Chicken City: My Integrated Garden and Chicken Ecosystem

Free Guide · An Integrated Chicken and Veg Garden

One meshed structure where the chickens feed the garden, the garden feeds the chickens, and almost nothing leaves as waste.

Chicken City is my integrated garden and chicken ecosystem: a meshed run with a central chicken house connected to four separate rooms, two of annual vegetables, one of dwarf fruit trees and one of berry canes. Gates let me shut the hens out of a room while it is fruiting so we can collect the harvest, then let them back in once the season is over to clean up fallen fruit, eat pests and bugs, and turn and fertilise the soil.

I love growing my own food for so many reasons. The question I get asked most is not why, though. It is how do you actually make it all happen. This is the answer, and it has a name: my garden ecosystem, affectionately known as Chicken City.

I garden in Macedon, in Victoria, where the winters are cold and properly frosty and the summers are hot and dry. That shapes when each room gets opened and closed, so if you are somewhere milder, or somewhere in the northern hemisphere where the seasons run the other way round, take the principle and move the timing to suit you.

What Chicken City actually is

Inside the meshed walls of Chicken City I have a central chicken house. Connected to it are four separate rooms: two containing annual vegetables, one containing dwarf fruit trees and one containing berry canes. Each of those rooms can be opened or blocked off to the hens with a gate.

That is the whole design in one sentence, and everything else is a consequence of it. The chicken house is the hub. The rooms are the spokes. The gates are the only moving part, and they are what turns a chicken run and a vegetable garden into one system instead of two separate jobs.

The four rooms, and how the gates run them

Shut out while it is fruiting

When the plants in a room are fruiting, the little ladies are locked out of it. That is the only way we get to collect the harvest ourselves, because a hen will happily strip a ripening berry cane long before I get to it. The gate stays shut for as long as there is something worth protecting.

Let back in once the season is over

Once the season in that room is finished, the gate is opened and the hens go in to do four jobs at once. They clean up the fallen fruit. They eat the pests and the bugs. They turn the soil. They fertilise it as they go. It is the least glamorous work in a garden and it is the work they enjoy most, which still feels like a very good deal to me.

Why the rotation matters

We apply this principle to all the rooms, at different times of year. That staggering is the quiet genius of it, because it means the chickens always have a room open to explore and to subsidise their feed, while whichever room is currently producing stays safely off limits. Nobody has to be bored and nothing has to be sacrificed.

What the mesh is really for

The mesh does two jobs, and I think the second one surprises people. It keeps the chickens safe inside, which is the obvious part. It also stops the juicy fruit being nabbed by the many native animals outside, which is the part that pays for itself every single season. If you have ever watched a crop you nursed for months disappear overnight, you already understand why I am so fond of that mesh.

The alpacas, and why they are part of the system

Chicken City itself is set inside a hilly paddock, and that paddock contains our other beautiful ladies, the alpacas. They are not decoration. They serve three purposes, and every one of them feeds back into the garden.

• They keep the grass tame, so the paddock never gets away from us.
• They fertilise the soil.
• Most importantly of all, they keep the chickens safe from foxes and other predators.

That third one is the reason I would recommend them to anyone with the room. A guardian animal on the outside of the run changes the whole risk picture for what is on the inside of it.

Three compost bins doing the feeding

Inside Chicken City we have three large compost bins. Into them goes all the kitchen scraps from the alyce alexandra cooking school, plus the alpaca manure and the chicken manure. Out of them comes rich compost.

That compost is what enables us to grow delicious and healthy fruits and veggies, literally from waste, and without the need for synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. It is also why the bins live inside the run rather than somewhere tidier and further away. Everything that needs to go in is already in there, and everything that comes out is needed within a few steps of where it was made. If composting is the bit you want to start with, I have written it up in full in growing food from waste.

A largely closed loop, and why that is the point

So in a nutshell, that is my largely closed-loop ecosystem. The whole system works in harmony, from the soil microbes to the worms to the chickens and the alpacas. There is no waste and there are no chemicals, just plenty of healthy food for everyone.

I say largely closed loop rather than closed loop on purpose, because I do not want to oversell it. But the direction of travel is what matters. Every output of one part of the system is an input somewhere else, and the more of those connections you make, the less you have to buy in and the less you have to throw away. I could not think of a more meaningful or more enjoyable way to spend my time.

If a whole Chicken City is out of reach

I want to be honest with you here, because I think it is the most useful thing on this page. This whole project may well be beyond the space, the time and the financial capacity of many people. That is not false modesty. It took room, it took money and it took years.

So the better question is not whether you can build this. It is which elements you could integrate into your own life. A worm farm in the garage. A few pots of tomatoes on the balcony. Maybe a couple of hens free ranging in a suburban back garden. Each of those is the same idea at a smaller scale, and each of them will teach you the thing that the big version taught me, which is that the pieces are worth far more connected than they are apart.

There is no chicken at all in my No-Chicken Chicken Salt, which feels like exactly the right way round when the chickens in question are pets with names. It is a vegan blend, because we adore chickens, and it is what I reach for on a tray of roast veg that came out of these rooms, or on scrambled eggs from the girls who did the weeding.

Alyce's Favourite

All the flavour, none of the chicken

Alyce's Organic No-Chicken Chicken Salt

Vegan, hand-made in small batches, and made for chips, roast veg and scrambled eggs.

Shop the No-Chicken Chicken Salt

Shop all the Flavour Bombs

Your questions about Chicken City, answered

How do you stop the chickens eating the harvest?

Every room has a gate. While the plants in a room are fruiting, the hens are locked out of that room so we can collect the harvest. They are only let back in once the season there is over.

What do the chickens actually do for the garden?

Once they are let into a finished room they clean up the fallen fruit, eat the pests and bugs, turn the soil and fertilise it. It is four garden jobs done at once, by animals who are delighted to be doing them.

Do the chickens ever run out of somewhere to forage?

No, and that is deliberate. Because the rooms come in and out of use at different times of year, there is always at least one open to them to explore and to subsidise their feed.

Why alpacas?

They keep the grass in the surrounding paddock tame, they fertilise the soil, and most importantly they keep the chickens safe from foxes and other predators.

Do you use fertiliser or pesticide?

No. The three compost bins inside the run turn kitchen scraps and alpaca and chicken manure into rich compost, and that is what feeds the beds. It means we grow the fruit and veg literally from waste, with no synthetic fertilisers and no pesticides.

More from Chicken City

• Chicken City: The Details is the one to read next if you want the rough plans and the build specifics rather than the overview.
• The Best Chicken Coop Design: Why Chicken City Integrates makes the case for the integrated approach if you are still deciding what to build.
• How Chicken City Protects Plants From Chickens is the practical fix for the problem everyone hits first, which is chickens destroying what you just planted.
• Chicken City Tour: Inside My Chicken Run walks you through every room as it is now, years on from when this post was written.