By Peter Veeken, President – Permaculture Yarra Valley As I write this, we are nearing the end of Permaculture Week 2024 and have had a busy schedule of events to promote permaculture to the wider community. This is the fifth year Permaculture Yarra Valley has run Permaculture Week and the first year is has gone beyond the Yarra Ranges. Events kicked off on Friday 15th and concluded on Sunday 24th March (which is actually more than a week!) In the Yarra Valley we held 18 events starting with the Ecotopia Festival at Ecoss followed by site visits, workshops, a film screening, a seminar on Growi ..read more

Dear Permaculture Australia member, As a current financial member, you are invited to the Permaculture Australia Annual General Meeting (AGM) to be held on Saturday 27th April 2024, 1pm EST (Melbourne / Sydney Time) online via Zoom. Links for associated documents are available here AGM AGENDA 2023 Annual Report Attendance via Zoom – Attendance via zoom is welcome, the zoom meeting will be activated right on 1pm. You will be required to pre register, for attendance purposes. Please register HERE You will need to pre register to be sent the live link. Nominations to the Board – Members can nomin ..read more

Summary of talk at a forum held at Lawson by BMET in October 2023 By Rosemary Morrow As we take on more and more technology, everything from our phones, cars, sports, meetings online, and work at home, we also are teaching our children to be a new people: a people who cannot listen to the land, nor see it in trouble. We don’t know where and how to intervene to mend, support and work with the land to restore it. And yet, we are the species who could do this special, and I call. It is sacred work. A life spent mainly inside with ‘screens’ creates a glass wall between us and the land we live on ..read more

By Pru Saimoun While I pawed through and pored over, the alternative ideas in my parents’ Earth Garden, Down To Earth, and similar magazines, in my teens, I have only recently put some of the permaculture principles into the creation of an abundant oasis. A year ago, I moved to a very cheap cottage on an almost bare block in a little town in the NSW Riverina. I had a vision of a food forest based on some of the permaculture gardening concepts I had used in patches in other gardens, and on reading and observing. A year on, and I am beginning to understand the reality of allowing plants to find ..read more

Thanks to financial support from individuals, families, businesses and fundraisers, in 2023 Permaculture Australia’s Permafund funded community projects by nine organisations around the world. The Kitgum Permaculture Practitioners’ Association in Uganda, East Africa, received a grant of AU$2,000 to offer its deaf community a permaculture design course {PDC} and syntropic agroforestry training. The objectives of the project were to equip participants with basic permaculture and syntrophic agroforestry knowledge and best practices. The mix of trainees included youth, the deaf, single mothers, sc ..read more

By Julie Johns Northern Rivers, NSW. I purchased three WaterUps Oasis wicking beds after pricing a DIY option and realising these are quite good value and probably easier to construct. My husband put together the raised bed component, the first one took longer than the subsequent two but they were not too difficult. He used the paper instructions, and there is also a video you can follow. I used the video to install the waterproof lining and WaterUps cells, this was quite straightforward, you just need a sharp knife to cut out the hole for the water inlet, it took a bit of work with my blunt S ..read more

In their successful application to the 2023 Permafund grant round, Anam Cara House in the Australian  town of Colac, Victoria, described its main purpose as  “To provide the South West Victorian community with excellence in respite and end of life care within a home-like environment; embracing respect and compassion for all people.”  They explained “We operate a day hospice program, 4 days a week. There are many participants who have a life-long love of the outdoors and gardening so we often do outdoor garden activities with them.  Day respite at the hospice provides a vita ..read more

This month we lost a Permaculture elder, author, teacher & educator. Dr Ross Mars was many of those thing’s but he was also a husband, father, pop, brother, uncle, friend and mentor to many. Not many people know, but we actually have Ross’ wife Jenny to thank for bringing permaculture to Ross. It was her who first did a Permaculture Design Course and suggested Ross do one too. The rest, as they say, is history. Ross’ contributions to permaculture were numerous, and if we tried to list them all, we’d be here until tomorrow and would probably still forget some. Ross’ involvement in Permacu ..read more

Elmer Sayre of Water, Agroforestry, Nutrition and Development Foundation in the Philippines has given us WAND’s one-year-on update.  The project is in Naawan Highlands, Mindanao (the large southern island of the Philippines), where the aim was to establish a 3000 seeds and seedling nursery and implement 2 permaculture design courses for the local communities.  The seedling nursery is flourishing with timber tree seedlings and high-value fruit trees like jackfruit, durian and rambutan. These will help restore the degraded lands and provide income opportunities for the farmers.  E ..read more

The Democratic Republic of Congo remains one of the richest in terms of natural resources yet is still one of the poorest countries in the world. Its colonial history was savage.  There was a failure to hand over any semblance of administrative and executive governance during the country’s pathway to Independence in 1960. The result is a tragic trail of dictators who, through corruption, have prospered while their people have struggled. It’s in this environment that Permafund’s grant program has entered its 17th country by partnering with an NGO known as the Union of Women for Rural ..read more