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Thinking about Establishing a Home Permaculture Garden in 2022? 6 Key Benefits You Shouldn’t Overlook

January 2, 2022

Thinking about Establishing a Home Permaculture Garden in 2022? 6 Key Benefits You Shouldn’t Overlook

Have you ever wondered why humans have to invest so much time and energy into growing plants that grow all by themselves in nature? Permaculture gardening may be the answer. Permaculture is a style of agriculture that aims to work with nature rather than against it. The result is self-sufficient, sustainable crops and plants.

Though it may seem intimidating or complicated, permaculture is just about using what’s available to you in your immediate surroundings. That means that if you’ve ever dreamed of growing your own garden full of food and herbs, you can jot it down on your New Year’s resolution list as an easy, attainable goal for 2022.

How to start a permaculture garden

wheel barrow — Photo by Ēriks Irmejs on Unsplash

Like any good project, you’ll need a few things before you can get your hands dirty playing in your new garden. First and foremost, you should familiarise yourself with your surroundings and resources. For example, how much space do you have? Are you planting in your backyard or on a balcony? Is there a community garden or rentable plot where you can start your garden?

Next, you’ll want to consider the ecosystem where you live. What are the native plants and insects? Which vegetables and fruits are native to the area, and what are their seasons? The goal is to work with nature as much as possible, so you’ll want to consider what occurs in your area naturally before planting non-native species.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A review of three books: Futuresteading, The Good Life and Costa’s World

January 1, 2022

A review of three books: Futuresteading, The Good Life and Costa’s World

It’s not often I comment on the constant flow of new books about green lifestyle, growing and wellbeing but three recently released titles had me thinking about the issue of communicating the good news to inspire and motivate people to adopt and adapt ideas for more resilient and low impact living.

As a publisher, it also had me thinking about the way books have changed over the decades. At Melliodora Publishing we focus more on dense content and a little less on style, although over the decades, my personal crusade against the drift to lighter content – in all areas of life! – has been moderated by colleagues proving to me that in a media driven world, presentation is as important as content. These books illustrate one of the directions in publishing that allow books to remain competitive for attention in a very crowded media space.

All three books arrived at Melliodora, partly through the normal promotion channels to reviewers, and partly due to personal and collegiate connection. All three have a colourful style with beautiful images, artful graphics and carefully balanced text and lots of white space, suitable for dipping in and out for ideas, practical guidance and inspiration. All three feature the authors, family and friends in ways that make you feel like you are part of their good life.

The first, Futuresteading; Live Like Tomorrow Matters by Jade Miles from Black Barn Farm in north east Victoria, arrived with the author and her partner Charlie on a visit to Melliodora after a local tree grafting workshop and book promotion event was cancelled (due to Covid of course). Instead Charlie did an impromptu grafting workshop for us Melliodorans, and Jade gave us an inscribed copy of her book…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

An environmental sociologist explains how permaculture offers a path to climate justice

December 12, 2021

Image by Local Food Initiative, flickr. Permaculture practitioners manage their gardens or farms in ways inspired by the sustainability and resilience of healthy natural ecosystems.

An environmental sociologist explains how permaculture offers a path to climate justice

Big farming is both a victim of climate change and a contributor. Droughts, floods and soil degradation threaten crop yields. But agriculture produces nearly one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

A potential antidote to harmful monocultures is a form of community farming invented back in the 1970s: permaculture. Permaculture is not just about farming; it incorporates economic and social principles.

I am an environmental sociologist, and I have witnessed permaculture working in two urban farming communities. I study ways that environmental justice, global development and social equity affect climate change.

Permaculture’s three main tenets – caring for the Earth, caring for the people and sharing the surplus – offer a potential path toward climate justice, which is a response to well-researched phenomena that climate change disproportionately harms underprivileged groups in economic, public health and other ways, and solutions to climate change should include adaptation strategies designed specifically for underprivileged groups.

I spent time at two communities in the Pacific Northwest and in Cuba during the fieldwork for my book “Surviving Collapse.” I witnessed how the communities worked to cut emissions and adapt to climate change in two ways: with egalitarian social organization and regenerative farming techniques.

Permaculture was born in Australia

In the 1970s, two Australian naturalists, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, invented permaculture, a method of growing that considers the natural ecosystem and the community. They wanted to change agriculture’s unsustainable practices, like the heavy use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Emergency #Permaculture: Are You Prepared?

November 15, 2021

Emergency #Permaculture: Are You Prepared?

Creating a Preferred Future

October 29, 2021

Creating a Preferred Future

Pandemic Brooding: Brown Tech in New Clothing

October 3, 2021

Pandemic Brooding: Brown Tech in New Clothing

Parts of this essay have already been published as ‘Pandemic brooding: can the permaculture movement survive the first severe test of the energy descent future?’ In this longer essay, David Holmgren explores the responses to the pandemic in light of his Future Scenarios work.

Extract:

I think it is important to see the Brown Tech world as a logical unfolding of energy descent systemic forces breaking down the techno-industrial world, rather than a great battle of benign wisdom over recalcitrant and subversive resistors, or alternatively, an evil plan for world domination that must be resisted at every turn. For an increasingly alienated, perhaps minority of permies, the emergent Brown Tech world is experienced as a mad undemocratic process taking away our rights and freedoms and imposing controls over previously private lives, possibly driven by shadowy elites striving for world domination or worse. This of course leads to association with people of very different values and backgrounds.

Introduction

The welcome signs of spring are all around me at Melliodora and Spring Creek¹ after a wet and gloomy winter. With very little passive solar gain, we burnt more wood, and with barely enough photovoltaic power to pump water and power a few other essential functions, we relied on backup from the Victorian grid – still dominated by coal, despite the impressive roll out of wind farms around our region. It was damp enough to remind us of the old days before acceleration of climate change, which has given us more winter sun but less groundwater recharge or fungal decomposition to moderate the fuel loads during the ensuing fire season.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pandemic Brooding: Can the Permaculture movement survive the first severe test of the energy descent future?

September 25, 2021

Pandemic Brooding: Can the Permaculture movement survive the first severe test of the energy descent future?

As the pandemic rolled into its second year, I became concerned that the psychosocial fallout of the pandemic, and especially the response at the global and local levels, could represent an existential threat to permaculture and kindred movements. At one level, this threat is the same as that to families, workplaces, networks and organisations more generally, where a sense of urgency to implement the official response, especially lockdowns and mass vaccination, is producing a huge gulf between an ever more certain majority and a smaller minority questioning or challenging the official response.

My aim in this essay is to focus on the critical importance of using all our physical, emotional and intellectual resources towards maintaining connections across what could be a widening gulf of frustration and distrust within our movement, reflecting society at large. I want to explore how permaculture ethics and design principles can help us empathetically bridge that gulf without needing to censor our truth or simply avoid the issues.

While the pandemic and the responses to it will pass in time, I believe the future will be characterised by similar issues that test our ability to tolerate uncertainty and diversity and to thus exercise solidarity within kin, collegiate and network communities of practise.

International Permaculture Day May 2013 Daylesford Community Garden

Future Scenarios and the Brown Tech future

The positive grounded thinking that characterises permaculture has always been informed by a dark view of the state of the world and long-term emerging threats. Future Scenarios is my 2008 exploration of four near-future ‘energy descent’ scenarios driven by the variable rates of oil and resource depletion on the one hand and rate of onset of serious climate change on the other…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to Design a Permaculture Neighbourhood

September 8, 2021

Online vs. Onsite Permaculture Courses: Which is Better?

March 29, 2021

Online vs. Onsite Permaculture Courses: Which is Better?

When deciding which permaculture course to take, the question at the forefront of it is whether to go with an online and onsite (in-person) version. Like so many things in the world (and permaculture design), the answer to this is variable, dependent on individual circumstances, abilities, and goals.

In short, either one could be great (and we are happy to have you on the permaculture team); however, your first assignment will be figuring out which format works best for you, your learning style, your tendencies, your needs…your mental climate so to speak. So, rather than deciding outright which is better, this article will be looking at how each works so that perspective students might choose for themselves.

Whilst doing this, we’ll work under the assumption that PDC students usually take the course with at the very least a cursory knowledge of permaculture—some sort of sustainable living thing that has to do with growing food in seemingly unconventional ways—and want to learn further what permaculture is and, more so, how to use it themselves.

With that in mind, it’s important that courses cover the basics of the practice, providing the history of, the motivation behind, and the basic theories within permaculture. From there, students would ideally want to take on the practices of permaculture and begin applying them to their own lives at their own homes. After all, the point of permaculture is put into action these things that we have observed and learned about the world.

What to Expect from an Online Course

On the whole, online PDC courses, despite being cheaper, are much more in-depth than onsite courses. They tend to last for months and cover a broad range of subjects, including climates from all around the world.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Jonathon Engels, permaculture, permaculture research news, learning,

Permaculture

March 18, 2021

Permaculture

A design system that offers a radical reimagination of the possible

Permaculture is a design system that mimics the patterns of flourishing ecosystems to create ecologically regenerative human societies. First developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s, permaculture takes inspiration from Indigenous and ‘traditional’ agrarian practices. Mollison and Holmgren created a philosophy and a set of principles for producing diverse and dynamic ecosystems in which humans play a positive role.

Permaculture is strongly associated with specific practices, such as planting perennial polycultures. However, its most distinctive aspect is a focus on ecological design that is based on careful observation and deep interconnection. Through this design process, permaculturalists co-create, with non-human nature, spaces and lives that restore soil, build biodiversity, and allow for the flourishing of multiple species, including humans.

Permaculture emphasises that the Earth is full of abundance, not in commodities, but in energy from the sun, wind, water, food, and life itself. According to permaculture ethics, this abundance should be shared with other people, non-human animals, and the Earth. Permaculturalists do not view humans as inherently destructive or greedy. Within healthy ecosystems, animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria form cooperative, rather than competitive relationships, and humans can be an integral part of these ecosystems. As a system based on cooperation and solidarity among humans and non-human nature, permaculture offers a radical reimagination of the possible.

As a system based on cooperation and solidarity among humans and non-human nature, permaculture offers a radical reimagination of the possible

Permaculture has spread from Australia throughout the world and been interpreted in a variety of ways. This has led to some important debates within the international permaculture movement. Some proponents of permaculture aim to keep it de-politicized and professionalized as a system of ecological design only, while others seek to align with other social justice movements…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

permaculture, uneven earth, food production, agriculture, food, rebecca ellis

Permaculture design for Stephan Schrotter at Cairo Montenotte, Italy

January 31, 2021

Permaculture design for Stephan Schrotter at Cairo Montenotte, Italy

This article is in three parts. The entire series will take us through a Permaculture Design Project at a property in Italy. Firstly we will look at how the project was observed, then the analysis that was undertaken before starting the design.

Holistic Goal

What is it?

A holistic goal is a three-part goal describing the quality of life desired, the forms of production to get there, and the future resource base that the forms of production depend on. A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a goal. A task is one step in the plan of action to accomplish a goal.

A Holistic Goal (now referred to as a “Holistic Context” by the Savory Institute) is necessary for anyone who wants to be a Holistic Manager. It can help you with your personal life, your business, and your family life. Having a Holistic Goal has eliminated a lot of decision-making stress in my life.

Holistic Management involves using a simple decision-making framework that ensures all significant management decisions are simultaneously economically, socially and environmentally sound both short and long term. No longer are decisions made toward objectives or goals alone, but always toward a new concept called the holistic goal for any management situation. The holistic goal provides the context for all objectives, goals or actions toward any vision or mission. This helps greatly in avoiding unintended consequences to our actions that are so universal that economists long ago used the term “Law of unintended consequences.”

-Allan Savory

What you have to manage?

A Permaculture project: Rebuild the house with two or three rooms to rent, food production for the family and guests, trees…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Permaculture?

September 12, 2020

Why Permaculture?

It’s been several years since I first stumbled upon permaculture, and several years minus a couple of months since I started doing my best to practice it. Many people have a similar story, and my guess is, like me, they’ve been asked dozens, possibly hundreds, of times what permaculture is. But, it’s been a rarity—if it has ever happened at all—that someone asks me why permaculture. That might actually be more notable.

When permaculture came into my life, my wife Emma and I were on a trip through Central and South America, hopping from farm to farm on work-trades to both stretch our budget while traveling and learn a bit about growing our own food. We cared about the environment, so we’d guessed organic farms were the way to go. It only took a matter of weeks to begin hearing the term permaculture as byword. We borrowed some books and were soon engrossed in the practice.

Our life has radically changed for the better. We’ve become stronger people, physically and mentally. We’ve become more capable, able to grow and preserve our own food and to build our own home, while consistently adding to the toolbox: forage wild mushrooms, make an earthen pizza oven, design a grey water system, start a social business… The world, from twenty feet away to the entire global construct, looks totally different, and while it may sometimes be scary, there always seems to be identifiable, simple steps for us to take, right now.

Why Permaculture?

The grand appeal of permaculture over basic organic gardening is that it is so much more. We had aspirations of living on a piece of land and growing a lot of our own food, but there were so many more ambitions beyond that.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Permaculture Alternatives to Waste-to-Energy (W2E)

May 12, 2020

Kowhai Festival — Photograph by author, Trish Allen.

Permaculture Alternatives to Waste-to-Energy (W2E)

Waste-to-energy (W2E), particularly incineration, is being promoted as a good alternative to landfills – it gets rid of all that plastic we use and generate energy, right? In this article I’d like to first outline what’s wrong with W2E and then talk about permaculture alternatives.

So What Is Wrong With W2E Incineration?

W2E is a continuation of the ‘take-make-dispose’ economy which lulls people into the belief that we can continue our wasteful ways without changing our behaviour. But we live on a finite planet and most environmental harm comes at the extraction stage – so why would we want to burn resources and get rid of them? It doesn’t make sense. We need to get away from an extractive to a regenerative culture.

There are multiple negative impacts of W2E plants, which are seeing many being decommissioned internationally. For example, the toxic ash that remains after burning still has to be disposed of in a landfill. This can be up to 25% of the original volume of waste material, but with more toxicity. So incinerators don’t do away with the need for a landfill, instead they require a landfill for more toxic and dangerous waste.

Aside from the toxic ash, W2E incineration plants create an on-going demand for waste to fuel the incinerator. They are very expensive to build, have huge embodied energy, and once built, have to run for years to get a return, locking us into a destructive system. Right now our planet’s ability to sustain life is seriously at risk. We cannot afford the luxury of investing in bad ideas.

Our young people are calling for Climate Action now and we have a major responsibility to urgently reduce emissions. Incinerators create emissions. New Zealand’s electricity is currently 80% clean (water, wind, solar, geothermal) so why would we want to start burning trash to generate power? It just doesn’t add up environmentally, economically or socially.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Permaculture and Money – Part 3

May 10, 2020

Permaculture and Money – Part 3

The Practice of Being Open

In part 1⁽¹⁾ of this series, we explored the relationship between money, psychology and violence, while in part 2⁽²⁾ we looked at some ways in which the stories we tell as a culture to do with money could be seen as encouraging destructive patterns of behaviour. Looby Macnamara would describe such destructive patterns as “spirals of erosion”⁽³⁾ and this part will explore in more detail some practical ideas for how we can transcend such erosive behaviours and create “spirals of abundance”⁽³⁾ instead.

Alternative Economic Theories

In parts 1⁽¹⁾ and 2 ⁽²⁾, I mentioned theories about the possibility of a moneyless society, or a society where money takes a different role, such as Sacred Economics⁽⁴⁾ author Charles Eisenstein and Satish Kumar, who among other roles was a practicing Jain monk as a child⁽⁵⁾. Both of these writers can be said to be influenced by EF Schumacher, whose book Small is Beautiful ⁽⁶⁾, published in 1973, critiqued the unsustainable model of resource and profit-driven industrialised capitalism, and recommends instead a philosophy of “enoughness” and appropriate use of technology⁽⁶⁾. Schumacher was himself influenced by Oriental thinking and in particular Buddhist ideas of moderation (see for example ref 7). In modern society, we can see an example of “enoughness” in practice in the Thai concept of “sufficiency economy” ⁽⁸⁾.

Peace Pilgrimage

The above examples show some ways in which alternative economic ideas have been influencing the world, and are somewhat encouraged in some mainstream societies. Yet if money is the very problem, it seems we need to explore more radical alternatives.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Permaculture and Money – Part 2

May 1, 2020

Permaculture and Money – Part 2

Living and Giving Abundance

In part 1 of this article series we looked at the curious concept of money and how it can be seen to be contributing to the institutional violence of much of modern society. This part will look at some alternative ways of viewing and interacting with money, while the next part will begin to explore some practical ways in which we can all begin living more abundantly.

Stories For A New World

In part 1 we explored the idea of transcending current modes of thinking or behaving, in order to engage in new ones. As John Paul Lederach points out, if we really want to find new ways of living then we cannot simply create a vision of a different place – we also need to be aware of where we are right now ⁽¹⁾.

As Charles Eisenstein, author of Sacred Economics, put it,

“It is not merely our attitudes about money that must change…rather, we will create new kinds of money that
embody and reinforce changed attitudes” ⁽²⁾

A Change In The System…

Some alternative economic theories include ideas such as the creation of local currencies like the Bristol Pound ⁽³⁾, non-centralised currencies such as Bitcoin⁽⁴⁾ or bartering or exchange systems such as those put into practice using Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS), for example in Australia with the Australian Community Exchange System ⁽⁵⁾. All of these can be seen to represent important options for those looking to put permaculture into practice by moving away from the monoculture of solely using money.

Or Of The System?

However, such alternatives can be seen to still be based on the premise of exchanging for a fixed rate which is decided abstractly and therefore they still hold within them the inherent disconnection from nature and subsequent destructive tendencies which using money carries with it ^{(2, 6)}.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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