SADIMET, OBREDIMET, CEAP, SWOC, PASTE. WTF?

You’re thinking I’ve lost it. This time, I’ve gone completely mad. Well, rest assured, I’m fine.

I admit, the title of this post might seem awkward at first glance, but that’s OK. Actually, I kind of want it to be like that.

Hopefully, by the end of this post, you’ll have a somewhat better understanding of what the words in the title stand for.

Permaculture design principles

The underlying theme of my lazy gardening post was that a lazy gardener spends most of her time designing the garden and less time actually working.

Well, funny enough, as I was yesterday browsing the internet for inspiration for designs of my permaculture garden(s), I found out that someone beat me to the punch. My lazy gardening principles aren’t as revolutionary as I’d like them to be. It has all been done before.

No biggy.

During my research, I’ve seen all these funny expressions being thrown around. Words like SADIMET, OBREDIMET, CEAP were being used. I’ve tried to dig deeper and look for a resource where all these words are explained in one place.

I was out of luck. So I decided to settle this once and for all and write a concise post, describing each of these in plain English. If you’re an organizational junkie (like me), you’ll like this post. If you’re not, just take what you find useful and run with it.

Here we go.

SADIM(ET)

Survey
Assess (or Analyze)
Design
Implement
Maintain (or Manage)
Evaluate
Tweak

SADIMET has it’s roots in landscape architecture. To illustrate the process a little better, I’ve made this flowchart.

OBREDIM(ET)

Observe
Boundaries
Resources
Evaluate (or Examine)
Design
Implement
Maintain (or Manage)
Evaulate
Tweak

OBREDIMET is adopted from industrial engineering. Do you see the similarities with SADIMET? Observe can surely be linked with Survey. Now, notice that in the flowchart I put ‘limiting factors’ and ‘needs’ under Assess. Well, Boundaries is just another way of saying ‘limiting factors’. And Resources can be rephrased as ‘needs’.

Therefore, Boundaries, Resources and Evaluate can all be put together as Assess. Personally I like Assess better than Evaluate. The way I see it, you assess the information you’ve gathered and you evaluate the implementation of the design. You see what works and what doesn’t. To me, assess just sounds better.

The rest of the process, DIMET, is the same.

CEAP

Collect site information
Evaluate the information
Apply permaculture principles
Plan a schedule of implementation, maintenance, evaluation and tweaking

CEAP is (as you’ve probably guessed) a permaculture “invention”. Again, it’s just a different way of saying the same thing. Collect site information is the same as Survey. Evaluate…see above. ‘Apply permaculture principles’ I actually like better than ‘Design’. It’s more precise.

You can design however you want. Using permaculture principles is one option. As permies, we’re obviously going to use them. That’s why I like ‘Apply permaculture principles’ better.

Plan a schedule of implementation, maintenance, evaluation and tweaking is obviously just grouping the remaining four steps into one.

SWOC analysis

Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Constraints (or Challenges)

SWOC analysis is actually pretty closely related to SWOT analysis, most commonly used in business. In fact, the first three letters are the same, while the last is Constraints instead of Threats. I guess it sounds less dangerous .

SWOC analysis is what you can use in the ‘Assess’ part of SADIMET process. I’ll get into more details in my next post.

PASTE sheet

Plants
Animals
Structures
Tools
Events

PASTE sheet helps you give an overview of the ‘Design’ part of SADIMET process. Again, more details about it in my next post.

Putting it all together

You don’t have to remember all these fancy words. This is not high school all over again.

The way I see it, these are best used as a reference point that you can use when embarking on a new gardening venture. They help you not to miss out on something important.

The last two, SWOC and PASTE are just tools that you can use to present your thoughts in a more organized fashion.

The first three all tell the same story: first observe, second make sense of it, third make a plan, fourth DO IT. Then it’s just about improving here and there.

When you think about it, it’s actually common sense (that’s how I got to lazy gardening principles). You’d probably follow the same path even if you didn’t know all this. Well, now you can explain (using complicated words ) to others what it is that you’re doing.

On permablogger, I’ll always try to advocate that we do more of doing (whatever it may be) and bother less with the theory, how it’s called etc.

What do you like?

Do you follow any of these principles? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Would you like me to write more theory posts or are you more interested in practical application? I’ll write in one of my future posts how you go about using these principles to create a new permaculture garden from scratch. Stay tuned!

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