Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
At the PDC level the majority of students will be designing for themselves. Their individual plan will be their own site. The real challenge is to get these students to start implementing permaculture on the ground. I consider this my primary goal.
People are coming out of their silos. And if these movements have shown us anything, it’s that if we join forces and mobilise then decision makers will have to act.
Whenever you design and create anything, you deploy one or another conceptual framework. One or another way of framing and making sense of both what you start with, how to go about developing or changing it, where you are heading, and why you are even bothering. No matter if you’re aware of your conceptual framework. It is there.
Lackan Cottage Farm is the product of permaculture design, which can be seen in everything from our natural building products, to our waste and water treatment, energy production, and food growing. It is constantly evolving and growing with our own permaculture experience.
Now here’s the thing. Adaptation cannot be fabricated or master planned, period. I believe it to be an essential truth that adapted systems can only emerge or be generated iteratively, in an ongoing dance between a system’s form and its context.
Generative transformation is really good stuff. I believe permaculture and generative transformation are meant to be together, just like orchid and wasp, legume and rhizobia, or carbon and nitrogen in the perfect compost. Indeed, I’d argue that generative transformation is in play when any permaculture project really shines.
The following diagram is a hyper-condensed summary of over two years, 80 posts and 70,000 words worth of this blog’s assorted ramblings about permaculture design.
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 April 2006 I bought a dilapidated 1920s local authority house in Writtle, Essex. With the help of my two sons Django and Aidan and friends John and Tim, we commenced a three-year experiment.
Mike Riddell, Director of Hometown Plus, the social business behind the York Place project has helped create a space that acts as both retail and community hub. While not explicitly a ‘permaculture project’ it embodies much of what we would laud as sound permacultural design, embodying both the ethics and principles we endeavour to include in our work.
With permaculture design we can create productive spaces, without much input once established. Will you design a resilient productive garden?
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.
