Part Two of the GaiaCulture Series
"Our natural forest is regarded as having seven stories, as they say. The top story being tall light-demanding trees. The second story is of short shade- tolerant trees. The 3rd story is the shrub level. The fourth is the herbaceous. The fifth comprises plants that spread horizontally. Sixth is the rhizosphere or root area. And the seventh is the vertical layer comprising climbers and creepers. [Vines, mosses, symbiots, parasites ...]" Robert Hart
One snapshot from our eighteen-month-garden terracing project. Tarragon plant underneath/beside Clumping Blackberry, underneath Collard Tree, next to (not in photo) newly planted Mulberry Tree which will shade them all. {"And in the shadows bind them", to paraphrase Tolkien.}
See whole Hillside Terrace Garden photo composite
And Watch Robert Hart's Shropshire Forest Gardening video
Witness trunks of fallen trees, acting as hillside terrace retaining walls, which gardenwide along with gopher holes and stones and mulch and crevices in the sandstone, make a home for hundreds of Frogs and Toads and Lizards. These garden family members consume thousands of ants and flies and grasshoppers and earwigs and other insects daily. They are in turn consumed by the Lizards and Snakes, and some Crows and other Birds. The gophers are consumed by the plentiful Owls, and the Snakes are often taken by the Hawks. There are dozens of varieties of birds, some transient some relatively permanent or regular to the garden, and Falcons, and Squirrels, Rabbits, Bobcats and Lynx, Raccoons, Skunks, Foxes, Coyotes, Deer ... and the occasional Bear and Mountain Lion. Fortunately none of these larger varieties of our neighbors frequent the garden. The Skunks did eat many of our melons last year, which this year we have not planted.
Having finally, six months behind, completed the summer garden planting and composting and mulching and terrace-maintenance, we finally get to take a step back and witness the integrity of the hillside -- evolving from a horizontal 'organic' veggie garden towards a vertical permaculture forest.
Last summer, the Terrace-Garden's first, was in the middle of the 2007 drought. Though we did have spring water through the summer, it was insufficient to provide any pressure to the hillside garden for the months of July and August. For those two months I spent 8 to 12 hours per day hauling buckets of water into the garden, and to our adjacent baby fruit tree nursery. That was a great example of a garden which is NOT permaculture. Over the last several months we reduced our summer garden water requirements by one-half, by giving away half of the nursery trees, and moving the other half to another orchard location where they could be nurtured a few months further along before planting.
We then cut our garden watering requirements in half, again, to one-quarter, by expanding and deepening the terracing with dozens of small to medium treelimbs and trunks, and dozens of wheelbarrows of clay/sandstone mix soil, consolidating outlying or satellite plants into the main garden, and bringing in three additional pickup loads of old horse-manure compost, and six truckloads of half-composted Oak leaves as mulch. We also expanded the verticality, or Forest Garden, aspect of our hillside by adding two Mulberry Trees, in addition to a volunteer Mulberry, and a large clumping Blackberry varietal. The garden already hosts eight Strawberry Guavas, in small to medium heights, and two dwarf Figs at medium height. Also one medium WolfBerry or GojiBerry, soon to be two or three, and a Peruvian Ground Cherry aka Golden Cherry. A modest, but tall, volunteer native Tobacco tree resides over them all, closely followed by one giant, and yet another soon-to-be-giant Choko or Chayote bush(es) ... which will produce many times more by being provided with large fallen Oak and Eucalyptus limbs to climb upwards and outwards on, getting them above the ground, and providing helpful summer shade as required in the Ojai Valley for most garden vegetables and shrubs. [Below, Choko over Strawberry Guava over Squash ... 'all over Toads.']
Thus, by reducing the horizontal signature of our garden, and expanding the underground 'ferment' and the above-ground 'foresting', we have cut not only our watering time and requirements about fourfold, but we have also consolidated our distance and time investment, and included more fruit and diversity in the crop, and begun the process of creating shade and joy for ourselves and all our garden family members.
In this, the 2nd year of our Terrace-Garden Project, the bird and gopher and insect damage is less than half of what we experienced in our first year. Perhaps it also has been reduced three-quarters.
Part of that, joyfilled, celebration was the rounding up of over two hundred 'Wild' Toads last month, for introduction to our insect-filled garden. Now every morning and evening, and when we look closely during the day, we come across these offspring of GrandMother Toad, scurrying from shelter to shelter, lapping up bugs, or simply gazing out in meditation on the wonder of this mere echo, this echoing mirror, of HER divine creation.
One of Bill Mollison's video, see in particular last two minutes for an Australian example of vertical gardening ...
Bill Mollison & Permaculture, Part 6
Bill Mollison & Permaculture, Full Video
Remember when we were kids, and read "The Forest and the Sea" by Marston Bates, all about the interwoven magic tapestry/sea of life, known as the RainForest?
California fuchsia (Zauschneria californica) a.k.a. (Epilobium californica) is another favorite of hummingbirds. 
Long-blooming California buckwheat (Eriogonum) attracts butterflies and many other beneficial insects.
Photos by Les Dublin.
In this time of drought, cacti are especially appreciated in the summer garden for their ability to withstand the heat and thrive with little water. The City of Ojai Community Demonstration Garden has two striking cactus and succulent beds that line the entry from the parking lot.
Photos by Les Dublin.