Tasmania has been referred to the spiritual home of Permaculture, as it was on the slopes of Mt Wellington, overlooking Hobart, that Bill Mollison and David Holmgren were to co-create Permaculture One in the mid 1970's
The Garden's design principles were directly influenced by Bill Mollison's Permaculture: A Designers' Manual, so it was no surprise in a January visit to beautiful Tasmania, Permaculture practices were in action.
A late afternoon in the Royal Hobart Botanical Gardens...
Apple tree espalier without wire support
Weighing down of apple tree branches with sand bags
Herb roof tool shed
Woven stick edging for retaining soil in the herb bed
Microclimate: bananas growing against a north facing brickwall
Around the sleepy village of Deloraine...
Self serve roadside organics
Bee boxes in the Manuka (tea tree) forests of the Tarkine
Ancient Myrtle forest of the Julius River (temperature rainforest)
When you can draw clean water from the rivers and creeks all over the island, purchase all your seasonal fresh organic produce from roadside stalls and find tranquil, pristine natural beauty every night to camp, you just may have discovered paradise.
Since no one has commented, then let me be the first.
ReplyDeleteThe saying 'don't put the cart before the horse'comes to mind. Espaliation of trees dates back to Roman times. Weighting down fruit trees to ease harvesting is an acient growing technique. Century old examples of turf or living roofs can be found all over Northern Europe. Hedgelaying which can begin with 'woven sticks' but ultimately results in a living fence is a traditional practice in England going back hundreds of years...........The Royal Hobart Botanical Garden folk would surely tell you the same.
These ancient growing techniques were not invented by practitioners of Permaculture, but rather have been adopted into Permaculture practice.
Permaculture has cherry picked and synthesised many of the most valuable growing techniques across time and space and put them to good use. But let's not fall into the trap of historical revisionism simply to feed our egos and apparent need to be the 'most' relavent system going. The proof is in the pudding (as it is said). Permaculture is a powerful tool for meeting human needs without destroying our evironment...we don't need to rewrite history for this to be self evident.