Five Hints for Urban Permaculture
Permaculture is a worldwide movement founded by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. It involves design protocols and methodologies, creating a design science of "connecting." This concept of functional connections forms the basis of permaculture design.
Imagine a culture that produces more than it consumes. Permaculture is a design system that goes beyond creating a sustainable (social, economic, environmental) world to foster a culture that is regenerative in nature. Its philosophy aims to reduce the impact of human settlements on both non-renewable and renewable resources, creating an abundant living environment for all living creatures.
"The future of sustainability is in our cities and towns. Urban neighborhoods are ideal for the promise and potentials of permaculture design. Our cities embody the greatest concentration of the social, intellectual and physical resources needed to create a sustainable system." ~ Larry Santoyo, Founder of the Permaculture Academy.
If the problem is being in an urban settlement, the problem is the solution: visualize a sustainable living environment with plenty of natural resources around that can support your needs. In a rural setting, we can use ancient and modern techniques to meet our needs. In an urban setting, we are more likely to use strategies. How do we become sustainable in the city? How does one practice permaculture in an urban setting? As Larry Santoyo says during his LA Permaculture Design Courses: “One doesn't do permaculture, one uses permaculture.”
Here are five urban permaculture hints:
Hint #1 - Grow your own healthy food and medicine:
Grow and raise your own food using gardening techniques that create a bustling ecosystem, like forest gardens that provide an abundance of food in a self-perpetuating, self-fertilizing, self-mulching, self-watering, self-pollinating, and highly disease-resistant way. There are abundant possibilities for growing food-producing plants in our backyards or balconies, including fruits, berries, nuts, perennial herbs, and perennial greens that can be harvested throughout the growing season for salads, soups, stews, etc.
Hint #2 - Create community gardens or an ecovillage with your neighbors and friends:
Build greenhouses and plant gardens in empty lots. Turn grass lawns into gardens that produce food and are beautiful. As city neighbors, we discover that our own yards provide enough space to incorporate many diverse plant species. In the permaculture design approach, all of these plants have a particular purpose and are placed in careful relationship with other plants. How to create an urban ecovillage structure? Believe it or not, a condominium association can work well for an ecovillage. In a condo association, individuals own their buildings while the land is owned and managed collectively.
“Local power is also the realm of the small nonprofit, church, and civic association. A handful of people, properly organized, can drive enormous changes in a city’s dynamics." ~ Toby Hemenway, The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience.
Hint #3 - Use microclimates:
Use the presence of buildings to cultivate plants that need partial shade or vertical climbing space. City dwellers are blessed with numerous microclimates within their own yards. South-facing walls, for example, can provide an excellent location for heat-loving plants like grapes, tomatoes, or peppers and can also be good locations for extending the growing season for lettuce and other greens.
Hint #4 - Design a water catchment system:
Water harvesting collects runoff water from the roofs of our houses that can provide all the water needs for the garden. Redirecting it to trees, shrubs, and beds, and storing it in rain barrels for later use, is an easy, economical, and highly beneficial practice.
Hint #5 - Composting and mulching:
There is no substitute for home-grown compost! Intensive composting allows for the recycling of resources within one’s permaculture system and contributes greatly to soil fertility, structure, and long-term sustainability.
Going green or sustainable in a city is not impossible, and it doesn’t mean giving up what we have.
It means social awareness and ethical ecology that provide honest community services and responsible commerce. With the right intention and commitment, we can all create beautiful, healthy living environments and rebuild our cities (or our homes in a city), making sustainable areas and creating opportunities. Once we look at the city's elements as opportunities to create beauty through design, we begin to find solutions.
That is urban permaculture.
If you want to learn sustainable practices join our Soulful Coffee and Cacao Retreats. Apply Now
Permaculture Heroes Vol. 1
Watch Video.
Cuetzalan A Magical Town.
Watch Video.
Tosepan Titataniske: An example of Sustainable Living and Cooperation.
Watch Video.
Comentários