System Design

​In this course I will focus on creating a balanced natural habitat for rearing fish (ie a natural outdoors pond) where the water is pumped to a separate habitat (recommended a glasshouse) where plants are kept in trays containing a fine gravel or sand medium. The water then drains from these trays back to the pond - which should be positioned as close to the glasshouse as possible (via gravity). My belief is this type of design is the best compromise between providing ecologically balanced environments for production (in line with permaculture principles) with the intensive constructed environments (characteristic of aquaponics systems) which make them particularly well suited to intensive low maintenance production systems within small urban spaces.

I believe this provides the opportunity for creating naturalistic / calming wetland spaces that provide a good habitat for fish and calming space from the urban zone - in combination with the structured intensive production within the glasshouse. Further- there is opportunity to incorporate passive solar design and incorporating natural materials into the design of glasshouses to further enhance the aesthetics of the design and create a system more in alignment with pattern-recognition and design of a permaculture system.

With this context in mind - I will present a number of design here for creating a naturalistic pond planting / design and design for complementary and naturalistic glasshouse structure that can house the plant grow beds.

When you have finished reviewing the content on this page - return here to explore the design of ponds and glasshouses.

Before going into the details of the specific design I would recommend (aligned to permaculture principles)  I have included a few examples below of systems that demonstrate how the aquaponics concept can be applied to a range of scales - from a bedroom fishtank, to a garden design , to a larger big glasshouse structure.