Permaculture
©GaiaCreations2008
Call us today for a design consultation with Stephanie Ladwig-Cooper, certified Permaculture Design Consultant (PDC)
530-828-6390
Permaculture Design Consultant and co-owner of Gaia Creations, Stephanie Ladwig-Cooper, is offering permaculture design consultations.
Contact us for details at 530-828-6390
Gaia Creations Permaculture Services:
- Backyard Permaculture (or Permaculture for Zone 1 and 2)
- Consultations for your apartment, rural backyard or urban landscape.
- Site analysis/design including specific strategies for increasing the function, efficiency and beauty of your home and/or land.
- Permaculture design which is in tune with the specific needs of the Client(s) as a whole person/family and the needs of the property as a productive ecosystem.
- Educational outreach including community based workshops teaching permaculture ethics, principles and applications.
EARTH CARE PEOPLE CARE FAIR SHARE
ETHICS:
1. Earth Care Care of the earth -ensure abundant resources for survival and continuation of ALL life on earth
2. People Care Care of people -ensure equal access to resources by all people
3. Fair share Share the surplus -share any surplus and ensure limits to population and consuption
PRINCIPLES:
- Work with Nature: rather than against natural processes and assist rather than impede natural developments.
- Everything works both ways: or the problem is the solution. How we view things make them helpful or not; think outside the box.
- Least change for the greatest affect: storing water in the earth, work a source not a sink of energy
- Yield of a system is theoretically unlimited: the only limit on the number of uses of a resource possible within a system is in the limit of the information and the imagination of the designer
- Everything gardens: everything is connected and has an effect on its environment in some way
- Cyclical opportunities: every cyclical event increases the opportunity for yield to be increased. Increasing cycling is to increase yield.
- Stacking functions: planned redundancy, all functions are supported by many elements while each element performs many functions.
- Diversity creates stability: stability is created by a number of beneficial connections between diverse beings.
- Information as a resource: information is the critical potential resource, share it
- Relative location: through proper placement of elements we can save time and energy
Permaculture Directive (from the Designer's Manual)
The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.
MAKE IT NOW.
APPLY THE PRINCIPLES:
Work with Nature: gravity, solar, native species, location, wind, etc.
Everything works both ways: slugs are not the problem in a garden it's the lack of ducks
Least change for the greatest affect: storing water in the earth in the most efficient places possible for maximum water availability over an indefinite period of time
Yield of a system is theoretically unlimited: attitudinal principle of thoughtful research and an open mind to govern our designs while applauding growth or expansion of the original idea.
Everything gardens: rabbits garden by burrowing in the soil and displacing worms and beetles
Cyclical opportunities: chickens eat insects and plants, they poop, we gather the manure and use it to make methane to power our stove to cook the egg harvested from the chickens
Stacking functions: the woodshed that provides shelter for fuel, is covered by a vine that feeds us fruit, flows water in the rain down a cistern that is used to water flowers that are pollinated by bees that in turn make honey to sell at market -all from a woodshed
Diversity creates stability: fruit tree diversity for climate pattern changes combined with nurse species, species specific plant guilds and water harvesting earthworks will overtime become self regulating ecosystems
Information as a resource: sharing information only broadens the potential for a just and sustainable world
Relative location: south facing slope (aspect) increases heat absorption in cold climate gardens extending the growing season for food production, warming homes/greenhouses and more
"Permaculture philosophy is one of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation, rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions rather than asking only one yield of them; of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolution." -Bill Mollison
Spiral Garden over sheet mulched lawn. Planted this spring in 3 Sisters Guild.
"Order is found in things working beneficially together. It is not the forced condition of neatness, tidiness, and straightness all of which are, in design or energy terms, disordered. True order may lie in apparent confusion; it is the acid test of entropic order to test the system for yield. If it consumes energy beyond product, it is in disorder. If it produces energy to or beyond consumption, it is ordered."
-Bill Mollison Permaculture: A Designers' Manual