Of course, the tips from Mollison's book that I'm most likely to put into action pertain to plants and ecosystems.  I especially enjoyed the way Mollison suggested alternative uses for features I'd already considered.  For example, I tend to deal with my boggy ground by building up so I can plant there, but perhaps I should instead dig out some areas to create open water.  (The swamp downhill from the East Wing might be a good location for bog-to-shallow-pond experimentation.)  And Mollison suggests considering hedges to be mulch sources and weed barriers as well as animal barriers and producers of food.

Meanwhile, Mollison goes into depth about using plants to mitigate heating and cooling issues around your home.  While deciduous shade trees are great, we just don't have room for such a large plant on the south side of our trailer --- a maple would take up half the garden (and would impact the powerline).  But I've been planning to trellis vines against the south side of the porch and trailer instead, and Mollison heartily approves of the idea.  My first attempt this spring with annual vines failed because it turns out that the soil there is very wet and clayey, so I'm dumping masses of weeds in the spot this summer to raise the soil up and increase the organic matter content in preparation for fall planting of some kind of perennial vine (probably home-propagated grapes).

On a related note, did you know that hanging plants are supposed to cool the surrounding area?  I'd always thought the pots of dangling ferns I notice in southern homes and porches are just for aesthetics, but I can see how the plants might do their part in keeping conditions comfortable nearby.  Similarly, all those fountains in Mediterranean countries are meant to add humidity (and thus coolness) to the air, while ivy growing over buildings is reputed to reduce heat gain in the summer by 70% and heat loss in the winter by 30% --- homegrown insulation!  Finally, a courtyard pond can buffer heat both during the summer and the winter.

While I'm unlikely to put all of these ideas into action right away (or maybe ever), I couldn't help mocking up a design for the truly integrated permaculture trailer.  With the help of a few plants, we might make our singlewide even more livable over time.

This post is part of our Mollison's Introduction to Permaculture lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Mollison's Introduction to Permaculture Shade houses Changing house temperatures with plants Mollison on creating a new forest pasture Mollison on integrating poultry into the homestead

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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