One of the most transformative experiences for me was spending about a year at Schumacher College in England, as a student in 1992 and as a guest scholar on a course called Design for Life in 2003 with Janine Benyus (biomimicry). The course I ran was also a Permaculture Design Course. Schumacher College is essentially a green university – I love it!

Back in 1992, I so was incredibly inspired by learning at Schumacher College with people such as Fritjof Capra, Vandana Shiva, Helena Norberg-Hodge and Satish Kumar.  Immediately after taking courses at the college I made a pilgrimage around the UK to places such as Findhorn, Scotland and the Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales.

I had also arranged with Helena to volunteer in Ladakh with her at the Ladakh Project (Local Futures). While in India, I also visited Vandana’s Navdanya Project (since evolved into Bija Vidyapeeth or Earth University). My mind was exploded and my heart sang with possibilities.

A few years later, I visited Fritjof Capra a few times in Berkeley California. He introduced me to the Center for Ecoliteracy which he founded and the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center  – places rethinking education and supporting teachers to change. Creating opportunities for children to experience connection with nature and to be exposed to ecological systems thinking has been at the forefront of my work since. (Fritjof had also been a regular teacher at the Esalen Institute.)

ETHOS FOUNDATION 

Back at home, I have been persistently passionate about creating similar opportunities here in Australia for locals and for people around the world who would love to come together to:

• connect with nature, community and self
• deepen our understanding of the ecological paradigm
• explore thinking and ideas that will help guide us towards a sustainable future
• experience a different, more connected way of living and thinking
• learn very practical skills for living simply and sustainably
• nurture young leaders in sustainability
• offer nature connected education for children

After many years – helping to start Northey Street City Farm, the Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network, school garden projects,  Local Futures study circles, offering permaculture education in 20 countries, I am now focussing all my efforts on creating a space for head, heart and hands learning, predominantly based here at the ecovillage.

This is what my organisation the Ethos Foundation, a not-for-profit charity, is all about. I have created programs such as Nature Kids, Young Ethos Scholars, and Permaculture Life and will be offering a few Permaculture Design Courses (PDC) each year. I see the PDC is an amazing door to a more sustainable way of life.

Ethos Foundation Permaculture Design Course – August 29 – Sept 9

I hope you can join me from August 29 – Sept 9 for an excitingly practical, intellectually stimulating and incredibly relaxing time here at Crystal Waters, where I have been living for the past 18 years. This course integrates my learnings from Ladakh, Schumacher, and all the other centres. I will be joined by indigenous leader Wiruungga, the amazing Robina McCurdy from New Zealand’s Tui Community. We’ll visit Maleny’s amazing coops including: Maple Street Organic Food Cooperative and the Maleny Credit Union. We’ll explore the ecovillage at Crystal Waters, the wonderful neighbouring Baranbali Farm, and visit school and community gardens in the region.

More information about the course will be uploaded to this website very soon. Please contact me for more information.

Films about amazing centres for learning:

Here are a few of the places which significantly influenced my thinking over the decades:

Schumacher College England

(with Vandana Shiva and Satish Kumar, Polly Higgins, Stephan Harding, Terry Irwin)

Earth University, India

Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales

Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, California

Local Futures (A short version of their recent film, The Economics of Happiness)

Esalen Institute, USA

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The wonderful Costa Georgiadis of ABC’s Gardening Australia led a huge group of people through the verge garden with his fabulous commentary of why verge gardens are the bees knees – it’s got me thinking about what more I can do along the street at my place. Always wonderful to see him and get a big beardy cuddle.

Costa espousing the benefits of having a salad garden on the verge.

Gardening extraordinaire, Barbara Wickes, president of the cottage garden group The Perennial Poppies, coordinates the extraordinary effort it takes to get the Giant Kitchen Garden displays ready for the expo each year.

After Costa’s ramble through this amazing demonstration garden, he sent the crowd across to the Kitchen Garden Stage where I talked about my favourite incredible edibles. I had a table full of cuttings from my garden that provide an abundance and resilience in subtropical gardens – a diversity of perennial and self-seeding plants and a selection of common but overlooked edible leaves.  (The video of this will be ready soon.)

Me launching into the Incredible Edibles talk.

The Giant Kitchen Garden is like a meeting of old friends – I caught up with Roman Spur of Spurtopia, the Yandina Community Gardens, Northey Street City Farm, Robin Clayfield, Brisbane Organic Growers and many more… Jerry Coleby Williams also led a great wander through the verge garden.

ABC Gardening Australia’s Jerry Coleby-Williams talking about verge gardens.

Here are some of the people I met along the way and some garden features on display…

I was delighted to hear the latest news from Roman Spur of Spurtopia – new baby girl and new house (bought from savings – no debt).

I caught up with Cath Manuel of Soil to Supper, then saw part of her no-dig garden presentation.

Beautiful kales.

The display garden demonstrated how you could set up a street side stall to share verge garden produce in the community.

These are great to help increase homes from microbats in urban gardens.

Showing the potential for a verge garden – from children’s play spaces, herb, vegetables, flowers, fruits, upcycled pots, interpretive signage, habitat logs …

An interesting pot of strawberries….

Looking down the main street of the verge garden displays.

The bug hotel in the centre of the verge garden roundabout.

The boot flower garden.

The stiletto palette garden!

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The kids and I found a treasure trove of hidden pumpkins the other day – we thought we’d finished our crop for the season.

I love self-seeding vegetables. They add so much to my garden – food for free!  I think for the past decade I have not planted pumpkin, tomato or mustard spinach – they seem to keep getting stronger each season. The pumpkins are getting sweeter and the cherry tomatoes bigger.

Monty (when he was younger), helping Costa with his pumpkin during a presentation at the World Environment Day Festival, University of the Sunshine Coast (opening the Moving Feast Community Garden).

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During the celebration of community at the Yandina Community Gardens today I made this little film to share with you.

There’s lots of fun for kids here too. Check out their website for some great plant info and recipes too – www.yandinacommunitygardens.com.au

The post Film #2: Permaculture Community Garden with Morag Gamble (9 minutes) appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

The Maleny cows at the Obi Obi bridge.

The crossing tree.

Colourful crochet on display.

Monty thought the library canon looked pretty funny like this.

The Artisan Market bicycle.

The library tree was one of the most intricately decorated tree.

The kids got to explore textiles from the animals, to the weaving to the making.

The RSL poppies.

So many amazing beanies.

…and shawls.

Fabulous weaving using weed vines.

A felting wonderland

Maia liked these little dry felting worlds …

and these cute little knitted/beaded animals.

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Our modular house – there is the main pod (orange), the kid pod (yellow), the office pod (upstairs), and the guest pod near the entrance to our lot.

We love it here. The kids love it here. They have already discussed which part of the house they will live in when they get older. It will be easy to add a little kitchenette and bathroom to make each ‘pod’ and independent unit.  I’d love that – having a big extended family around me when I’m older.

Our family – out on the verandah where we spend most of our time. Except in mid-winter, the house is always open – freely flowing between inside and out.

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Patterns in nature: spirals, waves, branching, lobes, star, scatter …

I am participating in the inaugural online course on The Systems View of Life with Fritjof Capra – Austrian born, American physicist (bestselling author of the Tao of Physics, Uncommon Wisdom  The Turning Point, The Web of Life, The Hidden Connections and more). Tonight’s lecture was about understanding patterns in nature and how life begins. 

Pattern understanding and pattern thinking is the basis of good permaculture design too – designing with nature.  One of permaculture design principles is to “design from pattern to detail” (Holmgren) – to see the connections and relationships and explore the bigger picture. Often, in our excitement or impatience, we are tempted to race in a start doing something without considering how this connects to and impacts the whole. Pattern thinking is about slowing down, taking time to see the bigger picture, consider things more fully and then choosing the simplest and most elegant design or action to implement change. 

Fritjof discussed in this weeks lecture about how all life is creative and that creativity is actually a key criteria of all life. Every animal, plant, even every microorganism is creative and in a constant state of flow. Change happens when something disrupts the balance and a new state of balance is reached – another state of being emerges. This process of emergence is how life evolves and remains in a state of dynamic self-organisation.

The late Brian Goodwin – visionary mathematician, biologist, teacher, philosopher and system theorist who was Scholar in Residence at Schumacher College for many years discusses beauty in nature, emergence, and how nature works to have least effort and natural grace – and how this is obviously a system which has good health and vitality. (4 minute youtube)

Fritjof also talked about how patterns of nature, the patterns which connect, stay stable while materials flow through. He gave the example of a vortex. The pattern, the spiral, remains constant even while water is flowing through it continuously.  You can even disturb the pattern and it will return to the vortex.

Things are stable but they change all the time. 

We often resist change, because change can bring uncertainty. But change is actually the only thing we can be truly certain of.  The patterns which connect remain stable – the relationships between living things, from cells to large organisms – but the actual living thing responds creatively, learns and changes. 

And for something different … a great song about Patterns (click to play) by a group of creative Australian permaculture musicians, the Formidable Vegetable Sound System. Enjoy! 

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The new Ringwood Town Square in suburban Melbourne – full of culinary herbs and flowers.

I was in awe for quite some time taking it all in. There I stood, in the middle of the new Ringwood Town Square – the train station on one side and the newly renovated and expanded Eastland Shopping Centre in the other. The space is full of culinary herbs and hardy edibles such as lemongrass, basil, sage, rosemary, nasturtium, artichoke, lemon verbena, mint, curry plant. Quite a formal design, but at the same time a very relaxed feel with these mass plantings of herbal diversity.

Mass plantings of edible herbs line the walk between the station and the shops – available for the plucking.

The edible gardens create a sensory garden barrier between the cafe and restaurant seating and the passing parade.

I was so impressed, I started taking photos from all different angles.  Perhaps not many people had done this because I was intercepted by the security guard – curious of my activities. I’m not sure what he thought I was doing, but after I gushed about how amazed I was at all the food in the space and how so impressed I was with the changes taking place the town centre where I grew up, he loosened his gaze and smiled.  He admitted that he had never actually eaten any of it, but he did seem genuinely proud of being part of this new public space. I haven’t lived here for over two decades, but I have to admit that I feel somewhat proud that the place I grew up has turned into something much more vibrant ….and edible!

I spent my first 20+ years living in the leafy green hills of Ringwood, 25kms from the downtown Melbourne. While it was a calm and natural area where we lived, the hub of Ringwood had always been quite a hard, bland place full of paving, carparks and blank shop walls of the major shopping centre.  This is why I was so surpised.

I went straight home to my parent’s house and searched in the internet for information about the design rationale, who looks after it, and whether you can harvest it. Coming from a landscape architecture background, I’m also curious to find out who are the designers of edible public spaces in Melbourne.  I only uncovered a small snippet of promotional information from August in a local newspaper about the Town Square becoming a gastronomical hub and a ‘community garden’ where people can meet, play, share great food and pick the herbs. Tomorrow I think I need to call the Council and find out more.

While I am delighted to find this space, I also feel that it is a shame that coming across good urban design is a surprise, and that not just the norm.  Hopefully the experience of this town square over time can show that accessible, creative edible spaces can form a central part of primary public space zones in suburbs around the country.

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The talk captured here on was delivered at a Brisbane Library as part of Brisbane City Council’s Learning for Living series.  A couple of friends kindly filmed the session for me and put together this clip…

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