longer feels that way. Zones are not written in stone, ever. The landscape changes, you change, and so will zones change to reflect that. More permanent elements like food forests or houses need more consideration regarding placement. Zones are just one tool one can use to place these items. 

Zones can help you understand the different roles that a landscape has (forest, meadow, intensive garden, grazing area, commercial area, etc), and help you think about what to do with ecological opportunities, like areas of richer soil or sun or shade.

Zone 0 - Isn’t used by every permaculturist. Some feel that it represents the built environment, especially the living space, or even the person themselves. Toby Hemenway didn’t use it because he felt that it adds a separation between humans, their buildings, and the natural world. He felt that having the main living structure in zone 1 would cause designers to look for more ways to flow and connect buildings and people with the natural world.

Zone 1 - Includes buildings and immediate surroundings that are used or cared for every day. Herbs, greens, eggs, household water, temperature control, etc. You are more likely to harvest daily greens or herbs if they are not across the pasture and down the hill. Even walking to the corner of your yard may reduce the harvesting you do. We keep our seedlings in Zone 1 because it is easier and more natural to keep an eye on them. We may walk by them several times per day and are more likely to catch pest pressure or watering issues.

One of our favorite places for greens and herbs that get daily use is lining the sidewalk that people generally approach their house from. Every time they come home, they have the option of picking a few mint leaves for tea, or some basil for their dinner on their way into the house.

Zone 2 - Is used or cared for less often but still needs regular care. Veggies like carrots or broccoli that generally aren’t harvested daily, a food forest planted for personal use, some animals (milk animals, rabbits, etc) would go here. Some people put chickens in zone 2 even though they need daily care, because they are concerned with odor or noise. Some keep them in Zone 1 and handle the bedding and don’t mind the clucking of hens. This is the personal part of naming what goes where. Do you want chickens further or closer to you and your daily activity?
For people who work from home, this working area might be considered Zone 2 since you visit regularly but don’t necessarily want it mixed with the most intimate aspects of your private lifestyle. The home office with a separate entrance away from the main entrance, or a tiny home in the backyard used as an office is increasingly designed into homes these days.

If your work involves raising herbs or food or eggs, think about customer access, how you will move elements in and out of the site, and how not to put that right next to your favorite quiet or private part of the house. This is possible even on a small lot. In one urban home, a roommate had a nursery that was lined up between a fence and the garage - this section was minimally useful for other things, and the garage created a privacy screen from the house. It was the least intrusive place in the yard she could have put it, yet it was near enough to the house and driveway that she could get materials to and from the location.

On our farm, we designed the nursery access in the far corner of the farm away from the house, and added screening hedges between the home and the commercial portion of the farm. We decided we’d like to keep the busiest interaction with public as far from our private living space as possible - it felt like we would be willing to open it up to a broader community if we did that.

Zone 3 - This would include seasonal agriculture like orchards or grains that are harvested at a specific time of year, or pasture animals. Often, in an urban yard, you won’t have a real zone 3. On even a small acreage, you may have a corn patch or grazing animals. Zone 3 elements still need care, but that might mean a visit once or twice a month. The assumption is that they are more self-sufficient and less attention is needed. It’s possible to create zone 3 areas in an urban area, such as a common grazing acreage where people could share grazing space or a public food forest. This is how people have done it for millenia and many cultures still do this quite successfully - villages have a zone 3, instead of individuals. There is a suburban development in Davis, California, called Village Homes that has communal food forests and swale/water catchment systems in a subdivision with single family homes. This could be done in many suburban areas or even urban areas.

Zone 4 - This is a semi-wild or wild area that is sustainably harvested and would include woodlots or wildcrafting herbs or mushrooms. One could have a small Zone 4 even in an urban backyard. I often design a corner of the yard to grow wild, or maintain a weedy area with many edible or medicinal “weeds”. This zone should need minimal upkeep but could be gently tweaked to increase the level of useful plants. It’s an interesting exercise to harvest sustainably or even regeneratively from a wild area. This is one area where indigenous knowledge, gathered over generations of observation, can be extremely valuable, especially in areas where it is clear indigenous people have interacted with their environment in a way that both people and the earth are healthy.

Zone 5 - Is completely wild; the Classroom, where you observe and learn. Seeing what nature does with minimal or no interference is an important lesson. The best place to observe that is in unbroken tracts of wilderness similar to your ecosystem. You generally won’t find Zone 5 in a city. Even a national park can be so impacted by visitors it isn’t a true zone 5, but you can still see a lot of what nature does on her own.

A lot of wilderness around the world has been managed or impacted in some way or other by humans, via fire, select harvesting and planting in forests and jungles, agriculture, roads, logging, etc. So an actual Zone 5 is relatively rare, but it is still worthwhile to observe the patterns of nature when left to her own devices, in a variety of settings. She is showing you how you can work with her. 

As research continues, it becomes more and more apparent that much of what we previously considered Zone 5, “wild” jungles, prairies and forests, were actually carefully tended Zone 4 areas that were modified by fire, selective planting and other management. Indigenous people interacted with these areas of wilderness in ways that often increased diversity, soil health, and abundance for all living things. 

That is our goal, in permaculture. 

So the smaller and more effective zones 1-3 are, the better. In some cases, Zone 3 could be managed more like a Zone 4 (holistic grazing is one example).

How to Use Zones

An important aspect of zones is that they are not neat, concentric circles. They will be unique to you, and to your lifestyle and your site. Edges may blur from one to the other. Some areas may have the functions of more than one zone. As one example, a kitchen garden generally has food you harvest regularly and would be as close to your kitchen as possible (Zone 1). In one house we lived in, the area by our kitchen was in deep shade in winter, when we grew most of our annual veggies. The sunniest part of the yard was behind the garage in the back corner of the yard, where we would normally put Zone 2 or even a small semi-wild area. We put our kitchen garden there because it made sense that it would be most productive.

Later, when a couple started renting the front section of the house and I had moved out, they took over the kitchen garden and put most of the annuals in the front yard amidst the perennials and converted the back yard area to mainly Zone 2 plants. We also grew summer greens and shade loving edibles near our kitchen area. At one point the home had 3 distinct Zone 1 areas, which was workable for a short time; the zones were modified according to the people who lived there and what their interests and access were. 

Our current “market garden” goes between Zone 1 and 2 depending on how many farm volunteers or guests we have staying with us. We plant kale there in the winter when we have more volunteers, and beans or commercial herbs in the summer. All of our food moves to our kitchen garden in the summer except for long term summer crops like cassava, or crops that take up space like the three sisters, corn, beans and squash, which we rotate.

The smaller the area, the less zones matter. Where something is placed would be weighed with other considerations like beneficial relationships, sunlight, views, neighbors, microclimates, what is already in the space, etc. The point is, keep zones in perspective - use them only to the degree they are helpful to you.

So, to determine zones:

1. Understand your lifestyle and what you will want near and far. If you’re new to this, there may be a bit of trial and error involved so design for flexibility.
2. Listen to the land. The land, its slope, shaded areas and other factors may determine to some degree where your zones are. Existing stands of native trees lend themselves to being Zone 4 or 5. Are there wildlife corridor opportunities?
3. Are there special circumstances, such as deep shade, or steep slope, or other factors that would change or influence where a zone might be placed?

Urban Zones

In an urban area, zones can be quite different. If you’re in an apartment, your zone 1 and 2 might be a local community garden, or your friend’s house who wants your help in the garden in exchange for food. You have to be creative with zones in a densely populated area with little green space. 

My zone 4 when in the city was a local park that had a big grove of wild tangerine trees, and other areas where I wild harvested elderberry, citrus, mushrooms, and other wild foods. We’ll go into strategies for land access in a later section of the course, but as far as zones are concerned, be flexible if in an urban environment. 

Some of our students have a surprising amount of food growing on their balcony. Others access their parent’s property or work with a friend who has land to grow food. Others focus on invisible structure work rather than growing food, which, instead of zones, have “circles of influence.” Where is your impact greatest among people? Where would you like to have more impact? That could be your zone 1, with people. 

Zone 2 might be acquaintances or colleagues you don’t interact with daily but still work to maintain beneficial connection. Zone 3 might be people you’ve established a good connection with that you reach out to only at certain times. Zone 4 could be people you don’t know, but reach out to, to market to or invite to an event, etc. There are a number of ways we can look at zones in urban areas.

One interesting trend in urban planning is the idea of a 15 minute city (more about it below). This is an attempt to zone cities for people rather than cars. Where do people travel daily? What if those things were within 15 minutes via walking or biking?

You can mark sectors on your map in several ways. The most common is to use an arrow to denote where the sector is coming from, and name what it is. For sun angle, you can mark where the shade will fall in the winter to denote where not to put a sun loving winter garden. I do this by visual memory. I know where the sun is during solstices and equinoxes on my land. You can get apps like suncalc that can show you where it is. This tells you where the shade will be at different times of year.

We’ve included some tools in the Site Assessment Resources document (in Permaculture Design Tools/Class Assignment section, lesson #5) to check on some sectors like sun angles, flood plains, wind, etc.

A number of cities are working on changing their planning and zoning laws to reflect this philosophy including Paris, Milan, and Seattle. Permaculture designers should be a part of this conversation! 

There are many ways to express sectors. The important thing is to make clear how wide the sector entrance onto your land is, and what direction it’s coming from, and to make the map readable and understandable.

We’ll discuss these urban concepts more in the invisible structure part of the course.