Toby Hemenway

It’s time to come back to earth, and to reverse scales from the mind-bogglingly large to the infinitesimally small.

Where does soil come from? In keeping with the big-picture perspective of this series, let’s tackle that question from the god’s-eye perspective. We can zero in on the finer points later.

When we deeply understand the system we’re working with—be it a garden, a business, a community, or even a personal relationship—we can spot the places where a small, perfectly located nudge will beget a large response.

One of my constant refrains is “Permaculture is a decision making tool for arriving at regenerative solutions.” Here I’m going to show how permaculture can help create strategies for deciding what cover crops to use.

Smothered beneath the dunes that blanket 150 miles of the Oregon coast are ancient, dead forests. Yet on these same dunes, the crumbling of delicate mosses and lichens on naked sand builds new soil, launching new forests.

The word “pattern” takes us over a vast territory.