Evaluating the Good Garden

Evaluating the Good Garden based on Life's Principles

This post will be a systematic evaluation of the Good Garden self watering multi level garden against the 6 major principles on the Life's Principles check list. The goal being to understand how well this design meets these principles and thus how well it is suited to life on this planet.

1) Is the design locally attuned and responsive?

The good garden is a resourceful design that passively gathers resources including water and nutrients. Local opportunities and limitations will drive the look, size and species composition of the resulting garden. It uses shape to gather and wick water as well as for water storage and providing habitat. Micro shades in the material will generate hydrophobic and hydrophilic areas. It uses free local energy to harvest water for irrigation.

The design does not specify materials. The design would be stronger if it used locally available and abundant materials. The water gathering surface and wicking areas could be made of locally sourced and recycled plastics. The base could use waste cement or bricks from building demolitions or construction projects. The design would be further strengthened if it used modular parts that could be assembled in a multitude of configurations depending on where it was being installed.

2) Does the design integrate cyclic processes?

The passive irrigation is a cyclic process that takes advantage of local seasonal shifts. Local feedback loops would decide what organisms flourish in the garden.

Again the design would be stronger if it took into account materials and material configuration, if it was disassemblable and reusable or reconfigurable.

The back yard at my apartment. Not a very resilient system. Requires lots or care and chemicals.

3) Is the design resilient?

The design encourages the adoption of passive gardening where by the make up of the garden is in constant flux (dynamic non-equilibrium) as the design experiences disturbances at various scales, from seasonal fluctuations in weather to climate change over a longer scale. This design will encourage back yard evolution. Allowing users to be amazed by the adaptation, co-evolution and idea generation of nature.

The design would be stronger if it integrated some way for the shape of the structure to be modified by the gardens constituent species over time.

4) Does the design optimize rather than maximize?

The Good Garden is multifunctional in that it provides s substrate for the design as well as condensing water, catching rain water, distributing water and capturing nutrients. All these functions are accomplished passively requiring energy only for initial manufacture. It gathers and reuses the products of it's constituent organisms.

The design would be stronger if it were recyclable. It should be designed for disassembly, reuse and reconfiguration.

5) Does the design use benign manufacturing?

The good garden would be built to shape. It is constructed from materials from a safe subset of the periodic table. Since it would support organisms and might be used to produce food it is essential the it be non-toxic.

The design would be stronger if it were self assembling at ambient temperatures and ambient pressures.

Another pic of my back yard. Imagine a more interdependent system.

6) Does the design leverage its interdependence in the system?

Designed to foster encourage and support it's own ecosystem, Good Garden gets high marks in this category. It will result in your own back yard symbiotic, cooperative and community based garden system. Creating new niches for a dynamic set of organisms. This system will be self-organized and maintained by the sun's locally available energy.

Conclusion:

The design is strong in categories 1,3,4 and 6. It meet some of the requirements in categories 2 and 5 but could improve drastically in these areas.