Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Horton Community Farm is an oasis of green tucked within a side-road off one of bustling Bradford’s busy roads. After a breathless, up-hill walk, entering the green land calms the heart and opens the senses.
To me the most successful approach lies in using the most weakly positive approaches to enhancing plant growth to maximise the effectiveness of limited resources, then applying negative design to shape the vegetation across the landscape.
In this article, I would like to propose some ways that an exchange of knowledge and knowledge-sharing strategies between permaculture and degrowth would be beneficial for both movements. This argument is based on the idea that the most interesting and diverse areas of any system are located at the edge, where one system, community, or way of thinking intersects with another.
David Holmgren’s new book is a fascinating, and intoxicating blast of ‘what if?’ which ought to be put through every suburban letterbox in the world, although given its size I have doubts that it would fit. I am a huge Holmgren fan.
Permaculture for Development Workers invites practitioners working at all levels in development to consider incorporating permaculture into their approach and demonstrates how doing so could increase the suitability and sustainability of their programmes – as well as supporting development workers’ personal resilience.
Good Life Permaculture (henceforth referred to as ‘Good Life’) was born in early 2013 after about four years of conception and design by Hannah and Anton. With a ‘good life’ as the mission, the initiative’s vision is to achieve ‘absolute sustainability’…
I would define permaculture in a general way as sustainable human settlements in a holistic approach, so that everyone can take it up. Here in Laikipia, for example, we’re talking about building peace, livelihoods, and about degraded landscapes, so we take that approach.
The Minimalist Gardener brings together a series of 17 articles written by renowned grower, permaculturist and teacher, the late Patrick Whitefield and originally published in Permaculture Magazine over a period of more than twenty years. Big thanks are due to Permanent Publications for bringing these articles together into this very accessible and easy reading new reference book.
Maddy’s new book Fertile Edges — Regenerating land, culture and hope is a testimony to her doing just this in an eloquent, insightful and deeply caring way. The anthology of editorials of 25 years of Permaculture Magazine is the kind of book you can leave on the breakfast table and treat youself to a daily dose of inspiration one editorial at a time.
For those that aren’t aware, Dave Jacke is a world class ecological designer, writer, and teacher. Lead author of the acclaimed two-volume Edible Forest Gardens books, I have long respected Dave’s sophisticated and comprehensive grasp of design process. While he prefers the phrase ecological design process1 over permaculture design process, he unquestionably has helped / is helping permaculture lift its game in terms of a design process that not only starts by deeply tuning into people and place, but embodies the principle of starting with patterns and ending up with details.
I wonder if the process of learning and discovering with our senses isn’t really what makes us human, what makes our life worthwhile. Perhaps this is how as humans we evolved our ‘big’ brains, our specialized neural networks. Maybe in exploring the word with our senses and trying to make sense of it all, we developed language in order to tell stories, we developed writing in order to keep records, and in the process we advanced our social group from tribes into culture and from culture into civilizations.
In this episode Dan Palmer from Making Permaculture Stronger enjoys a wide-ranging conversation with Darren J. Doherty from Regrarians.org.
