Funky Urban Permaculture Designs by VEG

Adam Grubb and Dan Palmer are some of the most accomplished urban permaculture designers I know. Aside from being the founding forces of the Permablitz movement, they also design professionally – creating functional, edible awesomeness in small suburban spaces through their Melbourne Permaculture business, Very Edible Gardens (VEG).

We’ve snared Adam as a special guest teacher on our Urban Permaculture Design Certificate in Sydney in January 2012, where he’ll be taking the class through the mechanics of good urban permaculture design. In the meantime, however, I thought I’d share some of the design work that VEG have done…

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As you may have guessed by now, we rather like permaculture design. Many of our past students from past Sydney PDC courses have done some amazing designs for their homes – see here and here for examples.

But what happens once you want to move beyond the boundaries of that backyard you know so well? What if you want to design other people’s places for them?

The scope of permaculture design is broad and wide, but small space design is something special. It’s the intricacy of it that i like; the fitting of many functional elements into a postage-stamp sized yard. And when it works, it’s very powerful.

But wait. Apart from being involved in VEG’s considerable output in terms of permaculture design, garden installation, courses and of course the mighty Melbourne Permablitz movement, Adam Grubb is also a weed nerd! Yay.

I seem to keep meeting weed nerds. I like them alot. First there was my friend Diego who seems to now be an Australian authority in weeds as art.

Then there was David Holmgren, perhaps the world-leading thinker on weeds and wild nature, and what they mean for humanity’s survival. And now Adam. These weed folk are everywhere!

Adam Grubb in the middle of an edible weeds tour…

Perhaps we can get Diego and Adam to do a weed-off in January when Adam’s here to teach. I’ll see and get back to you.

Most of all, however, I’m excited to be getting Adam up to Sydney to talk about the process of creating functional permaculture enterprises built on urban permaculture design. Sydney needs more urban permaculture designers! But it doesn’t happen by itself.

Seems to me, as with all things, community is the key here. VEG grew out of Melbourne Permablitz, a regular gathering of folks hell-bent on creating permaculture wherever they could. Before they knew it, Adam and Dan were consulting, designing and teaching. And they’ve kept doing it.

VEG crew delivering some west sussex chooks to some lucky urban homesteader…

What I’m hoping to see happen out of this Sydney PDC is for more people to get inspired about permaculture as a livelihood, as an enterprise, and as a skill-set that plugs into many other possible futures.

And having a best-practice urban permaculture designer in the mix will hopefully aid the weed-like spread of these possibilities.

Interesting VEG-like things:

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