The use of indicator plants in Permaculture is well documented, but like any 'pattern', we can use the same basic idea for other purposes. As my primary focus is beekeeping, I'll use mainly beekeeping examples. Forage Availability I plant Tagetes tenuifolia (Lemon Gem) as a companion plant in m...

A 3.75 acre (1.5 Hectare) Smallholding, that we are currently converting to trees. The project includes a one+ acre Forest Garden, Coppice, Orchard, Annual Vegetable growing. Most important of all, I keep Bees.

Hey, Here is the list of plants Raf Seghers was growing on his nursery in Belgium and using in his systems. Made the list in alfabetical order and only contains latin names as the common names are not of use for this network. All these plants you can look up threw google to. At the moment I'll ...

A community outreach group to educate people about permaculture, engage in permablitzes, get people gardening, provide networking for people interested in forming community, strengthen local awareness and local economy, and to integrate activities with like-minded groups.

Here is an article I wrote for the PRI website.

The odd corner was to avoid a downpipe, and was quite a pain to accomodate. It meant more cutting to various lengths, and bending the brackets. The brackets were fiddly but worked well in the end. We expect using internal posts would be an easier, stronger and cheaper way to go about connecting t...

This is a fairly typical working bee for the community garden, although we are short of resources at the moment. We don't have any sugarcane mulch, which we would normally use to top dress the beds instead of lucerne as in this instance. In this case we were building on top of a flood damaged bed...

I've been thinking about what zones might look like for permaculture on the prairies. As I mentioned in my earlier update, I haven't taken a PDC, so I'd welcome comments from those who have. Nor is this written with a specific property in mind, it's more a brainstorming session for what grasslan...

Forest ecosystems exhibit many beneficial properties we humans would be wise to emulate in our culture, agriculture and horticulture: they maintain, renew, fertilize and propagate themselves without human inputs; they build, store, and conserve clean air, clean water, nutrients, soil quality, and...

Yesterday I landed in London (UK) from Australia and already today I am searching for somewhere to volunteer, continue learning and to interact with like minded people. Any advice? I'm only here for a few months and I don't know anything about growing in this climate, so I think it's a great opp...

We had a social get together to make paper pots.

The Green temple mandala garden is based on the layout of the Purple Pear mandala.   So why a mandala garden? Well, I've been gardening veggies in some form or other for at least 20 years I reckon, whether it be a tomato in a pot or some lettuces in a polystyrene box. I've tried the square ...

Many of the people I have corresponded with on the Permiculture Forums here in the United States really think of Permaculture as a collection of "techniques" they hope to be able to try out and use on their places.  This is unfortunate.  Permaculture is more than sound bite techniques.  This is w...

In the late winter of 2011, we are hosting a weekend PDC which has 15 students in it right now.  It’s a really great group and with the format I am able to continue designing and implementing pC gardens around the city.  In Northside, which is one of the hotspots for community and PC in Cincinnat...

don't feed grain to the birds rotating over a bed...........unless you want a green manure crop rather than the crops you planted LOL I guess that should have been obvious if I'd thought about it but unfortunately I didn't, oh well the chickens will enjoy eating it when they get back to that bed...

In examining how the roof trusses were built, I made these sketches:       I obtained some 4" x 3/4" x 12' spruce boards (hemlock or fir would have worked also) and tried to form them over the best of the existing trusses, but they were dry and wouldn't bend that far without cracking.  ...

Hi All I wanted to tap into the observations and expertise of people with experience of Eucalyptus trees, as I think that this could be one of the benefits of this Network. If you have seen my earlier posts, you'll be aware that much of my emphasis is on bee forage plants. In the UK, there are ...

The first project on the list this Sunday was to move the Big Blue Bus to its final home. We've been working to set up the bus as a camper to use while building the house. After the house is built we'll convert it to a workshop. We'd decided we want to move her to what will eventually be the back...