Al’s hugelkultur adventure
By Dawne Belloise
Photos Dawne Belloise
Decomposing layers should generate heat and support plants that don’t normally thrive in this zone.
Camp4’s Al Smith hopes his “landscape lasagna” of burlap bags, egg cartons and organic matter will soon teem with critters, flowers and food. As Cement Creek Road deepens into its canyon, it narrows, weaving through stands of quakies in its dusty journey to Italian Mountain and Tilton Pass. In a grove several miles up, a berm rises unexpectedly – a fortified wall of tree trunks, dirt, burlap bags, cardboard and egg cartons layered among plantings and colored flags. There, on the moist earth, sits Al Smith, energetic Camp4 Coffee entrepreneur and now bio-experimenter. An elderly couple stops to ask him, “What is that? What are you doing?” Al beams his wide grin and launches into the story of hugelkultur, a permaculture concept from Germany and Poland that inspired this organic bio berm experiment edging his property. Hugelkultur, according to Wikipedia, is a horticultural technique where a mound is constructed from decaying wood debris and other compostable biomass plant material. Nel Curtiss of Rocky Mountain Trees came up with the idea for the Cement Creek hugelkultur. Al recalls: “Initially, I had a bunch of trees come down on my property here and I had to put them somewhere. My fence along the road was also down, so I stacked the trees there,” figuring the pile of trees would substitute for the fence. That’s when Nel stopped by to tell him about permaculture. 26
Al Smith working with his hugelkultur experiment out Cement Creek.
Nel explained how a layering system of greens and browns and vegetative matter, basically anything compostable, would eventually turn the berm into a living, composting bio creation that would generate heat, take in water and release it slowly. “It’s like lasagna,” Al says of the alternating layers. “Grass clippings are green, twigs are brown.” Nel started by bringing dump trucks full of sod and tree debris. When word got out, other friends began filling burlap bags with weeds, clippings and branches for the project. Eventually Al began cultivating plants in the berm. “I put a bunch of flags around the plantings so I can figure out what’s what. The orange flags mark the ornamentals; they don’t have any food value, but they’re pretty.” Al points to a red twig dogwood. A geranium is not quite ready to bloom next to its yellow flag identifier. Volunteer currant bushes are poised to take over. Green
