permaculture

[Russ Grayson <pacedge@magna.com.au>]

Interesting thread. Good list of ideas in Rick Valley's 1.8.03 email 
too. Got me thinking about what is a 'permaculture community garden'.

Rael below says that the gardens listed on the Australian Community 
Gardens Network website appear to focused on permaculture. Were it so. 
Yes, there is a strong permaculture influence in Australia: apart from 
Fiona Campbell and myself, there is Ian Lillington in South Australia, 
Morag Gamble and Evan Raymond in Queensland and Dr Martin Anda in 
Western Australia who have been strongly influenced by permaculture 
design in their work with community gardeners and who have exerted a 
certain degree of influence over the practice. As for Fiona and I, our 
involvement in community garden advocacy provided the best means at the 
time of making a contribution through permaculture. We have had to 
withdraw somewhat in the past couple years, but the gardens are now 
accepted by local government as a valid urban landuse. That was our 
objective when we started our involvement in 1994.

Most gardens, however, are not consciously 'permaculture', perhaps 
including some of those in the South Sydney Council district that 
received funding for signage and included a sign about permaculture in 
their gardens.

I don't quite now what makes a community garden 'permaculture'. Does 
the presence of a permaculture-trained adviser make it so? Can I 
suggest that the motivation to act at the community level by members of 
a community (geographic or interest-based) is an element of 
permaculture practice whether so named or not? How do you distinguish 
between a permaculture garden and an organic garden? I recall Bill 
Mollison once saying that permaculture, in its gardening iteration, is 
organic gardening plus design. Good definition. But many organic 
gardeners who do not identify with permaculture use many of the 
techniques with perennials and the effective use of space described in 
Rick Valley's email (vertical space, water harvesting etc).

We have promoted the role of community gardens in Australia as 
multi-use sites and this has been how some have developed with training 
in green waste conversion, often with local government involvement, 
schools and cultural activities. May I suggest that and definition of a 
'permaculture community garden' include:

- democratic, participatory management
- focus equally on food production and social/ community-building
- mixed plantings whether perennials are included in the system of not 
(a community garden temporarily occupying an area slated for 
redevelopment - such as was Randwick Community Organic Garden - might 
not plant perennials)
- multiple use where possible.

Some gardens here harvest roofwater and have utilised appropriate 
technologies such as solar ovens. Others are flat out just getting 
things to grow because of the limited gardening experience of the 
gardeners.

I see all community gardens, including those that are non-organic, as 
'permaculture' activities in the broad sense of the word because they 
implement permaculture as a community development strategy, consciously 
or otherwise.

...Russ Grayson



On Wednesday, July 30, 2003, at 10:44  PM, Rael Bassan wrote:

> Unfortunately, it's not easy to determine from existing lists which
> Community Gardens include permaculture.
>
> After going to many of the weblinks, it seems that almost all the
> Australian ones at www.magna.com.au/~pacedge/garden are so
> focused. Luckily, http://cityfarmer.org/ has a global search function,
> which provided a few leads.
>
> So far, it seems a compilation of permaculture community/school gardens
> remains to be assembled. Queries would have to be distributed to all 
> the
> email lists and other venues.
>
> I've started a database, and may continue if time permits.
>
> Rael
>
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture