Give the gift that has your favorite permaculture gardener saying, “You get me.” Whether they’re into vegetable gardens, fruit trees, food forests, or a little bit of everything, these thoughtful gift collections are sure to make them—or yourself—happy!
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What’s This Permaculture Thing?
Have you heard your favorite gardener talking about something called permaculture? If so, then knowing what the word means will help you give the best gifts!
Permaculture is simply the design and maintenance of a food-producing garden that works in harmony with the local ecosystem.
Let’s get into the gift collections!
Want to jump ahead?
- Edible Landscape Collection
- Food Forest Collection
- Soil Improver Collection
- Fruit Grower Collection
- Herb Garden Collection
- Vegetable Garden Collection
- Seed Starting Collection
- Seed Saving Collection
Edible Landscape Collection
Grab these gifts for the edible landscape enthusiast who loves combining beauty and function.
Seeds for growing both food and beauty in the landscape
1. Edible Flowers Seed Collection from Botanical Interests—This 8-packet set of flower seeds provides endless culinary possibilities and can also help attract beneficial insects!
2. Celebration Swiss Chard Seeds from Botanical Interests—Adds a rainbow of colors to the edible landscape, and is beautiful paired with sweet alyssum flowers.
3. Red Russian Kale Seeds from Botanical Interests—Blends into the edible landscape and goes great with a purple color scheme.
4. Orange Sun Sweet Pepper Seeds from Botanical Interests—My favorite sweet peppers that add a pop of orange to the vegetable garden.
Plants for adding fruit to an edible landscape
5. Montmorency Cherry Tree from Food Forest Nursery—Makes a good specimen tree and is the perfect start to a cherry tree guild.
6. Seascape Everbearing Strawberry Bare Root Plants—My favorite strawberry because it’s a longer-producing variety and the plants produce fewer runners, which means fewer bare spots in the edible front yard.
Book for learning more about edible landscaping
7. Edible Landscaping: Now You Can Have Your Gorgeous Garden and Eat It Too!—Learn to create gorgeous and delicious landscapes with planting suggestions, combinations, and design ideas by the pioneer of edible landscapes, author Rosalind Creasy. Take a virtual tour of my landscape for more ideas.
Would you like to grow food in your front yard without sacrificing curb appeal? Check out my mini guide, The Permaculture Inspired Edible Landscape.
Food Forest Collection
Grab these gifts for the food forest enthusiast…whether they’re just getting started creating a diverse and layered planting of edible perennials—or have years of experience.
Plants to grow for a thriving overstory
1. Chinese Chestnut Tree from Food Forest Nursery—A good, disease-resistant tree for a tall canopy layer.
Plants to grow for a healthy understory
2. Enterprise Apple Tree from Food Forest Nursery—This is a late-ripening, disease-resistant apple variety that would make an excellent primary component for a fruit tree guild.
3. Red Lake Currant Bush from Food Forest Nursery—Adds a pop of color with its flowers and foliage, while the beautiful red berries can be used in a variety of dishes from smoothies to jellies.
4. Russian Comfrey Root Cuttings—#1 multipurpose permaculture plant for biomass production, attracting beneficial insects, and more!
5. White Yarrow Seeds—A potential fertilizer that can help “stack the deck” toward a thriving, healthy food forest.
6. White Clover Seeds—Excellent source of nitrogen, an essential nutrient for healthy fruit production, and is often used in orchards as a walkable ground cover.
Book for learning about growing food forests
7. Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture—Highly recommended for beginners and professionals who want to learn how to create an edible backyard ecosystem.
Soil Improver Collection
Grab these gifts for the gardener with compacted or poor soil, or who has an interest in a healthy soil ecology.
Seeds for loosening and enriching soil
1. Green Globe Artichoke Seeds—The taproots bust through heavy soil, and a bonus to planting them is that they’re edible!
2. Daikon Radish Cover Crop Seeds—These radishes break up clay soil and build humus as they rot, while the flowers attract beneficial insects.
3. Cowpea Seeds—Summer cover crop that suppresses weeds and enriches soil.
4. Soraya Sunflower Seeds—Another summer cover crop that establishes vigorous roots deep into compacted soil.
A natural amendment for loosening and enriching soil
5. Worm Castings—Richest known natural fertilizer that attracts beneficial organisms and neutralizes pH. I make my own but always need more!
Book for learning about a healthy soil ecology
6. Grow Your Soil!: Harness the Power of the Soil Food Web to Create Your Best Garden Ever—Shows how to easily attract and retain the microorganisms that turn dirt into a healthy, living soil ecology.
Tool for making planting easier
7. Auger Drill Bits—Attach these drill bits to your cordless drill and go to town! They will satisfyingly break through compacted soil before planting to allow water and plant roots to penetrate.
Hint: I don’t use it to create a single planting hole. Rather, I drill 3-4 holes closely around the area that I want to plant in. This provides a new plant more surface area for growing healthy roots and accessing appropriate amounts of water and air.
Would you like to learn more about planting and maintaining a permaculture-inspired garden? You’ll find loads of information about ecological food gardening in my award-winning book, The Suburban Micro-Farm.
Fruit Grower Collection
Grab these gifts for the gardener who loves growing fruit.
Many of the fruit bushes and trees I recommend are from Food Forest Nursery. This online nursery located in the Arkansas Ozarks, specializes in bare root fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, fruiting vines, nitrogen fixers, and other perennial permaculture plants. They select and grow varieties for disease resistance and hardiness to zone 7 or colder. I’m really impressed with their operation!
1. Cumberland Black Raspberry from Food Forest Nursery—Perfect for any gardener that is just getting started with edible perennials. This variety thrives in a variety of soil types. Black raspberry plants “stay put” and only grow to 2 ½ – 4 feet with proper pruning.
2. Aronia Berry Shrub from Food Forest Nursery—Low-maintenance and widely adaptable to a variety of conditions, can be used for a foundation planting and also yields a ‘superfood’ berry.
3. Hinnomaki Red Gooseberry Bush from Food Forest Nursery—Fun to grow with tart berries, it is a good understory plant for an edible hedgerow in any home landscape.
4. Wyldewood Elderberry from Food Forest Nursery–This heavy-producing variety has proven commercial success. In general, elderberries are a great choice for an edible hedgerow, creating wildlife habitat and year-round beauty. They can also be easily propagated.
Fertilizer for starting fruit trees off right
5. Dr. Earth Fruit Tree Fertilizer—While I prefer planting fruit trees in a guild, I recommend this Organic-approved fertilizer for fruit trees that will be fairly neglected and won’t be planted with compost or supporting plants.
Books for learning more about growing perennial fruit
6. Landscaping with Fruit—Shows gardeners how to easily start an edible takeover of their landscape, including ideas such as using strawberries for ground cover.
7. How to Prune Fruit Trees—Fruit trees are healthier and more productive with proper and strategic pruning. This concise guidebook covers pruning instructions for over forty varieties of trees, from apples to almonds and plums to pomegranates.
Herb Garden Collection
Grab these gifts for the gardener who loves to grow herbs and put them to use.
Seeds for growing beautiful and medicinal herbs
1. Herbal Tea Collection from Botanical Interests—Grow a beautiful garden with these eight herbs that provide health-promoting libations.
2. Resina Organic Calendula Pot Marigold Seeds from Botanical Interests—A cheery edible flower with many medicinal uses, it also attracts pollinators and beneficial insects.
3. Common Chives Seeds from Botanical Interests—Delicious and useful herb that deserves a spot in every garden!
4. English Thyme Seeds from Botanical Interests—A valuable cold-hardy and drought tolerant herb with culinary and medicinal benefits.
Essential component for making DIY home remedies
5. Beeswax Pastilles—An essential, moisturizing ingredient in many homemade herbal products like lip balm, lotion, soap, and easy herbal salves.
Online course for learning how to use herbs for healing and wellness
6. Herbal Academy’s Introductory Course—Help your favorite gardener start their herbalism journey at home with this self-paced course. Over 34 lessons, students will learn about 75 common herbs and how to use them in teas, tinctures, syrups, body care products, and more.
Book for learning about using medicinal herbs
7. The Backyard Herbal Apothecary—Written by a trained herbalist, this book is packed to the brim with information on 50 different plants along with recipes for 56 natural remedies.
Vegetable Garden Collection
Grab these gifts for the vegetable gardener who loves nurturing a rich ecology along with delicious harvests.
Popular seeds for gourmet garden-to-table eating
1. Heirloom Organic Seed Bank Collection from Botanical Interests—Over 20 tried-and-true heirloom varieties of vegetables, including beans, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, spinach, and more.
Flower seeds for attracting beneficial insects and pollinators
The following are just a few of my favorite flowers to grow in the vegetable garden!
2. Sweet Alyssum Carpet of Snow Seeds—Excellent living mulch because its shallow roots hold the soil in place.
3. California Poppy Seeds—Its lacy foliage is a favorite of beneficial insects.
Indispensable tool for planting, harvesting, and weeding
4. Hori Hori Garden Knife—A multi-purpose gardening tool that makes digging, weeding, and planting a cinch…one of the first tools I budgeted for when I started my garden.
Excellent natural fertilizer for keeping plants happy
5. Neptune’s Harvest Fish & Seaweed Fertilizer—When used monthly, natural fertilizers like this can help prevent garden pests.
Books for learning about composting and rainwater harvesting, two important contributors to a healthy garden
6. Compost Everything—A great resource for gardeners who want to start composting at home.
7. Harvesting Rainwater for Your Homestead in 9 Days or Less—Rainwater harvesting may eliminate the need for hand watering the garden while helping to create an edible and ecological oasis.
Would you like to grow more food with less effort? Check out my mini guide, The Permaculture Inspired Vegetable Garden.
Seed Starting Collection
Grab these gifts for the gardener who likes to get an early jump on the growing season by starting their own seeds.
1. Basic Bounty Vegetable Seed Collection from Botanical Interests—A collection of nine reliable vegetables, most of which can be started indoors.
2. Wire Shelving Unit–I like this wire shelving model for seed starting because each shelf can hold two standard nursery trays (22″), which is uncommon for this style of shelving.
3. Burpee Coconut Coir Seed Starting Mix—Seed starting mix that is both OMRI listed and certified organic. It’s also compact and easy to store!
4. Galvanized Steel Tub—Large tub that is perfect for preparing seed starting medium.
5. Seedling Heat Mat—Extremely helpful to ensure the ideal soil temperature for starting seeds indoors, which is 68-86° F.
6. LED Grow Light—Mimics sunlight and is extremely energy efficient and long-lasting.
7. Clip Fan—Mimics wind to create healthy air flow, which reduces fungal issues and helps seedlings grow stronger.
Seed Saving Collection
Grab these gifts for the gardener who loves their seed collection.
1. Artbin Craft Organizer—Large, airtight plastic container that is perfect for storing seeds properly.
2. Silica Gel Packets—Add these packets to storage containers to safeguard against moisture and help maintain the quality of seeds.
3. Seed Envelopes—Save and label your favorite seeds with these blank seed packets.
Book to learn more about seed saving
4. Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners—Learn how to save the seeds from 160 different vegetables and learn the best practices for harvesting, drying, cleaning, and storing them.
Need more ideas? Check out:
Permaculture gardeners are a pragmatic bunch, to be sure! They will love these gift ideas that improve soil health, increase crop yields, and help to build a biodiverse backyard ecosystem.
Have you given any of these gardening gifts or tried them for yourself?
Marisa says
Based on your 2020 gift guide, I bought the hori hori knife you recommended a few months later, for my birthday. I used it a lot, but in late summer, the blade snapped in half when I was digging up roots. I ordered a different one (barebones) for the coming growing season. Hope it lasts! Just wanted to let you know I did not have good luck with this knife, since it’s on your list this year, too. Also having small hands, I am looking forward to a rounded handle instead of this really chunky one. Always love your content!!
Amy says
Oh wow! Mine has lasted for years, but thank you for letting me know!