Is “self sufficiency” just a bit of marketing genius?

What if I told you that the entire "self sufficiency" movement was just a trick used by companies to sell you stuff. How and why did this concept become shackled to permaculture?

Desire lines and systems thinking

Desire lines are a design tool that can be applied to any type of pathway, including literal pathways through gardens, and procedural pathways involving laws, procedures and behaviours. This post explores the application of desire lines in gardens, work places and families.

Ditching competitive elections in permaculture organisations

"Cooperate, don't compete!" It's one of my favourite principles and you will find it in Rowe Morrow's "Earth User's Guide to Permaculture". I'm not sure it made it into the revised Earth Restorer's Guide. I hope so. The more commonly known principle is "cooperate with nature" but Rowe's specific caution against competition is, I believe, …

Catch and Store Energy

This post forms part of my ongoing exploration of the various principles of permaculture. I find this Holmgren principle problematic. There's a risk that if it isn't firmly anchored to the three core ethics of earth care, people care and fair share, it might be used as justification for accumulation. Let's start here: Everything is …

Understanding Edge Effects

Here's the next instalment in my continuing series on the principles of permaculture, originally shared on my Permacoach facebook page and expanded slightly here:David Holmgren frames this principle as "Use edges and value the marginal" while Bill Mollison simply refers to it as "edge effect". This principles asks us to understand that edges are, to …

Using permaculture to mitigate flooding: Part 1

It's another year of grey skies, but there is always light on the horizon This month I wrote an article for the local newsletter about what we can do to mitigate flooding. I'm sharing an edited version here for people that might find it useful as we face another big year of rain, but please …

Care and feeding of your Facebook and Instagram algorithm

My parents were great teachers. As a teenager and as a young adult, it was common for people to approach us and thank either my mother or father for the significant contribution that they had made to that person's life. They taught English and History. Lately I'm remembering a lesson my Mum taught to students …

Designing gardens for kids

Photo by Charles Parker on Pexels.com Someone on a permaculture forum asked this question today: “How do I choose between a permaculture garden, or a pool and some grass for my three kids?” My first thought was, “Why not have both?” Natural pools are beautiful and create habitat for all kinds of creatures. You don’t …

Can anything I do make a difference to climate change?

I turn sixty this year. I’ve known about climate change since I was a teenager. Back then it was called ‘global warming’ but somewhere along the way we needed to rebrand, because there were humans that took any stint of cold weather as ‘proof’ that climate change didn’t exist. I could understand this thinking at …

Responding to viral fear

One of the great advantages of my professional background is that I have lots of experience in responding to contagious fear. I’m also more familiar with it than most people. Twenty years in the NSW Police Force included many opportunities to observe fear spreading like a firestorm through a crowd. We are a pack animal. …