Here’s our best resources on all things related to permaculture design and whole-systems thinking.
Forage below for designs, processes and resources for creating everything from forest gardens and solar-passive houses to water harvesting systems and urban rooftop edible gardens.
Next week there’s a nation-wide Wild Pollinator Count – do you have 10 minutes to watch a flower and report what you see? Sure you do. The Wild Pollinator Count can be done without any fancy gear, and you don’t need to be an insect expert. You just need to dedicate 10 minutes to helping…
Why is making a Base Map essential to your permaculture design process? Because its the base template on which you’ll create your design. A base map is a scale drawing showing the basic, permanent features of your design site. There’s a couple of ways to do it. A base map is the starting point for a…
Next to my primary school, down by the railway track, there is a mulberry tree. It’s been there since before I started kindergarten. I think it was self-seeded, but it’s difficult to say – the street verge just there has since been planted with all manner of trees by the nearby residents – grevillas, loquats, lilies,…
Our bees are back! We’ve set up a small Warré apiary at Buena Vista Farm on the coast at Gerringong. This will be a little different from beekeeping in the dry inland hills of Mudgee… 18 months ago we said goodbye to our Milkwood Farm bees, which, after we left the farm, went to live at Rahamim Ecolearning…
So you want to create a permaculture design for your home, farm, verge or community. How exactly do you begin the design process? By forming a goal statement, that’s how. Goals Articulation When we clearly articulate our goals we are creating a powerful statement which we can then design by, and for. Dave Jacke refers to this…
There’s a lot packed into our 3 day Natural Building course – students learn hands-on techniques in mud + lime renders, earth floors, strawbale, roundwood building, reciprocal roofs and more. Most folks that come to this course are there to get a solid overview of all these techniques from a master builder, so they can…
So how do you design a patch from scratch with Permaculture Design? Here’s a breakdown of the backyard permaculture design Nick did for Organic Gardener Magazine’s ‘Patch From Scratch’ project. There’s not many things more iconic that the Aussie suburban backyard – hills hoist, kids under the sprinkler… But do you know what’s even better?…
Selecting a good site for your apiary can make a huge difference to honeybee health, and your hive’s honey harvest too. Here’s some important things to consider when choosing a site. Natural Beekeeping is about stewarding honeybee colonies in place, in a bee-centric way. Therefore, the idea is that you place your hive well, and…
Farmer Cass is an example of how Permaculture Design Training (and a whole lotta gumption) can lead from a career in pet minding to full-time organic farmer. Since doing her Milkwood Permaculture Design Course, Cass has travelled and researched different organic farming systems, interned and volunteered on all sorts of farms, and ended up as a…
Here’s how we made some quick garden beds from scrap timber with everyday tools. These took us a morning to make, and they should last quite a few years. We made these beds this way because we’re living in a rental property, so investing in the cost and time of creating permanent veggie beds isn’t an option.…
So what does a permaculture design process look like on the ground, outside the world of a Permaculture Design Course? Here we have Dan Palmer, who’ll be teaching an Advanced Permaculture Design Course with us in October, sharing an example of his design process designing the surrounds of a suburban homestead in Victoria. Take it…
Welcome to our new series on permaculture renting, in which we attempt to grow food and live a simple life while moving from rental to rental at the whim of landlords + Australian housing prices. Yay! So we’ve been off the farm just over a year now. We’ve just moved into our second rental house,…
It’s not often you get to spend two weeks learning design with a group of folks who want to change the world. But that’s what a Milkwood Permaculture Design Course pretty much is. Our Autumn PDC students came from all over the planet to spend two weeks thinking, designing and doing in the rainforest just south of…