Course listings | Permaculture Association All courses are listed by members of the Permaculture Association. If you would like to list courses here and are not yet a member, join today. There are permaculture courses to suit everyone, ranging from the Introduction to Permaculture, to a Permaculture Design Course, through to the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. Find out more about the types of courses on offer here. Online Courses Our members have also listed courses you can complete from anywhere, anytime! Organise a course If you are interested in organising your own course, see our guide to organising courses. Permaculture Gardening: Creating Our Own Eco-systems | Permaculture magazine Most people interested in practicing permaculture are doing so in a domestic situation – a house or apartment with a garden. Permaculture works brilliantly on a small scale, so permaculture gardening methods are ideal for these situations. Here are some distinctive permaculture gardening methods to make your garden healthy, low-maintenance and highly productive. No Digging Soil is the very foundation of life on our planet, and we need to understand how to take care of it so that it can support the plant life which feeds us. The soil food web is complex and fragile and about the most damaging thing we can do to it is regularly turn it over, break it up and squash it. Raised Beds Raised bed gardening is a wonderfully simple way to garden without digging. Digging has its place of course. (Lead image: Hazelrowan Wood, Devon) Polycultures A polyculture is the opposite of a monoculture, it means growing more than one kind of crop in the same space. An annual vegetable polyculture. Mulching
Lessons from an Urban Back Yard Food Forest Experiment Editor’s Note: Some of you may remember my Magic in Melbourne post, where I covered the back yard of a certain urban wizard named Angelo, and his sidekick Louie. Well, Angelo gives us a great update on his progress below. It’s a very inspiring read, as I’m sure you’ll discover. In our modern, Western, science-centred world, proof is very highly valued. When it comes to permaculture, one question that often arises from those outside of Permaculture circles is "…but does it really work?" It’s not every day that you wake up and try to objectively prove a major system of thinking to yourself. With seven years of organic gardening experience under my belt and a good understanding of biological systems from a university degree in the biological sciences as a starting point, I came across the concept of permaculture in early 2008. Not willing to let go of my passion for food forests, I set my mind on designing one that would fit in a regular sized back yard. Well, this was "proof time".
Geoff Lawton's Zaytuna Farm Video Tour (Apr/May 2012) - Ten Years of (R)Evolutionary Design Paradise Dam, April 2012, from the now-climaxing food forest Zaytuna Farm Video Tour, duration 41 minutes Having spent the last few years seeking to establish and assist projects worldwide, and hearing some readers requesting more info on our own permaculture base site, I thought it high time I take a moment away from promoting other projects to shine a little light on our own work! It had been a long time since I last visited Zaytuna Farm. Geoff’s long term strategies are becoming evident, and it really is a sight, and site, to behold! Diagram of Zaytuna Farm – click for larger view Aerial shot of Zaytuna Farm Photo: Joel Bruce Geoff Lawton at the Zaytuna Farm entrance Before Geoff took on the 66 acre farm, back in 2001, it had been a cattle property for many years. An early shot of Paradise Dam and the first straw bale buildings (Photo: Geoff Lawton) In contrast, the April 2012 shot of Paradise Dam The Paradise Dam swale takes excess water off to infiltrate and hydrate the site
Permaculture: Design For Living Reprinted with permission from Context Institute – The Permaculture Research Institute gives sincere thank you to Context Institute for allowing us to share their work. Original Web Page is located here – Permaculture is more than a new way of gardening – it’s a sustainable way to live on planet Earth. An Interview With Bill Mollison, by Alan AtKisson One of the articles in Making It Happen (IC#28) Originally published in Spring 1991 on page 50Copyright (c)1991, 1996 by Context Institute Bill Mollison is a living legend. He passed through Seattle recently with a film crew shooting a documentary about the far-flung successes of permaculture, a radically new (or, some have said, radically old) way of gardening, designing, and living sustainably by cooperating with nature. Alan: Permaculture is a slippery idea to me. Bill: I’m certain I don’t know what permaculture is. Alan: Why “eerie”? Bill: Human beings in general.
Manual escrito pelo “pai” da permacultura está disponível para download – CicloVivo A permacultura se baseia no planejamento de sistemas em escala humana criados em total harmonia com a natureza. 28 de setembro de 2016 • Atualizado às 22 : 30 O manual de introdução à permacultura foi desenvolvido com base em um curso ministrado por Mollison em 1981. | Foto: Bill Mollison / Introduction to Permaculture A permacultura é um conceito diretamente ligado à sustentabilidade. Criado na década de 70, pelos ecologistas australianos Bill Mollison e David Holmgren, a ideia se baseia no planejamento de sistemas em escala humana criados em total harmonia com a natureza. Logo que os idealizadores apresentaram o conceito em uma rádio australiana, a metodologia atraiu cada vez mais interessados. A inspiração de Mollison surgiu a partir de uma inquietação de que o ser-humano é um dos grandes culpados por boa parte dos problemas que afetam todo o planeta Terra. O manual de introdução à permacultura foi desenvolvido com base em um curso ministrado por Mollison em 1981. Redação CicloVivo
Barking Frogs Permaculture Does your Garden Need Daffodils? | Tenth Acre Farm Many spring ephemerals–such as daffodils–dazzle the early season with their colorful flowers. But their benefit to the ecosystem extends beyond beauty. Learn about spring ephemerals and how they can benefit a permaculture garden. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This helps keep costs down so that I can continue providing high quality content to you for free. I appreciate your purchase through the links! What are Spring Ephemerals? Daffodils are spring ephemerals–herbaceous plants that live in deciduous forests. During their short time of spring activity, they have access to full sun conditions while other plants are still dormant. Daffodils and other spring ephemerals will reproduce by setting seed as well as by sending out new shoots from the root bulbs. Ecological Benefits of Spring Ephemerals Spring ephemerals contain a high level of nutrients. For this reason, spring ephemerals can prevent soil erosion. a colony of ramps
Top 10 Herbs and their Health Benefits Please Note: This article is to be considered as general information. Please consult with your relevant health care professional in relation to the use of these herbs. Herbs and spices is at the foreground of our history. Ancient Egypt had used herbs and spices to preserve their mummies. Today, we are still using the original herbs and spices traded during the middle ages such as turmeric, black pepper, cumin, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg. The following are the top 10 herbs that are a great addition into your daily recipes: Top 1: Turmeric Turmeric is certainly the most powerful herb on the planet. Turmeric is one of the top most herb frequently discussed and mentioned in medicinal herbs in all of science. a. Medical intervention generally includes the following medications to slow and prevent blood clotting: Aspirin Clopidogrel (Plavix) Diclofenac Enoxaparin (Lovenox) Ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, others) Naproxen Warfarin (Coumadin), and others. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. Top 2.
Permaculture Zones of Use: A Primer Ah, an archetypical permaculture zones of use chart. So elegant in its simplicity, yet bewildering to those who wish to transpose it. Just what are permaculture zones of use and why do they matter? Permaculture zones of use are at once an organizing force during the design process as well as a management tool. They directly aid our efforts by offering simple, but effective logic to the positioning of design elements in the whole system. The closer an element is to nexus of human activity, the more attention it can receive than elements positioned further away. Therefore, it can be said that zones of use reflect the confluence of spatial relationships, energy use, and time. A property is typically divided into 6 zones of use. These six zones of use cover the entirety of a property. So let’s recap: the zones of use can be individually defined by the frequency and duration of human interventions. This framework comes in handy even after a master plan is drawn up. -Organize it! Related
How Plant-based Permaculture Is Possible I get laughed at a lot. It’s frequent enough that, when I tell people of my intention to build a permaculture system without using domesticated animals, I sort of give a preemptive grin. While I believe most permies mean well in advising me, most seem pretty dead-set on the idea that a vegan permaculture garden just can’t work. Truth be known, in my experience of being vegan, most people—not permaculturalists in particular, just people—seem to relish expounding on just how much my diet choice lacks. If Vegans Said the Stuff Meat-Eaters Say (Just for Grins) Anyway, this little dietary aside was only to say that, like with my diet, this is not something I’m necessarily trying to convince any permaculturalist to do. What Do Animals Have That Plants Don’t? Just to be clear, despite my digression about veganism as a diet, I don’t want to focus on the nutritional aspects of being plant-based, but more to the point, I would like to address design aspects. Designing without Domesticated Animals
Charting The Sun's Motion In Relation To Your Home And Permaculture Site Image source: NREL.gov Understanding the sun’s motion relative to a site is an important aspect of a good permaculture design, as various elements like plants, animals and solar devices depend on sun for their functionality. A good appreciation of the earth’s rotation about its axis, its revolution around the sun and the consequences of these motions on the sun’s position and availability at a given location on the earth’s surface, is essential for maximizing plant productivity, harnessing maximum energy, minimizing energy usage and maintaining a comfortable indoor environment for humans and animals alike. For proper functioning and productivity gardens, greenhouses and orchards should be placed at specific locations based on the adequate availability of sunshine for the parts of the year in which the plants are growing or fruiting. Let’s begin by trying to understand the earth’s rotation about its axis, its orbit around the sun and the four seasons. The four seasons Solar window Related