Category Design

Working smarter, not harder is a good way to create a resilient, high-yielding garden. And simple observation is the stepping stone for smart design.

To observe and interact is the first of David Holmgren’s 12 permaculture principles and arguably the most significant. It’s nearly impossible to create a resilient permaculture system without careful observation. Nature is a living, breathing ecosystem and the only way to truly understand it is to get out there and immerse yourself in it. Permaculture educators Angelo Eliades and Kat Lavers share their insights on how observing and interacting with their backyards over the years has led to the success of their renowned permaculture systems.

Permaculture design is successful because it mimics nature’s interconnectedness. An interconnectedness which allows nature to be a self-supporting mechanism that can exist and thrive without added inputs or unnecessary waste, and it’s successful because nothing exists in isolation. If we can implement similar systems into our communities, all of a sudden we’re less reliant on external supply and better equipped to stand and face adversity.

Everything in nature – and in life – is interdependent. The home, workplace, school or organisation, for example, all form parts of a larger neighbourhood. Through permaculture design we can cultivate deeper levels of connection, collaboration and cooperation. It’s something we practise in our gardens and we reap its benefits daily, but if we can apply similar strategies to our communities, we would create self-reliant and fiercely resilient communities capable of bouncing back from anything thrown our way.

Fire is an intrinsic part of the Australian landscape. With the opportunity to both reduce carbon emissions and build community resilience, Australia should be leading the world in transitioning to renewable energy to reduce the severity of bushfire.

Fire has become more destructive since European colonisation. And due to climate change and changes in land use, Australia has experienced even greater destruction over recent decades.

Australian landscapes were once effectively managed by Indigenous cultural burning practices, but stopping this has left us with denser forests more vulnerable to fire.

Traditional land uses of grazing and forestry which have contributed to both the prevention and control of bushfires have declined in recent decades. They have been replaced by residential, recreational and conservation uses that increases our vulnerability.

Samuel Ralph and Emily McMullen first became aware of permaculture design six years after moving into their suburban Hobart home. With renovations to their home finished, they turned their attentions to the garden on their 700 sqm block.

‘What we had was a weed scape and bare lawn that turned into dirt and dust in summer, and was impossible to get a spade into,’ explains Sam.

They were growing a few herbs, a lemon tree, some raspberries and greens, but they wanted to do more. Their introduction to permaculture came from an interest into reducing their waste. They watched the film ‘A Plastic Ocean’ and, as Sam puts it: ‘It was like having the blindfold ripped off’. They knew they wanted to change their habits.

Many of us spend a lot of time and energy caring for the environment and caring for others in our families and our communities. Sometimes we find that, while spending all this time and energy caring for everyone else, we forget to care for ourselves.

Inevitably we get tired and struggle with our own health, happiness and sense of wellbeing, and we stop working effectively.

In permaculture, we talk about zones, with zone 0 being the home and inside the home, zone one the area directly around the home and it goes out from there until we reach zone five, which is the wilderness and wild areas.

Through these zones we look at how we design, build and maintain our homes, gardens and properties. How we look after our inner self is known as zone 00. Just as we apply permaculture design principles to these other zones, we can apply them to our own lives.

You’d go a long way to find a purpose-built, permaculture-inspired, organically certified econeighbourhood like Bend. With those credentials, you might expect a remote location, miles from anywhere, but Bend is located in a major town on the NSW Far South Coast, near schools, shops, a post office, library and medical facilities. The aim of this intentionalliving project was to build community, not just build ‘a community’.

‘Bend is integral to the town of Bega. We wanted to be inclusive and diverse, and part of the town,’ says Jenny Spinks, who was active throughout the project and now lives there. The eco-subdivision was intentionally medium density, with twothirds of the houses privately owned, and the remaining onethird purpose-built for affordable housing rental.

The eco-neighbourhood of 30 houses harvests and reuses its own water, mandates composting toilets and runs on permaculture ethics and consensus decision-making. Ideally, being in town allows a further reduction in ecological footprint, through less car use.

We bought our old house and quarter acre block in urban Hobart in late 2012. The only reason we could afford to buy it was because of its ‘interesting’ and limited access—just a steep old 100 m concrete staircase from the road. And while we were pretty okay with this initially, we always knew we wanted to buy the neighbouring block that came with easy access.

In 2016, we bought the neighbouring weed block, making our block three quarters of an acre now with access. We quickly built a driveway which we mostly use for our electric bikes and are now in the process of implementing our full design.

When we did our initial design, we designed the whole property with the neighbouring weed block in mind, hoping that one day we’d get it and thankfully we did. This means we’ve been able to quickly roll out the implementation process (as our budget allows) as we’d already been thinking about it for four years.

The concept of permaculture can be difficult to define. Often people have a basic understanding but find it hard to really grasp the concepts behind it that make it different from just organic gardening or sustainable living. What sets permaculture apart is that it is based on design, permaculture principles and the three ethics of earth care, people care and fair share.

The permaculture concept was created by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren at the University of Tasmania in the 1970s. David was Bill’s student and together they published the groundbreaking Permaculture One, (Corgi, 1978) which offered the first description of what permaculture was.

After this book was published, David and Bill went their separate ways. Bill travelled the world, spreading the word of permaculture. David set about gaining skills and putting what he had come up with into practice.