Why Edible Landscaping? Top 30 Plants

Would you like to turn your lawn or garden into an abundant edible oasis? The following slideshow will offer you the basic reasoning, medications principles, pharmacy and plants to transform your home or workplace. AppleSeed Permaculture is also available for consulting so that you can choose the appropriate plants and plant communities for your particular site.

Ethan Roland of AppleSeed Permaculture presented this slideshow in September 2010 for two incredible organizations: The Kismet Rock Foundation in North Conway, NH and The Alchemy Juice Bar & Mama-lution in West Hartford CT. Both organizations are doing excellent social and ecological world-change work, and we highly recommended that you support their projects… Continue reading

Young Farmers Conference 2009 – Permaculture for Farmers & Ecosystem Investing

Young Farmers Conference 2009:

Permaculture for Farmers & Ecosystem Investing

Below are the slideshows and handouts for the two workshops I presented last week at the Young Farmers Conference, dosage held at the incredible Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. Let me know what you think in the comments – and Enjoy!

Permaculture for Farmers

[slideshare id=2669780&doc=pcforfarmersslideshow09-091207175232-phpapp02]

Download the handout by clicking on the image below.

Permaculture for Farmers Handout

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Ecosystem Investing

Download the handout by clicking on the image below.

Ecosystem Investing Handout

Agile Manifesto Principles & Permaculture

The software development world is doing excellent work to move holistic & dynamic design processes forward. My friend and Gaia University colleague Patrick Gibbs pointed me to an ‘Agile Manifesto‘ for software development, whose principles seem very applicable to collaborative eco-social & permaculture design.

You can find the principles here: http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

I’ve re-organized them, pulling the most-useful for ecological and social landscape design to the top. I’ve also replaced the word “software” with “outcome” to generalize the ideas. I’ve slightly altered a few of the principles and marked them with an asterisk*. If there is an immediately corresponding permaculture principle, I’ve included it afterwards in (parentheses).

MOST USEFUL FOR DESIGN PROCESS

MOST USEFUL FOR SOCIAL PROCESS

  • Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
  • The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
  • At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. (Pc Principle: Apply self-regulation and accept feedback)
  • The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
  • Business people and designers must work together daily throughout the project.*

OTHER PRINCIPLES

  • Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable outcomes.
  • Deliver working outcomes frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
  • Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, designers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.*
  • Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

Several of these agile principles map very closely to the Principles of Collaboration I articulated for my Master’s Thesis at Gaia University:

Fertile ground! what do y’all think? Anybody using similar principles in their design work?