Permaculture gardening helped Nicky Schauder feed her family; now she wants to help others do the same.
Nicky Schauder could be considered an unlikely author of a book on permaculture gardening. She doesn’t hold a horticulture degree, didn’t grow up in a farming family, doesn’t regularly sell at farmers markets.
But it turns out that Schauder’s lack of long-time farming experience is one of her guide’s strengths. Schauder’s first book, Permaculture Gardening for Everyone: How to Use Permaculture to Grow Abundantly at Home, is written not for the commercial grower but for the backyard gardener, the family aiming to feed itself organically, the environmentalist interested in cultivating a more sustainable space.
And for that, this mother of six, who began raising food because of her children’s severe allergies, is the perfect teacher.
To be clear, Schauder does have a certificate in permaculture design. As well as a website, newsletter, gardening app, and series of educational videos at motherearthnews.com. She and her husband Dave also lead workshops on the land where the family moved in 2022, in Leesburg, Virginia. She sells microgreen subscriptions and helps maintain school gardens in her community.
But Permaculture Gardening for Everyone never gets overly technical or talks down to readers. Schauder simply shares what she has learned across a decade of trial and error, first in the yard of her family’s Northern Virginia townhouse, and now on their farm’s bigger footprint.
The book is slight — just over 100 pages — and includes workbook exercises to help orient the beginning gardener. It’s meant to inspire, not solve every quandary a grower might encounter.
Schauder begins by answering: What is “permaculture gardening”?
It “looks at the bigger picture — the entire system of animals, trees, the gardener, your family and neighbors,” she writes. Permaculture gardening aims to work with nature and not against it. “Permaculture design is a cyclical or spiral system in which the end products are the main ingredients to create a brand-new product (food, clothing, medicine). The end products and byproducts are used to generate new growth.”
Schauder’s next chapter grounds the theory in reality. She encourages readers to learn to grow their plants from seed by raising microgreens to eat. By starting with sprouts, gardeners achieve quick success, producing nutritious food from their efforts within days. Plus, they learn an important skill that’s foundational to their future gardening success.
Permaculture Gardening for Everyone continues by gently walking readers through garden design, choosing plants, preparing soil. The final three chapters cover planting, maintaining the garden, and harvesting.
It’s a text a reader will want to explore as they dream of a new kind of growing, and then refer back to over and over once the work of gardening begins. Throughout the book, Schauder references other resources that can expand on the advice she offers in the book.
For anyone interested in an introduction to permaculture or the inspiration to try a new way of raising food, Schauder’s book is an encouraging resource that never intimidates.
“Permaculture Gardening for Everyone: How to Use Permaculture to Grow Abundantly at Home” was published in 2025 by Ogden Publications. You can purchase it here or most places where books are sold.
