Food is poised to change, more profoundly than ever before: what people eat in 2114, how it’s made and consumed, would be as strange to us as the foods our own ancestors grew and ate before the age of cold storage, takeaway
and cooking shows.

When it comes to growing anything, it’s all about water. You want to catch every drop of it. Moisture in the soil builds organic matter and fertility, which equals naturally healthy plants. Regardless of what you intend to grow, shaping your landscape to harvest the…

Over 90% of plant species have mycorrhizal relationships with fungi, via their roots. Such relationships tend to be symbiotic, to sustain the relationship: fungi obtain sugars and shelter, and help the plants to obtain minerals, nutrients and water. The mycelia are very fine and spread…

The garden is a good place to start doing permaculture. But Bill Mollison would be shaking his head in dismay if it stopped there, behind a little fence: ‘Poor bastards’, he’d be saying.

We are becoming increasingly aware of the hazards of eating a chemicalladen diet, and many have taken steps to avoid toxins in their food. But avoiding human-made additives and petrochemical derivatives can be more difficult when it comes to body products. Commercial body products can…

Claudia Echeverria is a teacher and facilitator based in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney. Her work involves various disciplines, groups, partnerships and businesses; heart, hands and nature are the common themes.

I see the greatest problem as blindness to the life of the planet; therefore, irresponsible destruction of the planet in every seed, whether it be for food or energy. Food is being produced through a system that is devastating the planet. In fact, what is…

I love bamboo: growing, eating, crafting, building, and listening to the sounds of creaking culms and rustling leaves in the wind. It provides me with microclimates, windbreaks, privacy screens, animal fodder, wildlife habitat, an endless supply of mulch, delicious tender eating shoots, lots of materials…

I have been in Australia for two years. I left the refugee camp in Uganda because it was very crowded, there was a lot of sickness because of poor sanitation; sometimes people had to share beds and drips in hospital because of the lack of…

When I first heard about permaculture I was drawn to how it provides tools for living in sync with the planet, as a designed approach with ethics and principles. What I wasn’t prepared for was how it could be applied to so many aspects of…

I am developing a small farming business, with my partner Kirsti, which grows good food for our community. We aim to do that in an environmentally, socially and financially sustainable way. My personal aim is to regenerate this twenty-six hectare property into a farm that…

On a steep and uneven hillside adjacent to Warrawong High School, south of Wollongong in NSW, a social enterprise called Green Connect is running a farm called Urban Grown. Green Connect combines permaculture ethics and design principles, with employment opportunities for resettled refugees and at-risk…

Low maintenance, low water needs, abundant, resilient: we all want to describe our vegetable gardens like this. I have been preparing no-dig gardens in many different environments for two decades and my no-dig method saves time, replenishes soil and is very productive.

Assimilating permaculture design as a fluent part of your repertoire takes years of practice. Along the way you inevitably adapt the way you design to suit your style and context of application.

Whether you are a gardener with a passion for compost making, or a child who has felt the warmth of a pile of grass clippings, you will be familiar with the heat created by decomposing material. Our aim is to capture and use this heat…

When Sunny Wilder (architect) and Nicholas Coyle (furniture designer/maker) moved their thriving timber furniture making business from Melbourne to Pambula, on the far south coast of NSW, they wanted to build a house that combined their skills and included a lot of storage. ‘We have…

HG Eco-logic Constructions is about building quality and beautiful homes that work for our clients, the people who will live in them. Our focus is on creating a climate – in both house and site – that is comfortable, and is achieved through passive energy…

Why not try your hand at homemade cheese. It’s not hard and the good news is you can use milk purchased from the shop to make cheese, as long as you have calcium chloride to re-calcify it.

Steven Hoepfner, Brett Young and I set up Wagtail in 2013. After completing an internship with Allsun Farm (near Gundaroo NSW) in 2011, my partner and I started looking for land in Adelaide to start up a small urban farm. Steven joined an urban farming…

Symphony Farm, at Tilba on the far south coast of New South Wales, is an integrated beef, pork, chicken and egg farm, run by Mandy and Graham Thompson with their five children, Brohdan, Denham, Huon, Heath and Sarah.

‘Permablitz the Gong’ began as a conversation between three Wollongong women – Jacqui Besgrove, Sheryl Wiffen and Kristy Newton – in 2011 after Jacqui and Kristy completed their Permaculture Design Course (PDC). The women wanted to do something about food and sustainability at a community…

Permafund is the ‘Permaculture International Public Fund’, for tax deductible gifts (donations), run by Permaculture International Limited trading as Permaculture Australia.

Almost fifteen years ago, a young Shanaka Fernando dreamed of a world based on need rather than greed. He wished people would focus less on money and more on each other, and wondered if the act of giving would make a difference.

If you grow them at home it’s easy to save your own seed for sowing the following season.

Description: creeping annual ground cover herb, with tiny white flowers and oval shaped leaves; stems can reach up to 60 cm in length.

Issue three, here we are. Pip Magazine is now into its second year of publishing and it is growing strong. What began as a crazy, out-there idea is now well and truly a happening thing. As they say, it takes a community to raise a…

Our planet is going though the most rapid rate of change in its history, and we face a future of surprises, threats and opportunities. We in the permaculture community have a key role to play in both mending the present and creating our preferable future.

Not far from the north-western coast of Italy, near the French border, is a beautiful and fascinating ecovillage created out of a crumbling medieval village. The Torri Superiore Cultural Association was founded in 1989 to restore and re-inhabit the abandoned village and create a cultural…

Description: an attractive evergreen shrub with edible fruit; the rounded leaves are green on top and cream below; flowers are pink with prominent red stamens; fruit is oval and green.

David Holmgren’s book Permaculture: principles & pathways beyond sustainability (2002) is still in demand around the world. With editions now in ten languages, it is reaching more people than ever. The new e-book format allows people to carry it with them anywhere. Another advantage of…

Ryeland sheep are a very old, white-faced, polled (no horns), small to medium sized breed, which produces a fine, down type of wool. The breed was developed by monks at Leominster in the rye growing district of Herefordshire, England, in the 15th century.

Claire Dunn, a burnt-out forest campaigner with an ever-growing to-do list, is in danger of becoming a ‘pale-faced greenocrat’ – all media savvy and no soul. To reconnect with nature, she signs up for a year-long wilderness survival program, where she learns to build a…