Michele Margolis is passionate about grassroots urban permaculture, here she updates us on what happening in Sydney’s inner west. Cities are a bit harder than little towns in some ways but easier in others — and there’s plenty going on in Sydney in local communities within the huge Sydney megalopolis. Permaculture West is rocking! Tribes …
Bellamar Gardens is one of the exctiting new major permaculture projects in Cuba, located near Matanzas, just a hundred meters from the famous Bellamar Caves. I was invited to consult on the project when I visited Cuba in 2009 when the land had quite recently been secured by FANJ (Foundation for Nature and Humanity), Cuba’s …
Lauren Jardine writes of her experience following studies at PCA, Djanbung Gardens, putting her new-found knowledge and skills into practice as a volunteer at Shearwater Steiner School. The Journey Continues….. I have always toyed with the idea of being a teacher but never really liked the idea of teaching the curriculum in its most classic …
Wildlife is welcome here but not cats or dogs…. It was twenty years ago that I made the momentous decision to take on a 5 acre degraded cow pasture and restore it to biodiversity and abundance as a permaculture education centre and wildlife sanctuary. I remember sitting in the middle of that barren landscape in …
The Eco-Social Matrix (ESM) developed by permaculture designer, Robyn Francis, provides a useful tool for bioregional planning, human settlement and ecovillage design, transition initiatives, and for thinking more deeply about the consequences of where we live in terms of accessing our needs and interacting with community
Here are two very inspiring stories of mainstream communities thinking outside the box to create collaborative solutions to local sustainability issues in Goulburn and Geelong. The Tale of Goulburn Valley… “Our agenda is food sovereignty, food sustainability. This is what we are creating with this broad community cooperative.”
Due for release June 2012, the last major work from Masanobu Fukuoka, author of international bestseller The One-Straw Revolution. This new book, titled Sowing Seeds in the Desert, is Fukuoka’s last major work, and may just be his most important.
My grandmother was a great source of practical wisdom — born in the 1880’s she grew up in a world kept clean and hygienic with simple natural ingredients and common household items. The world changed post WWII as we entered the era of booming corporations, consumption and petro-chemical products. Suddenly the washing had to be …
Davidson Plum Davidsonia pruriens var. jerseyana A bombshell of colour and intense clean, tart flavour, Davidson Plum has become one of my favourite bushfood fruits in the kitchen. This tall (3-4m) slender rainforest plant will grow and bear in the tiniest garden space. It prefers a semi-shady location and does well under the canopy of …
Robyn Francis reports, March 2012 We learned of the importance of ozone in the stratosphere when it depleted to allow harmful levels of ultra-violet rays to reach the earth’s surface, so ozone up there is a good thing, but not so good closer to earth in the troposphere. At ground level ozone is killing trees …