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By Lorraine Sharaf
January is the perfect time to begin planning gardens and landscape projects for the year ahead. Before rushing into something new, though, it’s worth reviewing last year’s successes, challenges—and yes—unwanted outcomes.
I’d normally call those outcomes failures, but I’m learning to reframe my reactions to a misplaced rain garden or an over-zealously planted bed (a chaotic mess) as information gathering. After a toddler-worthy meltdown, I put on my science hat and ask what those outcomes can teach me—then let go of the thousands of hours I spent creating these “learning” projects.
The land is always offering clues about what will work. We just need to slow down enough to see them. Slope, water flow, sunlight, access, and our daily routines all tell a story about how to support both the land and us.
In permaculture, we learn that when we separate elements, we often create more work for ourselves. But when we integrate them, the system can begin to take care of itself.
A good idea, placed without context, can turn into a lot of unnecessary work.
I’m guilty of being swept up by the new shiny thing—a herb spiral, a garden shed—and rushing past my evaluation steps. In my excitement, I’ve focused on the feature itself instead of how it would function in relation to everything else.
That’s where this month’s focus comes in.
Permaculture Principle #8: Integrate Rather Than Segregate
🤝 Icon: Many Hands — many connected parts working together so no single element carries the whole load
🤝This principle is often illustrated as people holding hands in a circle—a reminder that many hands make light work, and that strength comes from relationship rather than isolation.
🧩 How the First Seven Principles Lead Us Here
Principle 8 brings together everything that we have already learned. The first seven principles have trained us to think in systems rather than isolated parts:
- Observe and Interact — Spend time watching before acting. You can’t integrate what you don’t understand.
- Catch and Store Energy — Notice resources like sunlight, rain, and seasonal abundance, and find ways to hold onto them.
- Obtain a Yield — Design so your efforts return something meaningful, whether that’s food, beauty, or saved time.
- Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback — Pay attention when something isn’t working and adjust.
- Use and Value Renewable Resources — Embrace what regenerates naturally instead of relying on constant inputs.
- Produce No Waste — Look for ways one element’s output can meet another’s need.
- Design from Patterns to Details — Start with the big forces shaping a place before choosing specific features.
As permaculture co-founder David Holmgren puts it:
“By putting the right things in the right place, relationships are created that support each other.”
Ask “How should this all work together?” before asking “What should I add?” As with writing an article, making a film, or creating a painting, some elements just don’t fit, no matter how much we love them. I’ve removed far more words, ideas, and analogies from this article than you’re reading today.
🫀 Why Integration Matters
System design is in practice everywhere, whether naturally occurring or by design.
Our bodies are a clear example. Just like the human body, healthy systems don’t work as isolated parts. Our bodies aren’t a collection of independent organs—they’re networks of interdependent systems. The lungs supply oxygen to the blood. Muscles rely on nerves for movement, and the digestive system feeds them all. None of these systems could survive, or thrive, on their own.
I have an aunt who lost sight in her right eye following a mild stroke. The ophthalmologist explained that there was nothing wrong with her eye itself; the problem is that the connection between what the eye receives and the brain is damaged. The eye is healthy but can no longer participate in the whole system.
Teams lose without integration. A football team is made up of many parts that must work together under constantly changing conditions. Every play relies on offense, defense, and special teams.
An individual player may underperform or get injured, but the team adapts. Some players sacrifice personal glory—blocking instead of scoring—so the play succeeds.
That’s integration in action on “any given Sunday (or Monday night)!”
🌱 Integration in Practice
The Chicken & The Orchard: Instead of keeping chickens in a bare run and hauling manure to the trees, let the chickens roam the orchard. They eat the fallen and rotting fruit (pest control), scratch the soil (aeration), and leave behind fertilizer (feeding).
Compost Placed Where It’s Used: A compost pile works best when it’s integrated into daily routines and garden flow. When compost sits near the kitchen door and close to garden beds, scraps are added regularly and finished compost is easy to use. The result is healthier soil with far less effort—and no more trips across the yard with a heavy wheelbarrow.
Shrubs, Pollinators, and the Garden Edge: Planting flowering native shrubs along the edge of a vegetable garden creates a transition zone rather than a hard boundary. Shrubs provide habitat for pollinators and beneficial insects, slow wind, and moderate temperature, while nearby vegetables benefit from increased pollination and pest control.
🔗 From Silos to Systems
When we design for a single function at a time, we create silos and more work for ourselves. We end up hauling compost, moving water, managing waste, and fixing problems that careful placement could have prevented.
Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison says it succinctly:
“You don’t have a problem. You have a design solution.”
The challenge is to place elements and functional systems so that they can support one another naturally.
In a permaculture approach, we move from goals → functions → elements → placement, with the focus on proper placement. Less weeding. Fewer pest issues. Healthier soil. Stronger plants. Less effort.
When Integration Is Missing (and How to Fix It)
💧The Misplaced Rain Garden
A rain garden is installed with native plants intended to capture runoff or absorb water from an underground spring.
- What went wrong: It was placed where water could go, not where water regularly flows.
- What was missing: Connection to roof runoff, slope, or downspouts.
- Solutions: Redirect downspouts, add shallow swales, or gradually reshape the grade so water naturally reaches the garden—without replanting.
🌳 The Over-Planted “Food Forest”
Trees, shrubs, vines, fruits, vegetables, herbs, flowers, and groundcovers too close and without considering their growth patterns and needs.
- What went wrong: Maintenance became overwhelming; plants competed instead of cooperating.
- What was missing: Phased planting and feedback from observation.
- Solution: Thin or transplant aggressive plants, prioritize long-term structural plants, and reintroduce complementary plants gradually—even if patience isn’t your forte.
Why Integration Pays Off
Whether you’re tending a balcony herb garden or managing several acres, integration reduces work, increases resilience, and produces steadier yields over time. When one element’s “waste” becomes another’s resource, you stop being the middleman.
Integration offers three major advantages:
- Reduced Work: When the “waste” of one element becomes the “resource” of another, you stop being the middleman. You spend less time hauling compost and more time observing.
- Increased Resilience: A segregated system is fragile. If your “nitrogen” comes only from a bag and you run out, your plants suffer. If your nitrogen comes from clover, beans, and compost tea, you have backups.
- Maximum Yield: By stacking functions in space and time, you get more out of every square inch. Stacking functions means designing elements so they serve multiple purposes and support one another in the same place (space) and across seasons or years (time).
If you’re staring at a problem in your garden—too many slugs, for example—don’t ask “How do I kill them?” Ask instead, “What element am I missing that would love to eat them?”
(Got ducks?)
🌳 A Concrete Example
Consider a fruit tree planted by itself and managed intensively to maximize its yield. It may produce more fruit in a perfect year, but only with constant attention.
Now, think of that tree as part of a diverse guild*: flowering plants attract beneficial insects, groundcovers shade the soil, and deep-rooted plants cycle nutrients. The tree may grow more slowly and yield a little less some years, but if pests arrive, the solution is already present. If weather stresses the tree, the soil stays alive and protected. If one plant fails, others fill the gap. Some elements may underperform or even fail, but the system will hold.
The goal isn’t to squeeze the most out of every element; it’s to create a system that can dependably produce every year without extreme intervention.
* A plant guild is a group of plants that support one another’s growth.
🌎 Learning from Place
Over 10,000 years before Europeans colonized the land that we call Bucks County; the Lenape people were the stewards of this region. Many of the tenets laid out in permaculture are intrinsic to how the Lenape lived—food production, water, habitat, and community life were all integrated into their lifestyle.
The Three Sisters planting—corn, beans, and squash—is one example of how elements thrive together. These systems were shaped through generations of feedback from the land.
This classic indigenous planting guild integrates corn, beans, and squash. The corn provides a ladder for the beans; the beans fix nitrogen in the soil for the corn; and the squash spreads across the ground like a living mulch to keep the soil moist.
Want to plant a three sisters guild? Three Sisters Garden
Permaculture and sustainable agriculture are not original and innovative approaches, but old and established ways of thinking about agriculture that focus on respecting relationships with the earth rather than controlling them.
Readers interested in learning more about Lenape history and land stewardship can explore the Lenape Village programs at Churchville Nature Center: Lenape Village & Information.
🧭 January’s Permaculture Tip
When designing something new to your landscape, or your daily routines, ask:
- What other systems could this support?
- What does it need, and who already provides that nearby?
- Can this element connect functions instead of standing alone?
Even small integrations—herbs near the kitchen door, compost near the garden, water-loving plants placed where runoff already collects—make systems stronger and easier to care for.
Permaculture isn’t just about growing food; it’s about designing relationships. When we stop segregating our lives and our gardens, we find that the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
Another really fantastic write-up, Lorraine!
Integration is such a critical part of permaculture. When done well, it really makes all the systems in your design function better with more yields and less waste – and definitely more resilient (a critical thing with the global weirding caused by climate change). But, as you pointed out with the food forest example, it’s easy to over-plant things and over-stack things in a design in the name of integration – this is actually a mistake almost everyone makes who is new to permaculture and exploring its concepts for the first time. But it’s a mistake you definitely learn from. So finding that balance is the real key. Not everything integrates with everything else in a design, but figuring out what does and to what extent that integration should take place is one of the more advanced aspects of creating good permaculture systems.
Alley cropping is a great example of integration at the farm scale that we use here at Hundred Fruit Farm. Using the alleys between plantings is a great way of integrating two separate systems and utilizing the wasted space between them. When we still had sheep, we would often graze them between our rows of young hazelnut trees, since the grass alleys there would otherwise need to be mowed. The sheep performed a function that benefited themselves (food), us (less mowing), and the hazelnuts (weed control and fertilization). In our larger nut orchard, we also use the alleys between our slow-growing nut trees (which will eventually take up a 50′ canopy circle) with pawpaw trees that are happy to use the space in the meantime, and aren’t as bothered by being shaded once the nut trees begin to grow tall enough to cast significant shade on them.