Permaculture
An interesting form of agriculture
Permaculture is a sustainable agricultural planning and production method. The concept has been
defined by Bill Mollison from Australia. The method is mostly extensive, but very natural and absolutely
organic. Production is extensive and based on zones.
"Permanere" means to "remain always together". And in the case of permaculture, this concerns not
only plants and trees, but also the fauna - and us, people, too. All of these stay in the same area, but
can be nevertheless positioned in relation to each other in a way that their mutual relations are
headed towards an optimal state.
Read more about permaculture at Wikipedia
Permaculture in the Steinschaler Gardens
Our extensive gardens of appr. 5 hectares are cultivated according to the principles of permaculture.
- Kitchen and wild herbs lending a special note to the culinary specialities of our Nature Hotels
thrive in the "Vegetable and herb garden"
- In the "Heritage garden" you will discover folk cultural plants of the Pielach Valley
- In the "House garden" of the Nostalgia Garden of the hotel, some vegetables are growing and here
you will also find some animals like the mini pigs for example
- Regional, mostly rare kinds of fruits and the "Cornelian Cherries of the Pielach Valley"“
burgeon in the "Fruit garden"
- There are a lot of "semi-arid plants" in the "Dry stone walls"
- In the "Water garden" you will find the ponds with their typical flora and fauna
The garden areas around Nature Hotel Steinschalerhof also serve as "Show gardens"
for the many groups visiting us. We are glad to accommodate many visitors for a night
so they can get to know our gardens in more depth and get a taste of our products in our restaurant.
One of our production gardens is situated across from the Mariazellerbahn station "Steinschal-Tradigist".
This garden is also the entry point for guests ineterested in the subject of "permaculture".
The Steinschaler Gardens serve our hotels in many ways:
- For increasing the degree of our self-supply with regional and organically sound products
- For marketing purposes via our guided garden tours
- For the sales from our own production
In both of our Steinschaler Hotels we are happy to serve you meals containing many
freshly harvested, organic and gently prepared products, coming directly from our very own
permaculture gardens!
Biodiversity - biological diversity
In the Steinschaler gardens we cultivate and thus preserve various, partly also quite ancient
plant varieties. Many of plants cultivated here are – with regard to the average Lower Austrian
gardens – pretty unusual. Many old, almost lost kinds of vegetables grow along with cultivated
wild plants and crops.
What makes the Steinschaler Gardens so special is the fact that they are actually production
gardens, from which we regularly take our modest share of edible and medical plants and spices.
One can easily see that we place great value on processing them, our very own plants are an important
ingredient of our natural cuisine.
At the same time, they are also a nice example for how esthetically satisfying production gardens can be.
Many of the plants cultivated by us are quite unusual in our region. Old varieties and wild plants and crops
are all part of this graceful diversity.
Nothwithstanding the exisiting species-richness you will experience here, there is still a lot of space for
experiments, from which also our guests may gain valuable insight. This allows for the transfer of existing
knowledge to interested parties, and visitors can thus be reminded of almost forgotten species of plants. | 
