I’m so delighted to be speaking with my dear friend and permaculture colleague, Maddy Harland who’s one of the leading female voices in permaculture. We’ve known each other for gosh, at least 20 years.

Maddie who’s based in England is the founder of  Permanent Publications. The publishing house that’s released over a hundred permaculture titles. She’s also the founding editor of the  Permaculture Magazine, which also has well and truly reached a hundred issues now, too.

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Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.

Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

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She’s co-founded the Sustainability Centre and East Meon. Maddy is a member of the Cloudburst Foundation with its work in the common earth program of regenerating, which is a global program. Maddy and I share a wide-ranging discussion about how permaculture is woven into every aspect of her life and work and how permaculture and being close to nature has helped her through this last year with the COVID lockdowns. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Maddy talks candidly about how she’s found balance during the lockdowns. walking ancient Celtic trails, gardening, and beekeeping. She also talks about how she rapidly redesigned her permaculture publishing business using permaculture principles in 2020  to meet the new conditions –  Brexit and the pandemic – and come out with greater strength and focus. She says with everything that has happened, the popularity of permaculture has just sky-rocketed. Her new books are selling out before they’ve been released!

WATCH EPISODE 31 WITH MADDY AND MORAG HERE

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Read the full transcript here.

Morag Gamble:

Welcome to the Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble.. Permaculture Educator, and Global Ambassador, Filmmaker, Eco villager, Food Forester, Mother, Practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it’s been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life we first need to shift our thinking, the way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever. And even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on? So our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

In this podcast, I’ll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we’ll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can’t wait to share these conversations with you.

Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I’ve seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what’s happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I’ve created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women’s self help groups in the global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you’d like to find more about permaculture, I’ve created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We’d love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I’d also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I meet and speak with you today. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

In this episode. I’m so delighted to be speaking with my dear friend and permaculture colleague, Maddy Harland who’s one of the leading female voices in permaculture. We’ve known each other for gosh, at least 20 years. Maddie who’s based in England is the founder of Permanent publications. The publishing house that’s released over a hundred permaculture titles. She’s also the founding editor of the Permaculture Magazine, which also has well and truly reached a hundred issues now, too . As well as that, she’s, co-founded the Sustainability Centre and East Meon and is a member of the Cloudburst foundation with its work in the common earth program of regenerating, which is a global program. Maddy and I share a wide-ranging discussion about how permaculture is woven into every aspect of her life and work and how permaculture and being close to nature has helped her through this last year with the COVID lockdowns. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Welcome to the show, Maddy. It’s an absolute delight to see you again. I think last time I saw you in person was in your backyard and looking at your bees , I believe. It must’ve been like an April time and your garden was just coming back to life and there was just bees buzzing everywhere. And so a lot has change since I saw you. That was pre- bushfires and pre-lockdown and you know, everything has changed. I think at that same time was when your country first declared a climate emergency and all of that’s happened since I saw you. So how are you going anyway, by the way, I mean, your country, as opposed to Australia has been hit so hard with COVID. Um, how are you going in your part of the world?

Maddy Harland: 

I thought about that quite a lot before you asked me to have this conversation and thanks so much for asking, you know, it’s brilliant to be able to connect across the whole, the hemispheres. So lovely, you know, the glory of modern technologies that we’re talking to each other and we can see each other. And I still appreciate the miracle of it really. Um, our country had now 120,000 deaths, so we’re at the end of February. So that’s the highest death rate in Europe. Um, I think India, Brazil and obviously America have suffered more so for a small country and an Island nation it could have easily been avoided, but we didn’t close our borders. Um, not only to trade because you can’t close your trade borders, but we didn’t, you know, we had very porous national borders and we were accepting tourism up to about this month throughout the whole crisis. We had a ridiculous scheme last summer, which was eat out to help out where the government actually paid people to go to restaurants, which was a super spreading event because people were going and eating and drinking in restaurants and getting COVID cause you can’t eat with a mask on. So there have been unbelievable levels of mismanagement. There’ve been a lot of argument about keeping the economy going as a primary directive and arguing about the necessities of lockdown , even when our NHS was becoming inundated. And instead of one nurse for one intensive care patient, we had up to six or seven and we were bringing in physios and porters to turn patients. I mean, you know, just, awful, awful situation. And so a lot of this could have been avoided. It was very much economic. And then I think the other aspect to the UK is where our tiny country in terms of land. And we live quite squashed together. And we know that ethnic minorities tend to live , um, because many white countries or we were white were not now. Um, they are often the most economically challenged. Um, so there’s a big relationship between , COVID and poverty and lots of ethnic minorities live in to generation to generation they’re in small properties. So lots of people in small houses in on crowded streets. And , um, a lot of people were working zero hour contracts. So if they didn’t work, they didn’t get paid. And so even if there was risk of infection or if they had symptoms, they were still economically obligated to go to work. So much of the statistics have been revealing the dirty story of very conservative, economically-driven government and years and years of austerity and lack of investment and lack of, you know, running down the social care system, running down the NHS. So it’s been a bit of a perfect storm and that’s why the UK as a whole has the worst infection rates and death rates in Europe.

Morag Gamble:

So what are you, are you seeing people? I think I was reading one of your editorial posts that you have in your blog about how..you’re saying that people are kind of taking up permaculture way, just in a, probably as a matter of fact , of necessity. The mutual aid, the local food, all those things that we talk about in permaculture and you’ve been writing about for years, is that something that you’ve seen really come to the fore and do you think it’s something people will hopefully persist as, as we move forward, is it part of the re-imagining of the future?

Maddy Harland: 

Well, first of all last spring when we had our first long lockdown , everyone who could garden gardened, because there was this sense that our food security was threatened and it didn’t actually happen, but people got really, really into growing veg. It was perfect timing to build raised beds. And so of course, zucchinis and you know , all the good stuff like that. So there was this huge interest in DIY , gardening, anything around home resilience because we couldn’t go out. Basically we could get to exercise once a day.

Morag Gamble:

Once a day, gosh. I was just thinking, you know, like all of this has also come on the back of Brexit and people already quite anxious and vulnerable about what, where things are going to come from and the cost of living and all of those things. So I suppose, you know, you were talking about the storm before you didn’t mention Brexit, but I’m imagining that that is just like swishing around in everyone’s minds and hearts, as well as being something that’s kind of a driving force behind all of this.

Maddy Harland: 

I mean you know, the pain, anxiety of Brexit and suddenly not, no one could tell us. So we run a business, we export magazines and books all over the world, no one in December – and remember the Brexit started on January the 1st – could actually confirm the details of the customs and how we could ship around the world, but specifically into different European countries with different consumer tax on products. Fortunately books are zero rated, so we don’t pay tax. So we avoided a lot of that red tape but the small businesses who were exporting goods to Europe suddenly got hit by up to 20% tax on their products. And then people buying stuff from Europe direct through online platforms were getting hit by tax on delivery. So it has been mayhem. And what it’s done is it’s really shown the fragility of the system. And so people have automatically looked towards any kind of activities that are fundamentally about resilience. So food is the number one thing. Um, and then, you know, how do you make stuff? And how do you, as you mentioned, mutual aid, where do you share your surplus in your community so that people who are literally going without particularly children, because our children have hardly been at school for a year. And what that means is if you’re a poor family, you have to feed, you have to heat your home in the daytime in a cold climate, and you have to feed your children three times a day. So economically, and you’ve lost your job. So, so the economic pressure on young families, who’ve lost employment. And we have a high percentage of unemployment now , um, has been intense, really intense. So anything that people could do to have food banks get involved with community gardens. And also if , if you live in a high-rise apartment in a city, where do you take your hour a day, local exercise, you know , there’s a limit to where you can take your kids. So all these community projects, land-based projects became incredibly important to people. And of course, you know, the other side of this is mental health that we have escalating. We have a mental health care system that has had years and years of conservative government disinvestment. And we have a terrible sort of result of all the deep anxiety and just job losses. We, you know, we have a mental health crisis and sadly, I don’t want to be too gloomy here.

Morag Gamble:

This is kind of reality that we’re in right now.

Maddy Harland: 

Absolutely. And statistically, anyone with special needs , was more likely to die of COVID than people with without any of those, what are called disabilities, but, you know, special needs. So, you know, people would downs have much higher death rates. Um, yeah. So the whole thing, what it’s done is it’s completely expose the ugly underbelly of plutocracy. And the rich have come off really well and the poor have suffered disproportionately. It has shown how deeply unfair our society is. And of course there, again, if you’re a person of color , um, or an ethnic minority, again, you know, you’re gonna have had far more, there’s far more suffering in those communities. So really serious, really serious. And as you say an opportunity, I mean, we have never been busier. Before we switched on the recording, I was telling you that our latest book before we’ve even released it to the stores – we’ve sold out. Partly because it’s a great book, of course , but also because there is this huge interest in how can I live a more positive, resilient life? How can I wean myself off consumerism and all the traps and slavery of mortgage and , um, the 9 to 5 job. Where can I find my joy and also greater financial independence? And of course the answer is all these regenerative permaculture practices really free us. So my first job last year in March, besides to do a permaculture design on our business and really look at like, we’ve lost our stores globally. Magazines in stores who can’t sell books in physical stores, what are we going to do. Apart from doing a whole sort of digital redesign and , um, direct sales and so forth. Um , Tim and I got out into that garden that you saw and all our family came home. We have grown up kids because they decided that if you’re going to be locked down, then be locked down with mom and dad where the food is. And we planted every single space that we could with food. We doubled our beehive , with splits. We sold honey out front, vegetables and we shared plants and we swapped seeds. And, you know, we did all the joyful permaculture things that you do and, and the kids went.. You know, it was a good place to be.

Morag Gamble:

Absolutely. There’s a study that was done in Australia and that in the midst of the pandemic and it was done by Sustain Australia . They run all the sort of Urban Agriculture forums and , um, Costa was working on that too. And, and they got thousands of responses from people asking about how they’re managing their gardens and why they’re moving to gardening during the pandemic. And it’s kind of saying the same thing as what you’ve expressed is that the gardens have been a lifeline, you know, economically and for mental health reasons, too . And the big thread that came out of that was actually saying that there was a direct correlation between people feeling okay and having a garden that they could access. And so this study that was done, that was through a university, has now being used as a way to advocate for , federal funding to support a greater opening up of community food systems and support of a national gardening program, because we haven’t had one quite like. I know you’ve got gardening programs over there and I think like you’re saying too, I mean, we’ve had what, I think 909 deaths in Australia, but still we’ve had these massive lockdowns here and people have only been down, it goes five kilometers and they felt, you know, t here’s really taking it on with all they had. My mum and dad had been living in those sort of places. Thankfully here I’ve been quite unaffected in terms of being able to still move around, but they kind of felt so proud of themselves. And now we’re really all like we’re all in this together and t here’s this great pride of the states to kind of lock themselves down. But gardening was the thing that kept people going and gardening their streets and sharing and the similar sorts of things. But we have this and lots of great, I don’t know whether it happened with you where those great big runs and the seeds and the after the toilet paper run, there was the seed run. And so that people had to do mutual aid because they actually couldn’t get it. And I think there was this massive shift that happens in people’s minds thinking, Oh, well, we can’t just always go and get stuff it’s not always available. And maybe it won’t always be available. Maybe we do need to think differently. And so many people I speak to who have experienced this said, it’s really transformed their local communities and their neighborhoods and how they feel about where they’re living. And I think just that fact of being in one place for such a long period of time takes us to a place that we’ve not been to very long time. We’ve been so mobile, zipping off here and there, or just go t o the other side of town, a restaurant or whatever it might be. All of a sudden we’re here in our place kind of like what our ancestors were. And I think people are connecting in a really different way, even if they’re not from that place i s starting to feel. I was here at Crystal Waters. And so at 640 acres all up this ecovillage. And so I would take a walk every day I n a different direction. I had found myself in getting lost. I’ve been here for years. I explore places that I ‘ve never been to. And I know you’ve been off exploring places and connecting with your landscape in a way that’s. A and I wanted to like, maybe as you’re responding to this point, whether you feel like there’s something else that is kind of a common response that you’re seeing people are really grounding and connecting.

Maddy Harland: 

Well, there’s definitely a lot of people walking as for exercise and running because all the gyms have , you know , been shut and we can’t go swimming. And you can’t play golf, can’t play tennis. You can’t, you know, there’s so few options now. So longer distance walking. So for me, because we’ve been so busy with our publishing work I’m often spending 9 hours a day in front of a computer. So when I can get out, I walk every day and we’re really lucky as, you know, cause we’ve got the woods near us. But if I’ve got a bit more time, I can walk right up to the top of what we call the South downs. And this is a length of hills that chalk downland. And they run from Winchester, which is about half an hour by car, away from, from us all the way across the South of England. They’re sort of like an amazing chalk geology that has been pushed up. If you think of the white cliffs of Dover, we’ve got all this chalk you see in the South. And so you walk up through the woods and , uh , those were the places where the Celts built their forts, because from a defensive point of view you can see 360 degrees. So if you’re going to get invaded by anyone like the Vikings who did come to the Valley near us , you could protect yourself. So we have , 3000-year-old burial mounts up there and trackways and field boundaries. So it’s sort of really quite an ancient landscape. I’m not a field archeologist. I don’t have lots of sort of factual information at my fingertips, but I do know that this is an ancient landscape. And I’ve been walking those pathways basically. It’s where we have a bird called red kite with a beautiful folk tale. They’re big birds they live up there and other birds of prey and I love them. And so, you know, I’ll get out and try and walk up and walk a good five miles or quite a few kilometers and be out for a few hours. And I found it really deeply helpful to walk those lines and just also notice where the wildlife’s going too. So not only the human track ways , but you know, where is Badger walking and where’s fox walking and where the deer’s leaving tracks? So I’ve spent the last year really looking up, looking down. We’ve had quite a lot of rain recently, so it’s good for trackings in mud and we’ve had snow and frost. So I’m just looking at who’s walking this land with us in the more than human world and which direction are they going in and why? And it’s kind of when you’re in a situation where there is much anxiety, as there is in Britain, however stiff upper lip Brits are , you know, there is a lot of suffering. 120,000 deaths. Huge amounts of suffering. There’s something deeply healing about being on the land. I mean, gardening, as you said, then is just the best. I think, get my hands in the soil I can’t possibly be sad. You know, it’s just so uplifting. Um, but also there’s something wonderful about walking and feeling that your life, your little life is just another little human life. And actually there’s a whole world of other species out there and other creatures and beings who are living their lives and they’re beyond COVID.

Morag Gamble:

You wrote a book a little while ago, didn’t you The Biotime Log . Isn’t that, to me, this is a way that you could really inhabit what you’re talking about now.

Maddy Harland: 

The idea was first given to me by dear Max Lindegger. He wrote an article actually in the 90s for Permaculture Magazine. He used to visit us. He was kind of like our elder or a mentor on permaculture teaching. And he told me a story and wrote it down about when he was in Thailand before the tsunami and how the local first nation people, none of them were swept out or drowned . Um , and when they were asked, why? how come? They said, well , our relations told us, and basically they were so deeply attuned to the ants and the small mammals and and larger animals in the landscape that they saw them all going uphill before, long before the tsunami. I mean enough time , for them to get the communities away from the dangerous areas and into the high ground. And none of them were lost. And that was like sometime in the 90s. And that was like a seed for me that I’ve been growing ever since from Max. And so I have so much gratitude to him for that teaching cause it’s wisdom. And it got me kind of thinking, you know, we talk a lot about observation in permaculture and we’re, you know, we’re looking for m icroclimates and sectors and it’s all quite scientific a nd biological, but I think there’s another layer o f observation, which is about deep immersion and about daily practice of just watching and listening and using all the senses to be in nature. So you’re not just the observer and the observed, there is…something happens where suddenly you become part of. And one of the ways into this for me is walking, but it has to be quite a few kilometers. It can’t be just a quick walk because there’s some kind of rhythm where something happens a and that intellect in that separate consciousness dissolves and you become just the human within the landscape and you’re part of it. So that’s been a big thing for me. And you know, you could say, well, that’s very much like a shamanic practice and indeed in my personal life that’s what I go and do, and I do that with other people as well and share reflections and insights from an older culture. We don’t quite have the lineage of your first nation people or the Americas who still have sort of an unbroken tradition. Our Celtic teachings were eradicated and in a way Judaism reclaimed them, but there is a broken link there. I was with John Young a few years ago. I asked him, how do you learn if you can’t be mentored by someone who has an unbroken lineage, you know, how do you learn? And he said, well, you know, I’ve been taught that if you haven’t got the teacher, the human teacher, then all our relations become the teacher. So the deer will teach you and the badger and that has been a kind of unfolding quest really for me. So my beekeeping that you mentioned is all about that deep observation. I’ve been really lucky. My beekeeper is A really old, he’s an old boy that’s kept bees for 50 years and he’s lived in Hampshire all his life. His of this land and of these bees. And his teaching has been great because he’s taught me so much, you know, he says, don’t mess around with the bees. People are opening them up too much interfering with them. You know, the bees are highly intelligent. They know how to look after themselves and survive and have good colonies. And what often messes up bees is fooling around with them and all this messing about with them taking too much of their honey in their stores. I’ve had some amazing experiences with the bees. I’ll give you an example. We had the most awful weather for us. For the Scandinavians they would’ve just laughed and put on their snowshoes, but we had snow it was very cold, which is like Texas. Sorry, I don’t mean to be mean, but it’s like, we’re not culturally prepared for very cold weather in England where we’re cool temperate maritime and Texas is usually hot. So we had this bad weather. Then we have this period of intense warm and then we had unbelievable rain for weeks on end in the growing season. And I looked at the bees one day or my colonies, and there were no young bees, there was no eggs. There was no bridge in any of the hives. And I thought, what’s going on? Have my Queens died. And I asked my beekeeping mates in the area. And they said, this is the same experience for us. And we were all kind of scratching our heads and thinking, Oh God, we can’t even breed our own Queens because we don’t have any young eggs yet . T hey have to be three days old or less, you kno w, we’re going to have to requeen. S o I went to my teacher and I said, what do we do? He said, look, you got to no t worry about this. Just the bees knows what the bees knows what they’re doing. Just leave a while and see what happens, you kno w, b ees think fast. And so we did and then the warm weather came and it stopped raining. And I opened the hives again, and the Queens were laying in all the hives and in my friend’s hives. And I think the bee s, they knew that they were going to have a period where they couldn’t forage cau se it was raining and cold and that they couldn’t bring in stores for young. So they just regulated their population according to the resources that they had. And then as soon as the resources and the nectar started to flow, they started to make their babies again because they got brains.

Morag Gamble:

That is possible for us too if we take the time to be in relationship with the things that’s around us . And I think what you were talking about the walking, and it’s not just a stroll one way or another way, it’s actually regularly walking and being totally present the same way over and over and over again. And you start to see those routines and those patterns and notice the changes and who’s going where, and what’s what’s happening. And I think it’s that rhythm, like you said.

Maddy Harland: 

It is. It’s also about becoming really sensitized to the seasonal rhythm for us, particularly because our seasons are quite marked between summer and winter. And it’s about, yeah, it is about protracted rhythm and just always visiting the same places and seeing them with different eye. So we’ve been visiting as a family a tree in the woods since the kids were born. And one of them’s 31 now. In fact, before they were born we’ve been visiting this tree and just observing it , being with it, walking the same track.

Morag Gamble:

I think it’s interesting what you said before too, about it’s a practice. I was talking to someone else about it earlier today about this, describing permaculture as a practice. The difference between it being, you know, we’re designing about something and we’re doing something. It’s actually being fully present, fully engaged and switching on all these senses that you’re talking now and entering to that practice. And by being practice means that it’s, it is this constant opening to the new understandings and the noticings that we can absorb every day. And I really liked , I really like that description of permaculture that it’s a practice.

Maddy Harland: 

Yeah. It’s not all this whizzbang theory . Theory doesn’t mean anything unless you put it into practice.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. Practice in that sense that it’s not just practice it now and have another go but actually a deep sense of the word practice.

Maddy Harland: 

You’ve got to embody it , you know , it has to be, and we’re all different. So each different person that takes this knowledge embodies and practices it in their own one in their own expression. But I noticed that the best gardeners , all the ones that absolutely just live the garden and they’re the people that sit down and drink a cup of tea and watch the birds, listen to what they’re saying. And is there a predator around and the landscape and who’s doing what, where, and what are the bees foraging on? What’s the color of the pollen today? Where’s the nectar coming from and which direction are they flying in and where, where are the winds at the moment?

Morag Gamble:

It’s a curiosity, isn’t it? It’s not a recipe of doing something in a particular way.

Maddy Harland: 

It’s not mechanistic.

Morag Gamble:

No, it’s a way of being curious all the time.

Maddy Harland: 

And you see, I think Bill knew this. I think from Bill’s deep immersion in the forest as a younger man what he learned from first nation people in Tasmania, but also around the world as he traveled. I think this was a really deep, deep aspect of his intuitive permaculture.

Morag Gamble:

You go back and read it now. Like I remember reading it when I was just coming into permaculture and you’d see certain things, and then you sort of come back in another time you see something else. And now when I come back into it, I see all of this that we’re talking about. There is that real depth to it.

Maddy Harland: 

Yeah . And it’s so important to honor this, you know. You mentioned to me before we switched on the red button about my work with the Commonwealth and Common Earth which is a charity and one of the most important directives of the work that Common Earth does as a charity within the Commonwealth is that we do not send out consultants to tell people how to design regenerative systems. We might match up people who can share information and skill share but generally we look for people within the local community who are the thought leaders whohave the ability to be community leaders and we try to do whatever we can to enable those people to do better.

Morag Gamble:

Can you say a bit more about what Common Earth is? And because I know that it’s like in a broad sense, it’s really a response to, it’s this kind of climate..

Maddy Harland: 

It is climate action. Yeah. But it’s quite difficult in a way, because a bit like, you know, what is permaculture design ? What Common Earth does is Common Earth facilitates projects. So at the moment in the Caribbean, there is a citation translation initiative that is working with different universities, American universities and the university of Western and the Dominican country, not Dominican Republic.. so the government there to create a very large Marine protection area and to use academics, linguists, and also soft robotics to try and understand and listen to the sperm whales, because they’re the biggest tooth mammals on the planet. Now they’ve got the biggest wet brains of all, and they have incredibly sophisticated language. So the idea is to instead of just saying, Oh, we love [inaudible] but to try and understand it with all the incredible access to technology that we now have in the 21st century. And the aim is to actually understand what is being said by these huge, intelligent creatures, beings and possibly, ideally be able to communicate, so interspecies communication. And it sounds terribly grand and amazing, but the other aspect of this is the Marine protection. And the idea behind this is we have been brought up in this mechanistic universe that is subject and object. Here’s our design system, here’s your plot permaculturist, you know, make good of it. And there’s the sense that we are the creatures that are the stewards of the domain. We hold dominion still somewhere in our worldview. And of course, this is a complete delusion, really, because as I said to you, I’m walking the downs. I’m just a small human with a small human life. I don’t know when it’s going to end, might be sooner than I planned, you know, from the what’s going on statistically. And there’s all this other life out there that’s intelligent. So the idea of this project particularly is to at the moment, the waters around Dominica there aren’t protected from these enormous cruise ships . So when their sewage tanks are full, they can dump them in coastal waters, which has a devastating effect on Marine diversity. And as you know the plankton is the first thing in this beautiful ecological cascading food chain that ends with the top predators. And we need clean water . Otherwise we’re going to kill everything in the sea, which we’re doing very successfully at the moment globally. So the idea is that if we can alter this perspective, if we can facilitate a new understanding, which is underwritten by science, because we’re in the West, we’re still so tied to cause and effect science. If we can change people’s minds about what is intelligent life on earth, then we’ll probably change how we treat all our ecosystems. So that’s in essence and of course, if we protect our seas, our seas at the moment are absolutely pumped with CO2, they cannot absorb anymore. The only way we can sequester carbon is in soil as all us permaculturists have known for decades strangely. But we need to look after the sea because if we destroy life in the sea, then that carbon is just going to release and a bit like releasing methane out of permafrost. It will be devastating as a climatic driver. So Common Earth is in this really fascinating position of working currently with this project to try and change minds – literally. What’s coming out of the academic community is actually beautiful. There is this real understanding that once we see our fellow non-human or more than human creatures as intelligent, it will tip the balance of how we treat ecosystems and the more than human world. So that’s kind of what it’s about. Is a little bit abstract because it isn’t about, Oh yeah, okay. We’re going to plant, you know, 10,000 hectors of agroforestry. We might. We might facilitate the funding bridge project, but if we do, we’ll make sure that whoever’s running that project is actually local. And it isn’t some kind of colonized piece of white conservation which has millions of dollars through that . Cause that’s a big problem, particularly in places like Africa. That we have this kind of sentimental love of all the amazing, large species, the giraffes and the lions and tigers, we don’t love the white rhinos enough. So we spend lots of money breeding species and shipping them around the place, but we don’t actually look after the people that are of that land like the Messi. We shut them out of their traditional grounds and they of course are as much part of the ecosystem as what we call the game. So it’s a whole reframing of worldviews that we’re trying to work on. And that’s quite difficult. It is abstract.

Morag Gamble:

Jason Twill, who I know is part of your group . So when he came back into Australia. Well, I don’t think he’s there now, but before he left, he set up this group that’s related to that, which is a group that I’m part of and it’s driven by mostly women and mostly indigenous women. I’m not indigenous, but I have the honor of being part of this wonderful group. And the project is really about trying to re-imagine the landscapes and the narratives there from an indigenous perspective. And that’s being led by the amazing Dr. Anne Poelina. So we’re having just about to have our next meeting actually in a few days which is really exciting. So we don’t really know yet what’s coming out of that yet either, but it’s that re-imagining and reframing and seeing the landscape differently not so much through, you know, states and federal boundaries, but as a collection of bioregions . And we’ve been looking at maps of Australia and looking at how the map of the indigenous nations were are actually very aligned to the map of the bi-regions of Australia. And so reframing our whole understanding of what this land is, that’s now called Australia. And so it’s kind of, it’s fascinating. It’s absolutely.

Maddy Harland: 

And as you say, it’s such a privilege. When we have met at the Commonwealth secretary at London we meet at this enormous, great big colonial mahogany table, that’s vast, in a palace. But for all the people that sit around that table who had worked for government or different governments or so-called experts or whatever, that the necessity is also to invite the first nation people and listen to and have the honor of receiving that, what you’re speaking of that very different way of seeing the world. And that for me is one of the most important aspects of the work of Commonwealth is to facilitate and encourage that and do whatever we can in a positive way to support it and try and rewrite history a bit because [inaudible] Fortunately, I’m more Welsh and Irish.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah me too. I relate more to my Scottish clans, the ones that were pushed off to the edges, you know, for the sheep [inaudible]. There was a a word, a phrase that you used also in one of your recent books which was relating to what we’re talking about decolonizing permaculture. I mean this whole world that we’re in now and making sense of what’s going on and black lives matter. Where have you been going with that thought around. How we decolonize permaculture? What does that even look like.

Maddy Harland: 

So Starhawk, the American writer taught.. A permaculture teacher once said something to me, and it was as salient and as important a seed as Max’s seed about biotime. Um, she said that, you know, when you are privileged, what you have to do is you have to be really grateful for your privilege. Don’t be ashamed of it. Just really look it square in the face and be so grateful that you’ve had that gift..lifestyle. And so that was a real reframing for me. My maternal grandmother is Anglo- Indian, so she was mixed race. She left India because of the prejudice against half-classed people and came and lived in Europe to escape racism and always pretended she was Armenian. So Eastern European person, rather than the shame of being a person of half color, which is like not even within a cast. So that’s been something that I’ve carried with me. So I have very blonde relatives and I didn’t use to have hair this color and have one blonde daughter. She looks, she’s very olive and there’s definitely. You can see the genes. What can we do about decolonizing permaculture? I think you have to face the facts. You have to look around the room when you have a convergence and you have to say to yourself, right, okay, how socially diverse are we? We’re not socially diverse. Were socially diverse. Why are we speaking to other people. What is it about our movement in the UK that’s so white. What’s happening in other nations? Cause permaculture is busy as you know in Africa. Are the local population, actually the leaders in permaculture, do they lead the projects or are they led by white people? And are they working for the whites? How empowered are people that we’re supporting and how can we have a real process that asks these very uncomfortable questions? How many people of color do I have writing books for me? What’s the percentage of the articles in the magazine that reflects diversity in permaculture. And we have a long way to go. When you’re brought up white and privileged, so much of that privilege, I mean, Costa has his goggles. His permaculture goggles. We’ve got white privilege goggles, and we don’t even know we’re wearing them because it’s so ingrained over generations into us. And somehow all we can do rather than beat ourselves up is just try to be open to our learning and our mistakes and, be a student and be humble. And I know that I’ve got hidden prejudice. I’m not even remotely aware of it. I’m better than I was five years ago because my society has changed. It’s a bit like being a woman five years ago is really different to being a woman now because of me too. But nonbinary inclusiveness is still a struggle that many are having. So we can only just try to grow and not write it off as social justice warriorship, and that kind of awful kind of back to the land movement with guns, you know, just don’t go there. Ca use we’re here to make the world a better place. And we just have to embrace our ignorance and do our best. And there’s some great people out there that can teach us and some really good resources.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. It’s one of the things I absolutely love about the work that we’re doing with the permayouth, because every meeting that they have they have young people from refugee settlements from Asia 30 countries kind of coming on these things and they’re all contributing and they’re all describing what it is that they want to see in the world. And they’re starting to find out that whether you’re from a refugee settlement or from here at Crystal Waters, there’s the common searching for something meaningful and to make a difference in what’s going on around and to be able to do something about it as a young person and to have a voice. And it’s just amazing. And what’s happening then is because this connection there, those connections are rippling beyond.

Maddy Harland: 

And that’s why we started the permaculture prize and doing the Youth In Permaculture Prize with Abundant Earth foundation, because we wanted to reach beyond that not any kind of, you know, white man do good way, but we wanted to connect with those projects and not necessarily all in the two-thirds world. You know we funded, we awarded a prize to an urban project in the North of England that was working very much with, it was a place where they had no green growers, there was no vegetable shop. So there was only a supermarket and huge amounts of food real poverty and high unemployment. And they w ere like gardening on this plot t hat was f rom o f broken glass and b eing trashed and cleaning it up and making it accessible and teaching basic skills to local people who had nothing regardless of their race.

Morag Gamble:

I love what you’re doing with the permaculture prize , because what it’s doing is it’s not making people dance to a tune or fitting a certain set of criteria. You’re celebrating what you’re seeing is emerging and flourishing and people are. Like it’s a local action, local driven in context. It has meaning and purpose in those local communities. And it’s being celebrating and enabling them to continue to do what they’re doing and to have some resources, to maybe do better and spread it further and ripple it out to even more people. So thank you for doing that work. I mean all your work with Permanent Publications and having over a hundred books now, and Permaculture magazine well over a hundred issues. The Permaculture Prize. All of these things that you’re doing, been doing for decades. Really helped to bring this way of being in the world and seeing so much further than it could be without this, without the media. And you’ve got YouTube and you’ve got all the social media as well. It’s really, you’re kind of like a permaculture, a media. I was going to say empire, that’s not quite the right word, but you know what I mean? It’s just a, what’s the word.

Maddy Harland: 

An Ecosystem.

Morag Gamble:

Ecosystem. Thank you. That’s the word. That starts with an E.

Maddy Harland: 

We try not to be empirical.

Morag Gamble:

No, no, exactly. It was actually totally the wrong word. But what I’m trying to say is thank you for all the decades of work that you’ve put into that. And I wonder, I mean, I know it’s sort of going right back to the beginning, but what got you started in that in the first place? I mean to start on this journey, that’s a huge journey.

Maddy Harland: 

Well, we were really into conservation. We live in what looks like a very beautiful area of England. You know, it’s very classically small fields South of England hydros , but actually it’s an agricultural desert and I’ve seen such a drop in songbird population and in biodiversity around . And so we first of all, we started out planting wildflower meadows because we wanted to restore the traditional chore that my grandfather walked in a century ago, actually. Then we watched this TV program called In Grave Danger of Falling Food with this extraordinary Australian guy telling us that we were going to have a collapsing system but that we could be collapsing under an abundance of food. And we thought, hang on a minute, we can have a nature reserve and eat it, too. And it’s not mutually exclusive. We can integrate all of this. We can, you know, we were working as publishers , but in the sort of more not really corporate co -publishers, but more in the local publishing area. And I was doing a bit of environmental journalism. We thought we could actually weave together a holistic lifestyle that our kids are up in a nice place, have a garden and work with our local community and grow nice things.

Morag Gamble:

And you’ve done of all that.

Maddy Harland: 

And I’ve always like words. I had an English degree back in the day and I’ve always liked words. So it just seemed logical. And , you know , people come to me and say how can I put my career and earn money in permaculture? And I say somedon’t try and work out what the next income stream is from permaculture. Tell me what you’re passionate about and then do a permaculture design of your life. And then you’ll build resilience and sustain yourself.

Morag Gamble:

Beautiful advice. Thank you so much for joining me today on the show. We’ve wandered all over the planet. *laughter* From the practical to the conceptual in a world of meaning, it’s just been an absolute delight. Thank you so much.

Maddy Harland: 

Well, thank you for the opportunity to have a wonderful conversation with you and share this. It’s a very beautiful place to be. And I think it’s the most healing place in times of tremendous difficulty in stress. And that’s, I suppose that’s my, why did I do it? Because I know that it’s good and permaculture is not perfect as we’ve identified. And we have a lot of evolution that we need to do, and we need to work on it, but there are some fundamental principles and ethics and the seeds of a world that is possible with it. And for me, it’s the most coherent way of living the dream.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. Well, that’s a beautiful way to end this conversation and I totally agree. Well, thank you again, Maddy.

Maddy Harland: 

Thank you, Morag.

Morag Gamble:

So that’s all for today. Thanks so much for joining us. Head on over to my YouTube channel, the link’s below, and then you’ll be able to watch this conversation, but also make sure that you subscribe because that way we notified of all new films that come out and also you’ll get notified of all the new, all the new interviews and conversations that come out. So thanks again for joining us, have a great week and I’ll see you next time.

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