Our bonds with other species are as vital, to survival, as our bonds with other people. If we don’t choose our company carefully, disaster is likely to ensue.

As a species, we should be shopping for the best relationships. There’s a lot a stake, and we don’t want to be abused or neglected. When searching for a good fit, we should keep in mind the following characteristics of good relationships.

Healthy Relationships Are:

• Supportive
• Stable
• Trustworthy
• Reciprocating
• Versatile
• Low Maintenance

Any signs of abusiveness, jealousy, extreme neediness, aloofness, instability, selfishness, should be bright red flags. To satiate our needs, we require an assortment of healthy relationships, from lovers and close friends, to co-workers and acquaintances. We know that too few or too many relationships can be a bad thing.

The most conspicuous relationships of the human species involve domesticated plants and animals. Our common pets, and almost all the food items in a grocery store, are domesticated organisms. These are the barnyard plants and animals we learn about from the moment we begin to talk.

But these creatures were not always domestic. All of them descend from wild ancestors, just as dogs descended from wolves. In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond provides an excellent overview of domestication’s history. The domestication of food plants and animals was the basis of the Neolithic Revolution, when Old Word hunter/gatherers became farmers. Diamond make a good point: the reason we domesticated wolves and wheat, instead of moose, zebras, or cheetahs, is because wolves and wheat had a natural tendency to associate with people.

Wolves, for instance, probably first encountered people while scavenging meat scraps from hunting camps. Since wolves and people where both social hunters at that time, and since both species had something to gain from cooperation (increased hunting success), it was highly likely that a relationship would form.

It was the same way with plants like wheat, which probably thrived in man made disturbances before it was domesticated. Out of this relationship people gained food, and wheat gained habitat. Moose, zebras, and cheetahs don’t associate with people, if they can help it, and don’t have much to gain from a relationship.

When examining the planet’s organisms, we find a whole spectrum of tendencies for associating with people. On one side, we have animals like spotted owls and arboreal salamanders, who have very different needs from people. They want little to do with us, because we have nothing to offer them. Endangered species are likely to occupy this side of the spectrum, because, as we modify their habitat to suite us, it becomes less suitable to them.

In the middle of the spectrum are organisms that have needs and habitats similar to ours. Deer for instance, were not abundant in Western Washington State, until people began clearing the old growth forest to suite their needs. While this activity seriously threatened the spotted owl, deer thrived in the fields and thick re-growth that resulted. Similarly, apple trees have a habit of sprouting up in disturbed forests around human settlements. Since people like to eat deer and apples, this is a happy relationship, and both parties have something to gain. But an important distinction is that these species do not absolutely need us. Deer and wild apples would do fine without human help, perhaps making use of natural burn areas. (Read Northwest Lands Northwest Peoples, edited by Goble and Hirt.)

At the far end of the spectrum are organisms that need humans to survive. Corn is an excellent example. In the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan pointed out that without human intervention, corn could not even reseed itself. Helplessly, corn relies completely on people for it’s propagation. Corn is so needy, it can only survive by rewarding the humans who plant it with prodigious amounts of food. Through the hybridization and genetic modification of corn and other domestic organisms, we make them still more dependent on us. If humans quit supporting them, these organisms would cease to exist.

The Domestication Spectrum:

The most domesticated organisms in the spectrum reward us with the greatest quantities of food, but it comes a cost. Anyone who’s noticed the luxurious lifestyle of some pet dogs has witnessed that cost. I am referring to the frightening phenomenon of co-domestication.

Sure, dogs keep us company, they intimidate thieves, and they fetch the paper. But these same dogs enjoy a constant supply of free food and the freedom to sleep the entire day, while their owners slave away at full time jobs. Who has domesticated whom? This article (PDF) sheds light on how powerfully canines have shaped our species, not just vice versa.

All domestic organisms are the same way. They give more because they need more. The reason they can yield so much more than their wild counterparts is that they have differed the work of their upkeep to us. As much as we have domesticated them, they have domesticated us. We do their bidding, even when it becomes painful.

But do we want to be domesticated? Jared Diamond demonstrated that such relationships have been a primary vector for pandemic diseases throughout history. Almost every plague can be traced back to a domestic animal, even the more recent "swine flu". Domesticated animals also develop much smaller brains than their wild counterparts. Neoteny, or juvenilization, is a common trait exhibited by domesticates, a phenomenon by which adult animals retain the traits of juveniles, becoming helpless, cute, dumb, and compliant. This process can happen in as little as fifty years, as demonstrated by Dmitri Belyaev’s experiment in domesticating the silver fox. The idea that humans have been similarly tamed is a chilling one. (See http://www.primitivism.com/domestic.htm for effects of domestication.)

Have our co-domesticates made lap dogs out of us? Consider that most of the calories you consume come from just four crops. Consider that most of the carbon that comprises your body was fixed by corn. Or take a drive through Middle America and see it stretch to the horizon; corn, corn, corn, corn…. Or better yet, visit the Gulf of Mexico’s vast "dead zone" where all the fertilizer washed from the Mississippi’s corn and soybean fields accumulates, and becomes a patch of lifeless reeking sea as broad as Massachusetts. (http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/general.html)

Who is in charge here? Whose greed is ravishing the planet? Is it the Exxon? Is it George W. Bush? Is it Wal-Mart?!

No. It’s corn. Corn is in charge.

People are conceited enough to believe that we are the cause of this nightmare. But if our species was really in control, the world would look a lot differently. However greedy we may be, it was never in our interest to pollute and overpopulate the planet, dine on high fructose corn syrup, work long hours plowing up the soil, and cover every arable acre with wheat, rice, and corn. This is, however, very much in the interest of corn.

The human/grain relationship is the definition of unhealthy. Of all the plants we could have loved, we’ve chosen the ones that destroy our home and feed us junk. This is abusive. If we had any spine at all, we’d ditch them forever.

As a species, it’s time we had a talk with crops like corn. What we ought to be saying is, "Look Corn, things started out alright between us. I remember when we first got together in Mexico, we hung out with Beans and Squash, we made tortillas together, it was beautiful. But things aren’t the same anymore. Corn, you’ve been so draining lately. I’ve taken you everywhere and given you everything; land, water, fertilizer, herbicide, even genetic modifications – do you have any idea how many prairies and watersheds I sacrificed? I butchered the nitrogen cycle for you! And what do I have to show for it?! Corn-syrup! Lousy corn fed beef! Diabetes and heart disease! That’s what I have to show for it! And if it was up to you, I’d never have anything else. A person can’t live on cornflakes alone! Corn, I’m an omnivore, I need variety, adventure, and Omega 3 fatty acids. I don’t mind having corn on the cob now and then, but corn syrup on every label? You’re even in my gasoline! I can’t go on like this. You’re jealously is insane! This relationship isn’t working for me anymore. I think it’s time I saw other species."

What would it mean, to divorce ourselves from our co-domesticates?

A healthier relationship with our food might resemble our hunter/gatherer past, when we utilized a greater diversity of plants and animals in our diet. Hunter/gatherers across the world eat somewhere in the ballpark of 200 different plant species. We are omnivores, descended from a long line of omnivores. Even our chimpanzee cousins eat about 200 plant species. Primate intelligence may have evolved, in part, to facilitate such an eclectic diet. Ethnobotanists estimate that indigenous people from my home region, the Columbia Plateau, utilized at least 135 plants for food. When we consider how many non-native plants are available to us, as the result of global exchange, it does not seem unreasonable to demand a 300-plant diet. This is not to mention animal foods, which lag not far behind plants in hunter/gatherer diets, in terms of number of species eaten. The markets of the undeveloped world are a tantalizing example of just how much culinary variety we miss out on in the industrialized world. Broadening the scope of our menu would certainly improve our health and the health of the planet.

A healthier relationship with food might also look a little more independent. By eating from a wider swath of the domestication spectrum, and avoiding the extremes, we could spare ourselves internal and external damages. For instance, most of the vegetable greens consumed by modern Americans come from domesticated crops grown in intensively managed fields, which is totally absurd. There is no shortage of wild greens growing in our waste places, even in urban settings. Commonly overlooked "weeds" such as nettles, lambs quarter, amaranth, purslane, etc. are higher in vitamin and mineral content than their domestic counterparts, and thrive with zero maintenance. Many of these taste as good, or better, than domesticated greens (see http://www.eattheweeds.com). They are more than abundant enough to meet the vitamin and mineral needs of everyone. If we incorporated these semi-wild plants in our diets, we would waste less money and energy, and preserve our integrity as low-maintenance omnivores. Instead, most of us continue to be trapped by our bias toward tame, high-maintenance things.

Few societies are as irrational as ours in this regard. Most of the world’s other cultures have realized that while some foods are worth the effort to cultivate, others are best harvested from the wild. The hunter/gatherer Indian cultures of the Northwest were happy to adopt domestic species like chickens, potatoes, and turnips. It was no stretch. After all, they had been gardening tobacco for a very long time. But almost nothing could stop them from harvesting huckleberries, or wild salmon. Only our culture would build the Grand Coulee Dam, thus terminating a free and abundant supply of wild salmon, in order to irrigate potatoes. Most long-established agricultural societies derive a significant part of their diet from the wild. Farming corn did not keep early American societies from dining on venison and nuts as well.

Sea food, the one wild harvest industry our society wasn’t so squeamish about, is rapidly being replaced by high-maintenance fish farms, and other forms of aquaculture. On the whole, the industrial world has done a very poor job of striking a balance between low and high maintenance sustenance strategies. Indeed, we seem to have an uncanny tendency toward the latter extreme. Why? Why would we go to so much trouble? Perhaps it is because, as any government employee can tell you, make-work can be profitable (the Grand Coulee Dam makes another pertinent example). But this is an entirely different topic, perhaps better covered by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine.

If you’re like me, make-work isn’t your forte. You’ve got better things to do than labor for things nature offers for free. You may also like the idea of moving your diet toward the healthy norm – two or three hundred plant species. Find out more about increasing the diversity of your habitat at: https://sites.google.com/site/humanhabitatproject.

In classic permaculture style, within the problem lay the seeds of the solution. The deforestation due to conventional agriculture in these surrounding hills has caused soil erosion and during the rainy season much of this rich volcanic black top soil is washed downstream. This annual bounty has been redirected through the Ijatz site using a sequence of channels and sink holes, which in turn slows the water flow enabling the nutrient rich humus to be captured and stored on site. The earth has been moulded to create slopes, edges and contours essential for increased growing opportunity.

During the dry season any rainfall is held in the pond sequence, maintaining the local water table which is the source for the hundreds of trees and plants. While the flora perpetually contributes biomass to improve soil fertility, a micro climate suitable for growing has developed in what is essentially a few acres on the edge of town. Prior to the establishment of the Ijatz project, over one hundred homes were annually flooded in the immediate vicinity. Currently, the site can receive flood water to the depth of more than a metre during the wet season. A perfect demonstration of a multifunctional permaculture design element, the banana circle has provided the solution. Acting as a pump, that most excellent of pioneer species, the banana simply sucks up and holds this water. The spaces between the rubbery concentric rings of a banana tree are simply saturated in water. The centre of the circle becomes a compost heap for any site prunings while the worms of the vermicomposting stations make short shrift of sections of banana trunk. The composted output is another useful income stream for the coop. Of course, let us not forget nature’s own delicious potassium stick – the banana itself! All this and the local community benefits from dry homes throughout the rainy season too. This in turn satisfies one of the cornerstone ethics of permaculture: people care – positively affecting the local community.

Banana circle

The project is only thirteen years in the making and boasts a diverse range of trees and plants that reach every level of the canopy. Timber is harvested and the bamboo stands are about 6m tall. There are a number of guava, grapefruit, lime and lemon fruit trees. A vine layer producing a vegetable called güisquil (sechium edule) when boiled is similar in texture and taste to a tender swede or turnip. There are several other local tropical plants that contribute roots or leaves to the kitchen table. The annually deposited soil is then built up to form raised beds for growing vegetables. My three week stint centred around reinstating the vegetable and herb beds preparing them for fresh seedlings, including lettuce, coriander, frijoles (beans), parsley, celery and radish. This soil food web is teaming with life and I encountered countless worms, spiders and other small creatures. Thankfully, the nesting cobra we stumbled across only wrapped itself around Pancho’s arm (the head gardener). No harm done – sadly only true for Pancho!

The core focus of the Ijatz cooperative is coffee production. On the final day of my visit, the ladies of the cooperative harvested fifty kilos of coffee beans ready for processing. However, they collectively own several plots of land on the slopes of the now extinct Volcán Tolimán. Through the cooperative, the workers have generated a stable income which has funded educational programmes on child care and nutrition. They also have discussions to understand where their high value product sits in the open market. I was invited to describe the drinking habits of Europeans. My talk was graciously received even though my Spanish is woefully short of adequate.

If you are interested in volunteering your time and energy to the assist the Ijatz project and you have a command of Spanish language you can contact them directly at asociacionIjatz (at) gmail.com otherwise I can advise you. Volunteer opportunities exist throughout the year.

Read my follow up article about how Ijatz manages its core business – coffee, using permaculture principles. You can follow my blog at www.kevpermatour.blogspot.com as I travel Central America gaining permaculture experience working towards my Diploma in Applied Permaculture from the Permaculture Association Britain.

Permaculture education should be in every school, everywhere. If it was, I believe most of the world’s problems could be solved within a decade.

It was about this time, that we heard Bill Mollison speak on Permaculture, with zones, to encourage a design plan that integrates the environment, plants and people with a vision of possibilities.

Vegetable and herb gardens were started and fruit trees were planted. Poultry, dairy goats, pigs and milking cows were added. Derrick being very gifted with skills of building fences, sheds, and as ‘a fix-it man’ was able to do many and varied tasks on the farm. Derrick, being a butcher by trade, was also able to turn the animals into cuts of meat for the freezer, mince into sausages, meat into smoked hams.

A nursery area was started to provide our own plants for the farm. Soon, people started asking us for various herbs and edible plants and the nursery grew like ‘topsy’.

I found plants so fascinating and loved to read about them and learn as much as I could. Collecting edibles was fun and resourceful for the farm and the nursery. Today our large range of culinary and medicinal herbs, spices, fruits, rare edibles, and seed varieties are sought by people from near and far. Postal orders placed by people for plants and seeds, keeps the family very busy. Derrick, now retired, is still the handy-man. Angela and her husband David, assisted by their daughter Aleisha, now run the farm.

For many years the Farm held regular, free guided farm tours, when I’d would show people around explaining the many useful plants that people could grow in their gardens. These Farm Walks were very popular and large groups of people would assemble to learn.

At the end of one afternoon farm walk, an elderly man was most enthused by the many edible plants, but said, he would never be able to remember all the information. He suggested that I write a book. Many other people over the years echoed the same suggestion.

But, where to find the time, to write a book? However, the concept was often in my thoughts, and I made notes and collected information, and recorded my own and other people’s experiences of benefits to their health with herbs. Herbs can play such a valuable role in health and this is what I wanted to enthuse people to see, and to use their herbs regularly.

Then in 2001 I started to write, and in June 2003 the book was born: “How can I use herbs in my daily life?” which covers over 500 herbs (see this DVD also). The response to the Herb Book from all over the world has been overwhelming, with readers saying they use their herbs more and report wonderful benefits to health. People have told me that they use the Herb Book as a constant reference, and also share the information with others and this is what herbal folklore is all about – passing it on.

Good health is precious. Every person needs to work at maintaining health, therefore, we need to learn all we can about how the body functions, nutrients required, digestion and assimilation, the many benefits of herbs, and the value of food with living enzymes.

As I became more aware of the value of enzymes and living food, I started to see that little things like ‘sprouts’ could have a big impact on health, as they provide a high degree of vitality and rejuvenation to the body. People who were reading the Herb Book were interested in knowing more about wheat grass and sprouts, which I had mentioned in the book. I showed them how I grew sprouts, particularly fenugreek, which is my favourite sprout. It was from that interest, the book “How can I grow and use sprouts as living food?” came to be written (see this DVD also).

Sprouts have so many valuable attributes: high protein and nutrient content, fibre and essential fatty acids, and they are rich in antioxidants and living enzymes. Sprouts are ‘super foods’ and are something every person can grow right in their kitchen at very minimal cost.

Many readers of the sprout book have said that this book should be in every home. The book is easy to read, and it is easy to put the simple steps into practice. I encourage every home to grow sprouts regularly, and get the many benefits of sprouts as living food.

In 2007 I was led to write once more, resulting in "How can I be prepared with Self-sufficiency and Survival Foods?" Many people have said that this book is very timely with the present financial situation.

Just why did I come to write a book centered on this topic? For many years I taught herb courses, covering many edible plants, and included a segment on the importance of self-sufficiency and survival for possible hard times.

During one class, when I asked, “If shops closed tomorrow, how much food do you have to feed your family?”

One woman replied, “Maybe enough for one week.” This made me think how dependent the majority of people are on farmers, trucking companies and shops to provide their daily food. People often expressed that I should put information on self-sufficiency into a book. Then, in 2007, my son Ricky rang from Adelaide, while doing a course on alternative energies.

Ricky said, “Mum, when are you going to write that book on self-sufficiency and survival? There will be a big demand for it.”

His words gave me the nudge to get writing! During 2008 I sensed a real urgency to put this information together. This is not only my perception of what is happening in Australia and world-wide, but everyone is feeling and experiencing the pressure, as everything they purchase has risen in price, dramatically.

The AIM of this book is to share with people the importance of being as self-sufficient as one is able, with the likelihood of very difficult times ahead. We all need to rethink our current wasteful habits and consider the best use of our natural resources and renewable energies. It is time for us all to take action to: reduce, recycle, repair and reuse items, over again.

This book is written for people who have relied upon shops for everything and so that people who already grow some food in their backyard will be spurred on to be even more self-reliant.

But, imagine if the annual crops we rely on the most, grains and pulses, could be made to grow perennially instead. No end/beginning of year ploughing, no annual replanting, etc. It would save enormous amounts of time and energy on cultivation and planting, and allow soils to remain undisturbed for longer, with immense benefits to soil life, structure, organic matter and carbon content.

The video below highlights this out-of-the-box permaculture thinking. The Land Institute in Kansas has been working solidly on engineering annuals into perennials (by way of natural plant breeding – not by gene gun). They take ancient wild, perennial varieties of grains, and cross them with their modern annual counterparts, and repeat, and repeat, until they end up with a harvestable product from a plant that doesn’t have to be resown every year. Or at least that’s the aim. This is still a work in progress, but their purpose is "to develop an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops".

The implications/benefits of this are hard to exaggerate – both in terms of energy/time expenditure for farmers, but also in terms of the health/structure of soil that doesn’t have to be cultivated nearly so often and the potential biodiversity (stability) that could be achieved with mixes of these polycultures.

With populations growing, the gap between nature’s way, and ‘our’ way, needs closing. We must find ways to eat that don’t undermine the very resources of soil, water and air that that eating depends on. This is the kind of ‘genetic engineering’ that I can endorse, and is the kind of research for the public good that should be aided by all governments that give a hoot about the future.

Find our more here.

Download: You’ll see the option to download the 913 megabyte MP4 file at bottom right side of this page.

YouTube: The video can also be watched on YouTube, in four segments, here, here, here and here.

Greening the Desert II (including Part I) – Greening the Middle East
(Duration: 36 mins)
Tips for playing: If it’s slow to load, turn off High Definition (HD) on the player.
If you still have problems, click play (on low or high def) and then after it’s started,
click on pause. The video will then continue to buffer into your computer.
Play once fully loaded.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank Kelly Kellogg at this juncture. Kelly donated initial funding that enabled the purchase of the land for the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project site (aka ‘Greening the Desert – the Sequel’). But, upon watching the Greening the Desert Part II video, Kelly was inspired to donate an additional $20,000. These gifts are very encouraging to us as we try to solve problems at source (teach a man to fish…). Others who may feel inspired to donate to help us move this work forward faster can do so here.

A little background on the video follows:

Children in a school playground, Al Jawfa, Jordan Valley

When there’s no soil, no water, no shade, and where the sun beats down on you to the tune of over 50°C (122°F), the word ‘poverty’ begins to take on a whole new meaning. It is distinct and surreal. It’s a land of dust, flies, intense heat and almost complete dependency on supply lines outside of ones control. This is the remains of what was once called the ‘fertile crescent’. It is the result of thousands of years of abuse. It is a glimpse at a world where the environment – whose services provide for all human need – has all but completely abandoned us. This is a glimpse at the world our consumer society is inexorably moving towards, as our exponential-growth culture gorges itself at ever-increasing rates.

The original Greening the Desert video clip has been watched hundreds of thousands of times and has been posted to countless blogs and web pages in the datasphere. Although only five minutes long, it has inspired people around the globe, daring the lucid ones amongst us, those who can see the writing on the wall, to begin to hope and believe in an abundant future – a future where our survival doesn’t have to be based on undermining and depleting the very resources of soil, water, phosphorus, etc. that we depend on. The work profiled in that clip demonstrates that humanity can be a positive element within the biosphere. Man doesn’t have to destroy. Man can repair.

In the clip at top I introduce you today to Greening the Desert II. I shot the footage for this video last month (October 2009) and edited it on location in the Dead Sea Valley in Jordan – the lowest place on earth, at 400 metres below sea level. Much of it was shot in or near the village of Al Jawfa where I stayed, which is effectively a Palestinian refugee camp that has morphed over the decades since 1948 into something resembling a functional small town. It was first shown to delegates of the ninth International Permaculture Conference (IPC9) in Malawi, Africa at the very beginning of November and is now being released for general consumption. The video will take you to the original Greening the Desert site, letting you see its present condition after six years of neglect when funding ran out in 2003. You’ll also be introduced to our new project site – the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project, aka ‘Greening the Desert, the Sequel’ – and see some of the spin-off effects within Jordan from the influence of the original site; promises of much more to come.

The work we’re undertaking in Jordan is in accordance with what we call the ‘Permaculture Master Plan‘, where the project’s future is assured through funding from running educational courses. Project sites thus become self-sufficient, and self-replicating.

Geoff Lawton instructs students in a school yard in Jordan, one that PRI has
just created and begun the implementation of a design for, so its
many children can see, experience and learn permaculture first hand

Through this work we envision thousands of educational demonstration sites worldwide – all inspiring and teaching communities around them how to begin to tackle at root the massive challenges we now face after decades of short-term profit-based thinking has all but ‘consumed’ our planet and dismantled the social constructs that the human race has always depended on for its survival. Through this work we see desertification stopped in its tracks, and reversed. We see this century’s dire water issues getting resolved. We see productive work for millions in bypassing the irrelevant efforts of our ‘leaders’, to instead build a new kind of culture – a culture based on cooperative effort and learning. It’s a culture where its members have regained a sense of their place in creation, where they become land-based stewards of remaining resources; creating a culture where we at last find ultimate satisfaction – promoting and building peace and low-carbon, relocalised, community-based prosperity.

We have many such ‘Master Plan’ projects in various stages of development worldwide, and a steady stream of enquiries from people around the globe wanting to get involved and help widen this cooperative network. Perhaps it’s time you took a look at Permaculture? After all, do you have something more worthwhile to do?

Jordan Valley

We’re pleased to announce that we’re partnering with the makers of the video above, WeForest, to help establish self-replicating permaculture reforestation demonstration sites in accordance with our Permaculture Master Plan, in several worldwide locations – starting in Zambia in the first instance. Our Geoff Lawton has just agreed to be on their advisory board, and we’ll be working to supply guidance, knowhow and staff to pioneer these projects.

This is just one example of the many encouraging collaborative results we get as people boil current events down to their only logical conclusion – discovering we need to quit battling nature and get busy harnessing biological synergies to repair the earth and rebuild sustainable community interactions.

I completed my PDC in January ‘09 with Geoff at Zaytuna farm, along with a lovely range of fellow students from the far reaches of the globe. I sincerely hope they also post stories to share – come on guys, it’s time to be brave!

I returned to my home in south western Victoria (Australia) a changed woman, and I sometimes wonder what it was I use to believe in before I was transformed.

So returning home with fresh eyes for the world, I have set about transforming everything that I can cast my Permaculture web over. So hopefully I will have more than one story to tell!

My climate is cool and almost coastal ( I am 15km inland). There is a prevailing south westerly winter wind blowing fresh from Antarctica, and almost no frost. Our rain is mostly in winter and spring; our summers reach the mid thirties but usually for no more than a day or so before dropping. However last summer (Jan/Feb) set a new precedent; our hottest consecutive days, high thirties to low forties for four to five days in a row, a significant and dangerous change for us.

With a new thirst for experimentation, I have been doing informal trials and generally playing around in the garden, all the while observing and forming new questions.

So what is the story with the apricots and the weeds?

My three year old apricot trees were growing alright, considering they were planted traditionally, in an area of lawn, had never been watered, and had generally been pest free, besides a nibble from a curious horse in their first year. However I was keen to see what improvements I could make to the soil for fertility and water infiltration, and I wanted to practice increasing soil carbon on a home scale.

Firstly I sheet mulched the area with large quantities of fruit and vegetable waste from the local supermarket (diverting it from producing methane in land fill). I covered it over with all our cardboard and shredded paper waste, and then I topped that off with pea straw and old rotting grass hay.

I built up a few double reach beds in between the trees with compost and planted up some broccoli and cauliflower seedlings. I also broadcast the entire area with a winter cover crop seed mix containing oats, barley, turnips, radish, broad beans and kale to name a few.

I stood back and let nature take its course.

What I have experienced is the most beautiful and magnificent act of nature I could have dreamt for.

I harvested the broccoli and cauliflower heads as they matured then left the stems to continue growing. The pea straw grew peas and the rotting hay grew every grass and weed species available and imaginable.
The veggie waste produced a few surprises, peach and avocado seedlings (great for understock), garlic and onions. The entire site has an understory of potatoes, soon to be uncovered and enjoyed.

Many of the plants have grown exponentially in the past few weeks as they bolt to seed, radish and turnips at two metres, and hemlock (a local weed) heading on to three metres.

This abundant growth is building delicious topsoil and hosting an enormous quantity of soil biota.
Rainfall infiltration has been so advantaged that I have not experienced the usual winter run off from my land, despite our best winter rainfall in five years.

The brassica flowers are full of bees, all contributing to honey production and the whole place is alive with predatory wasps. Lots of the small local bird varieties such as willy-wagtails and fairy wrens reside close by, all consuming, producing and living contentedly in the abundant surroundings. (We should all be so lucky.)

Snails evidence a duck deficiency

The arrival of a warmer burst of weather is heralding the next succession of production. Tomato and pumpkin seeds from the veggie waste have been patiently waiting for their turn to appear. The drying off of the broad beans, barley and oats means its time for the chooks to get lucky. The seed-eating birds will collect the majority of the fallen ones but hopefully some will escape to begin the process again next autumn.

I suspect the nearby rose bushes are hiding and protecting a few birds’ nests hidden safely away from the neighborhood feral cats.

The apricots have set enough fruit to support a decent taste test and maybe a few jars of jam. But look out next season!

I will begin to chop and drop to favor the next round of production and I imagine I will find some other unexpected treasure amongst the bounty.

All photographs © Craig Mackintosh

On my recent trip to the Bill Mollison/Geoff Lawton course in Melbourne, that I forced myself to miss so I could go on site visits in the area, Cam Wilson kindly offered to be my guide – giving me very knowledgeable insights into the places we visited. As well as the Dalpura Farm site we just posted about and giving me the heads up on Angelo the Wizard, covered in this post, Cam took me to see the very cool stuff he’s doing on an urban block currently under his expert control in the ‘burbs of Melbourne.

Cam’s garden is rich in biodiversity, yet purposeful placement and organisation
makes for a very aesthetic retreat – one you truly feel a lure to spend time in

Cam has that kind of a quiet, understated personality that inspires confidence. He said his garden "should be worth a look". Being a Permaculture instructor – running regular PDCs – and being one of the main guys helping get the Permablitz movement off the ground, I was keen to do exactly that.

Cam uses a broadfork to aerate the orchard soil, stimulating microbial life and
soil building, whilst chickens get busy maintaining the section through their
irrepressible behaviours and their manure

The section is rather generous – three quarters of an acre all up, leaving a full quarter acre to garden once you subtract the house and garage. Cam and Jesse take care of the place for Kim and Clive, who are currently doing international Permaculture project aid work in Africa. Rather than leave their home to grow musty and the yard to turn rapidly into a candidate for a small scale carbon offset venture, Kim and Clive thoughtfully placed their own hard working pioneer species in their garden – namely, Cam Wilson!

Distractions of colour and fragrance, as well as beneficial host plants with
multiple purposes, all make it very difficult for ‘pests’ to become an issue.
Healthy soil, means healthy plants, which also repels pest attack.

And, what would you do once when you’ve successfully roped an expert Permaculturist into house sitting at your place? Well, you give him a budget, a big thumbs up, and tell him to let his creative knowhow loose on the place in whatever way he wishes, of course!

And so he has.

The original mainframe design of the section was done by Dan Palmer and Cam Wilson (placing the swaled orchard, chook system and raised kitchen bed), before Cam was invited to move in and take it further. Cam has since designed and implemented the terraces, the food forest, a very cool and functional water feature, and more.

Next-in-line plants wait their turn….

Everything about Cam’s work is ordered. Raised beds are on contour to ensure passive water filtration, and, with the whole yard sloping, plants like yarrow (achillea millefolium) are planted on the downward side to act as dynamic bio accumulators – collecting and storing the downward flow of nutrients, where they can later be pulled and returned to the beds as mulch.

Yarrow, bottom, mops up nutrients that leach through the garden

Grapes are being planted to run along wires above paths, where they’ll cut light intensity in the hot summer months, before dropping their leaves as mulch in autumn, and thus allowing full winter sunshine through during the colder months.

Cam checks the temperature of his compost pile

Nasturtium flowers add colour and a peppery tang to salads

I visited in mid-winter – but would love to take a lengthy wander, preferably at lunch time, through the orchard in summer and autumn months, when your average fruit preserver would be getting frantic with vacuum sealed jars. You’ve got persimmons, plum, apricot, pomegranate, olive, peach, nectarine, pear, apple, fig, orange, lemon, grapefruit, mandarin, hazelnut and mulberry. Interplanted support species – for nitrogen fixing and/or biomass – include tagasaste (Chamaecytisus palmensis), Acacia floribunda, subterranean clover, white clover, vetch, broad beans, oats and wheat during winter, along with nasturtium and comfrey for chop and drop.

Yarrow swings through the larder

Comfrey works well here, with its deep root system bringing nutrients up to the surface from depths that regular grass never could. Nasturtium is used in many places, also acting as a nutrient accumulator and a great ground cover – protecting against erosion, improving soil structure and providing beneficial insect habitat. (Hoverflies love ‘em.) Excess growth is simply broken off and put around fruit trees, or eaten!

Chunky wood chips make for guilt-free, comfortable walking along paths – holding moisture, absorbing pressure to reduce compaction, and ultimately converting into rich, dark humus.

Even the laundry gets a great view

The latest addition is what will ultimately become a gorgeous and still practical centrepiece for the yard – a pond fed by a cascading series of infiltration basins that slow-soak water through to a number of newly planted trees.

Those of you interested to combine urban water harvesting and food forest establishment with yard landscaping will find Cam’s detailed article on how and why he built this invaluable.

Despite the garden still being in full establishment mode – i.e. quite new, being only two growing seasons in since initial designs – it was producing a good amount of food already, and my visit six weeks ago was right at the trailing end of winter. Cam and Jesse have been at the site only since January, and Cam has put in an average of one day per week into the garden. For what you’re getting in return, base costs look modest:

• Huge worm farm – $250
• 4 main terraces – $2000 (should last at least 50 years)
• Greenhouse – $700
• Food forest plants – $400 (mainly fruit trees and shrubs and some of the herbs). Cam grew most of the under-storey himself from seeds, cuttings and divisions.

Cam’s already taunting me by email with descriptions of how it looks now that spring is in full swing. I can’t wait to check it out again. In the meantime, I asked Cam to give us all a few tips from his storehouse of knowledge – be sure to check them out below.

Worth a look it was Cam!

Bill Mollison at Trinity College, Melbourne All photographs © Craig Mackintosh

I had never been to Melbourne before this week, but from my very short exposure to it over the last few days, I can already sense that it is a very strange place….

Take yesterday for example. I was in town, and noticed someone had dropped their purse on the sidewalk. There was a lot of foot traffic, and so, standing at a distance, I watched to see what people would do – you know, once they noticed it. Would they pocket it and hurry off? Would they look around for its owner, or maybe a policeman to hand it to?

Unfortunately, neither. Instead, I was mortified to see people – in full view of passers by – just sit on it. I mean, who would do that?

Another example. Here at Trinity College, where the latest Bill Mollison/Geoff Lawton PDC has been taking place, Geoff escorted me to the dining hall for breakfast. Standing before two impressive looking wooden doors, he asked me, with a hint of mischief, if I knew Harry Potter. Perplexed, but sensing something ominous, I could only respond that I’d heard the name, but that was all. With that, Geoff swung the doors wide open, and, with a degree of apprehension, I stepped in.

Although expecting something unusual, everything seemed to check out okay inside. At the same time, it was hard to shrug the nervousness off. I don’t know what it was, but I had this strange feeling – you know, like when you feel you’ve been somewhere before, even though you know you haven’t.

It was kind of creepy. Inexplicable.

The Dining Hall in Harry Potterville, Trinity College, Melbourne

PDC students come to learn wizardry

The course has been going very well it seems, although, to be honest, I haven’t sat in on many classes. I’ve been on missions in the area instead. But, during my short classroom visits I’ve enjoyed watching a tremendous tag team in action. Sometimes Bill and Geoff were teaching in turns, sometimes simultaneously. It was always interesting. When teaching together, their immense knowledge, vast experience and biting wit had people learning and laughing continually.

Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton teach a PDC at Trinity College, Melbourne

84 novice warlocks, witches and wizards and their teachers (centre)
Click for larger view!

Respectively, the two of them have worked magic worldwide – doing the impossible in some very strange and faraway lands. People have watched as they’ve turned barren hillsides into flowing springs, sand into fruit. They’ve even created hope where there was none, and out of the most basic and unexpected elements – soil, water, air and biological agents.

They’ve also inspired many to learn the craft.

Speaking of which….

Angelo, the Urban Wizard

On one of my Melbourne adventures I stopped in the suburb of Preston, at the house of a certain urban wizard called Angelo. I knew immediately that he was a wizard because of his cat, Louie.

Lavender is an excellent companion and medicinal plant

Louie has a tail that can take any shape he wishes. Just after my arrival he went through just a portion of his repertoire; there was the corkscrew (which is just as you’d imagine), the backridge (where his tail lies flat along the entire length of his back), the spiral, the wave and more. As convincing as this was, though, there was even more evidence that Angelo was a wizard than just his cat, as we shall see.

Angelo wasn’t always a wizard. A few years ago he was just like you and I – at least until a certain mysterious girl got him reading strange books and experimenting with various plant potions.

Up until this time, Angelo had always been a computer systems engineer (yes, just like Neo). Then, one day, a strange wind blew and Angelo happened upon an advert on the interweb – for one of Bill and Geoff’s courses. Along he went, down the rabbit hole and all the way to Harry Potterville. The rest is history. (Just a short history though, as that was only last September.)

Angelo must have been wizard material, as up until recently his parent’s yard was a strange cross between a typical English style garden (full of roses and ornamentals) and an overrun jungle, and today the section is something else entirely.

A wave of those hands and who knows what could happen

Prior to the course, Angelo’s ‘garden’ consisted of many kinds of plants scattered about the property – but mostly all in pots. It was container gardening mayhem. After the course, and after some negotiations with his parents – his absentee landlords – he decided to liberate his plants and reconnect them with the earth.

Babaco fruit – related to Paw Paw

Angelo only transformed two garden beds at first, but, with a full sense of the power in his hands, he was soon working his magic on more. Unwanted plants disappeared, the land got flattened, new plants appeared. From what he said, the new plants ‘communicated’ with each other (I couldn’t hear them, but maybe it’ll come to me in time) and had special mysterious relationships too.

Then, thinking he was getting short on space, Angelo also shrank the lawn by half – simultaneously growing the garden. It seemed there was nothing he couldn’t do.

I walked about, following Angelo’s enthusiastic steps, getting a sore hand trying to write down all the enormous array of plant species he has in this space (I gave up in the end). Geoff talks about the garden being the ultimate health food shop. If that is the case, then Angelo’s yard is a health food shop and apothecary complex.

An infant Duck Potato

There were dwarfs in the land as well he said. Dwarf oranges worked to shade raspberries, and there were dwarf nectarines and peaches. By planting early, mid and late harvesting trees, he ensured an extended harvest period. Not all of the fruit trees were dwarfs though, but their tight spacing and spring and summer prunings kept them at a manageable and very productive size.

Nashi and Williams pears were planted next to a north facing heat absorbing wall – planted on wires 18 inches away so as not to cook their leaves.

There was comfrey under mandarin, nasturtium under apples. There was cat thyme (his sidekick Louie liked to hang out here) and yarrow, pomegranates, goji berries, the small and potent alpine strawberry and yellow, cherry and pineapple guavas. There were blueberries, red and black currants and grape underplanted with hyssop, lemon geranium and strawberries.

Angelo grew potatoes in pots – the regular variety in soil, and ‘duck potato’ (or arrowhead) in water. Even blackberries, which can run amuck in a garden, were present – kept in a pot to keep them in check.

A clump of stinging nettle was left in situ, a great home for the preying mantis and aphid-eating ladybird. All kinds of sage had their place, along with tansy, lemon balm, citronella, scented geraniums, fever few, growth-enhancing fox gloves, and insect-confusing wormwood. There was tree mugwort, a fast-growing windbreak that doubles as an excellent medicinal plant for woman’s problems, triples as an excellent cane coppice, and quadruples as a nice high roost for cat-avoiding, insect-eating birdlife.

It seems even wizards have to listen to their parents. The roses had to stay, but they got underplanted with strawberries, sorrel and aphid-repelling chives.

Scotch broom – most regard as a ‘weed’, but here it’s a great
nitrogen-fixing companion for fruit trees

Angelo, like all wizards, was very conscious of the movement of the stars. Trees were planted on the south side so as not to block light for smaller species, and being deciduous, they were perfect in front of windows – blocking the harsh summer sun but allowing winter warmth to stream through.

Angelo’s serious plant diversity reduces ‘pest’ problems to an absolute minimum.
Some are decoys, some are repellents, and some are habitat for predatory insects.

Angelo, though still in the league of apprentices, already has his eyes set on even more advanced sorcery. He has a roachberry (or soda apple or devil plant) – a rather imposing, tall and prickly plant – that he plans to graft eggplant and tomato onto (same family), which then magically allows a significantly increased yield of each.

A goldfish (perhaps a former girlfriend or misbehaving pet?) comes up to say hello.
The azola doubles in quantity every month – great food for the worm farm

Angelo is conjuring up huge quantities of fresh, nutrient-dense, chemical free fruits, berries, vegetables and herbs – much of which are largely invisible to ‘pests‘. The health and vitality you can squeeze out of mere metres of urban space seems like pure alchemy to me! I’m looking forward to visiting Angelo and Louie again, in the summer months when I fully intend to sit on his wood-chip mulched paths and gorge myself on foods you rarely see in our long distance, centralised industrial food system – the berries and fruits that just don’t transport well across continents, but that transport just fine from plant to plate.