Following on from a whole street of verge gardens is another verge garden in Sydney that is using verge plantings as a great way of cultivating community.
Costa and his verge needs little introduction, since his garden gets featured weekly on national television as part of Gardening Australia. What I like best about this verge garden is how it is truly helping to create community in a rather underutilized street of spacious verges. Read More
Just a note that we’re running a part-time Permaculture Design Course in Sydney that starts on the weekend of the 17th March. It’s in a one day a week format (you chose from Saturday or Sunday class, no class on the Easter weekend), and it’s going to be great.
This will be our third part-time PDC in Sydney, and it’s an awesome format to study permaculture in if you live in Sydney and can’t get away (or take time off) for a two-week intensive PDC. Read More
Right now Nick’s in the the middle of teaching Milkwood Permaculture’s annual summer Urban Permaculture Design Certificate in Sydney, which is always a fabulous two weeks. This year, we have the wonderful Cathy X as one of the students, and she’s documenting the process in pictures.
I love this course. It’s so similar, yet so different to the PDCs we run at Milkwood Farm – same core curriculum, principles and Nick’s fabulous + infectious energy, but realized in the middle of the city, instead of way out in the backwoods. And once again we’re blessed to have an awesome group of students to work with for 2 weeks. Read More
Our current permaculture design course in Sydney is producing a heap of exciting, creative and actually doable urban design, but not as you might know it. 40 urban folks have taken up paper and software, and also cross-stitch and dioramas to help them re-imagine home.
I love watching people design. Especially people who are thinking holistically, thanks to good information. Every time we run a permaculture design course, no matter where it is, we see the results of a group of switched-on folks who have re-designed their known spaces with permaculture principles in mind…
Last weekend we ran an Aquaponics workshop in the middle of a landfill site. But a landfill site with a difference. Kimbriki is a strange little valley on the north shore of Sydney that is at once apocalyptic and regenerative. It’s a landfill site, it’s a massive composting operation, and it’s a recycling center. With added fish!
The aquaponics setup is within the gardens of the Kimbriki Ecohouse, which sits like a little oasis in the middle of a cataclysm of large machinery, trucks, noise, and the refuse of Australia’s largest city. What a nice place to spend the weekend. No really, it is. Read More
Last Monday we arrived at a soggy sports field early in the morning. We had a trailer-load of lucerne hay, 6 fejoa trees, masses of herbs and cuttings and one thing on our minds. Permablitz.
Would anyone else show up on such an unfriendly, rainy public holiday in winter? Unlikely. But in our heart of hearts, we hoped they would. And you know what? They did. Over 40 fabulous folks turned up to dig, plant, shovel, learn, and grow some community… Read More
Join us for a fabulous day of digging, planting, learning and growing, with our annual Alexandria Park Permablitz!
10 – 4pm: Monday 13th June: Alexandria Park Community Garden, Alexandria, Sydney.
Everyone is welcome, with light lunch and organic fruit provided. Bring your gloves, your boots, your kids, your dad & your water bottle, and expect to have big day of dirty clean fun. Read More
Aquaponics just might be the ultimate closed-loop food production system. A healthy aquaponics system can provide its lucky owner with fresh fish and fresh organic vegetables year round, for very little ongoing cost. Getting an aquaponics system set up, however, can be costly. There’s lots of off-the-shelf systems to choose from nowadays, but they cost a bundle.
But never fear – where there’s a will, there’s a way. After seeing Steve’s amazing bathtub aquaponics setup in Alice Springs, we were sold on the idea that an aquaponics system could be beautiful AND economical to build and maintain. And it all starts with a bathtub. And some ingenuity. Read More
Just a note that we are rip-roaring ready to go on our ‘Introduction to Permaculture’ courses, which will be held in Sydney, Mudgee and Kiama before Christmas 2007.
We’re both really looking forward to cutting our teeth on teaching sustainable system design and getting whoever wants to learn worded up on the basics of Permaculture as it applies to the Australian environment.
The course also includes two days of great food and the inevitable sharing of information, making of connections, and the beginning of many conversations – all the good things in life, really…
The first course is in Sydney at the end of October, followed by Mudgee in November, and Kiama in December. It’s basically two days of information, techniques and principles of designing systems for human habitation which result in the absolute minimum impact on the surrounding biosphere, by use of techniques that make things easier for everyone to live, eat and work sustainably (and are totally funky and not arcadian in the least)… Read More
