Urban Permaculture Design Course

ncik teaching in Newtown
Nick Ritar teaching an Urban Permaculture course in Sydney last summer
 

Designing Permaculture into inner-city environments is, in some ways, taking things to the heart of the matter. Our cities are so often synonymous with waste; wasted water, wasted food, wasted energy. But it doesn't have to be this way – abundance and productivity is entirely possible within city environments – as always, it comes back to good design, and the energy to see things through.

So this Winter we'll be running an Urban Permaculture Design Course which will be quite a treat: a part-time Urban PDC with a 12-day, one day per week format, in the centre of Sydney starting May 29th 2010.

In addition to our standard curriculum, this PDC will provide in-depth focus on Permaculture for cities and urban communities. Organic food production, water harvesting, nutrient cycling, energy, local food systems, patterning and other aspects of Permaculture design will all focus on the urban context.

For further context and hands-on inspiration, we're also including a wide range of amazing site visits including urban backyard and balcony Permaculture systems and some of Sydney's funkiest examples of truly sustainable city homes, plus a bunch of workshops including a full-scale inner-city Permablitz.

Milkwood Permaculture's Nick Ritar will hold the fort, alongside sessions by guest teachers Cam Wilson of Permablitz, Penny Pyett of Permaculture Sydney North, Russ Grayson of Australian Community Gardens Network and Michele Margolis of Transition Marrickville; this PDC might just redefine how you co-exist with your city.

Run over 12 weekends, students can choose to take either the Saturday or the Sunday class. And if anyone needs to swap days for a week, that's no problem.

In keeping with the permaculture ethic of 'fair share', we're also offering substantial discounts to members of permaculture groups, community gardens and other community groups in the Sydney basin. See our Sydney Winter PDC course page for details.

The Edible Urban: Part 2

strathcona

When I lived in the city, I always loved the idea of a microfarm. In my head, a microfarm was a plot of land with a footprint the size of a city terrace which was simultaneously blooming with flowers and vegetables, honking with geese, clucking with chickens and covered in trailing greenery and mulch. Someone drove a wheelbarrow through the plot, delivering hay to some minature cows while a small but sturdy windmill creaked overhead.

While this version of a microfarm might be only realisable in my head (or in duplo) and might seem a little idiotic, the real-life version of farming seems just as crazy these days, though its up the other end of the scale. The median size of an Australian farm which functions as a ‘primary producer’ is something like 700 acres. As opposed to my imagined 0.03 acres. Which means (leaving aside the delightful conversation we could have here about big agribusiness and the demise of the productive small farm) that any farm less than 700 acres is therefore a small(er) farm, and anything less than, say, 100 acres, would by today’s definition be getting into the micro.

Microcosms in Melbourne

seedballs on tarp

Just a little note of an off-site project of ours happening in Melbourne this month as part of the 2010 Food and Wine Festival. Westspace's series of rooftop installations entitled 'The High Life' is part of The Edible Garden initiative being spearheaded by the venerable Diggers Club as part of this year's festival.

Kirsten's contribution to this series is a seed ball project entitled The Latent Power of Germination and will be up on the rooftop of the Order of Melbourne from the 16-23 March, and also throughout the city thanks to hundreds of complimentary packets of seed balls. You can read all about it at Westspace's The High Life project page.

So if you live in Melbourne, please come along, sneak a peek, pick up a packet and off you go, a veritable harbringer of bloom.