Are you wondering what advantage comes from a little bit of permaculture planning before you spend the rest of your life pottering about in your garden growing food? How does design increase the success of a garden? Join us in our upcoming tour, March 4th afternoon tea and discussions at Earth Keepers in Buxton. Not only will you meet permaculture teachers Judith and Paul Collins but also be engaged in discussions about effective permaculture design with April Sampson-Kelly. The group will explore what makes this property unique, and witness how this wise couple face the challenges of being self-reliant in …
Go Easy There’s more than one way to shape the land and direct water to your gardens. Most people can’t afford machinery to shape the land and build abundance. So, they usually abandon hope of reshaping their site and work with what is there. Why bother shaping the landscape? We can shape the landscape to: collect surface water when it rains store water in shallow ponds provide water for birds, lizards, frogs encourage beneficial insects improve the soil water the plants prevent erosion and nutrient loss What are our no-dig options? We can use animals (pigs, chickens, guinea pigs) or …
Abundance on a Shoestring A natural water management system can save you heartache, time and money. Learn how to grow food in a planned landscape. Utilise the different micro-climates. Sculpt the thirsty places and soak up the soppy patches. Mitigate flooding rains and prepare your home for wildfire. Not all water management systems require pipes, dams, tanks or machinery. Nor do they require weekends of back-breaking digging, bags of cement, pebbles or terrace bricks. All Earthworks need a bit of know-how and planning. With this bit of know-how you can turn you garden into a more resilient and productive space. …
This will be a fun full day of ideas and practical solutions and then application with a mini-practice design. Learn the art of Permaculture design with designer, creator, artist and international permaculture teacher April Sampson-Kelly on her mature demonstration property: a food forest integrated within a buzzing community. We will start the Introductory Day at our permaculture site [Silk Farm], have lunch together, then pop over to a local site to put our new found skills to the test and do a permaculture concept draft plan for their site. Your chance to learn what Permaculture is about and how it …
In today’s workshop we built and wove a tipi using mostly biological resources. Over the life time of anything we make there is deterioration and eventually things turn into compost. But a living tipi, like a living fence, can be more durable. Using nature and living resources we can train plants to replace the weave and to replace the poles, some small trees happily grow good central poles and will pleach their side branches. We talked about a range of weaving plants and suitable pole plants in the permaculture food forest. Some plants can happily produce both poles and weaving …