(1) Care for the Earth
(2) Care for People
(3) Redistribute Surplus

These three ethics have always been at the heart of Permaculture thinking and teaching. At least, that is what folks in the Permaculture movement claim – including me. They are hard to disagree with too strenuously, no? This is partially because they so vague. This abstraction is part of their strength – they are widely appealing, and serve as a commonsense and positive entry point to draw people into a conversation.

The trick is, their abstraction is also part of their weakness. I have often found that the Ethics are taught in a watered-down and feel-good style, that does more to create good vibes and excitement than it does to challenge students, or help designers navigate the sometimes-murky waters of choosing clients, partners, and projects. If they get reduced to a story about tending our garden, then sharing our kale with our friends, and then composting our “surplus” kitchen scraps back into the garden, then what does the movement really gain by having ethics at all? Other than to say – in Permaculture, it is so easy to be ethical!

The way I think about the Ethics – and the way I train future designers – revolves around the idea of putting some meat – and maybe even teeth – behind the Ethics. That “care” is a tricky term, after all – it can refer to emotion alone. Like: “In my heart, I truly care for the Earth, and so I shed a single tear every time I turn the key and start up my Hummer.” I prefer to think that, as used in the Ethics, it actually refers to the action of caring – of taking care of something. So the question becomes, how do we know when we are taking care of the earth, of people?

We can and should choose indicators and benchmarks, to help us know when we are following the Ethics we espouse, and when we are coming up short. Specific measures are up to the designer, but there are a few questions that I think the Ethics demand that we ask – and ask repeatedly.

Care for the Earth: What, really, is our measure of ecosystem health? The most popular in the Pc movement seem to be biodiversity and energy capture, but I would easily accept topsoil depth, presence of top predators, decreasing levels of nutrient or contaminant runoff in surface waters, structural/functional diversity, etc. What matters to me is not which indicator is used, but that there IS one. We need ways to measure our results – and to see if we measuring up.

Care for People: What is our measure for social health? A trickier question, even, than measuring ecosystem health, but we still have to actually think about it if we want to accomplish it. The questions that emerge from this Ethic are:

How is this project helping this community USE AND CONTROL it’s own resources sustainably – or regeneratively? How is this project helping a community take control of its own destiny – to self-determine?

It may not be as easy to come up with a number or a measure for this, but I want to hear you (and me) at least make an honest and compelling case for how our work is doing this.

Redistribute Surplus: Trickier still, this third ethic, and most often neglected. And exactly as crucial as the other two. This one merits a little digression.

Most introductory Permaculture presentations start with an “Evidence” section – a presentation of the evidence that we need to be doing something different – that we can’t go on as we have been. That’s classic Pc, as many folks are aware – to spend just a few minutes on doom and gloom, and then focus on solutions for the rest of the time. I present the usual littany of bummers for my evidence section – deforestation, soil loss, climate, peak, etc. etc., and then as the last item, I put up a slide on “Inequality.” I use this graphic for the slide:

Source: contexts.org/graphicsociology/files/2009/05/conley_champagne_distribution.png

I leave this slide up, while we have a little discussion on “Why is inequality an ecological problem?” The discussion that follows is generally very productive.

My own answers:
(1) Because of the environmental EFFECTS of inequality: poor communities are unable to defend themselves against toxic contamination, and have no buffer against instability in the economic and ecological systems, so bear disproportionate effects – especially disproportionate when compared to comparatively tiny ecological footprint of these same communities.

(2) Because inequality is an environmental DRIVER: as long as their are people making decisions about production and extraction who are making a killing from it, and who can also shield themselves indefinitely from its effects, while at the same time those who do the work and actually bear the brunt of industrial fallout don’t have any decision making power about production and extraction, there will be no sustainability. Research supports this statistically: in counties, states, and nations (3 different studies) the more inequality, the worse environmental outcomes. When the benefits go to power-holding decision-makers, and the detriments go anywhere else, why would we even expect the system to change?

(3) And finally, because it’s just freaking ecological, isn’t it? The movement of energy and matter through complex living systems is the stuff of ecology, and we can use that lens, and those tools, to understand it and to change it.

SO, back to the 3rd Ethic. The way I see it, the question that the 3rd Ethic “Redistribute Surplus” demands of us is this:

How is my work helping, in some way, to begin to flatten the terrible mountain of inequality that lies between us and true sustainability?

Or, to reverse the metaphor…

How is my work helping to fill the chasm that separates the 80% world from the 20% world, that MUST be filled to regenerate our culture and our biosphere?

These are the questions that I try (and sometimes fail) to put at the root of my Permaculture practice – including design, research, and education. These are the questions that I try and inculcate in the slowly growing horde of amazing, inspiring change-agents, that I am privileged and amazed to call students. These are the questions I would like us to be asking each other all the time, and asking of the projects and partners we consider supporting – especially but not only the ones we call Permaculture.

In this light, the Liberation Ecology curriculum is all about an in-depth, design-driven exploration of the Ethics. What does it take, after all, to create a project that can answer this set of questions substantively, and in the affirmative? It takes more than the Principle of Multifunctionality and the Scale of Permanence, I figure. I’m pretty sure of this, actually! If we want to build a movement that works – that gets us the world we want to live in – then I think it’s (past) time to put some more of that critical design thinking that we pride ourselves on into the design of the movement itself. Leavening the feel-good and inclusive nature of the Ethics – with some provocative questions – is one way to do it.

This past Sunday, a knowledgeable and enthusiastic group of gardeners joined Adam, Kenzie, and I for the installation of Denver’s very first Forest Garden at Ekar Farm, a five-acre urban farm enjoying its first season of growth. The workshop was meant to not only teach the principles and practice of Forest Gardening, but to install one as well.

We began as most garden projects do – by pulling weeds. We then began digging out sunken beds – a key permaculture technique in a dry climate like Denver’s, where we need to use every technique possible to slow, spread, and sink water that enters the garden site. We dug down about 6 inches and piled the excavated dirt onto the pathways to build them up. With the whole group of 25 or so participants working, we were able to dig out the beds and build up the paths within an hour or so.

The next step was digging little holes for our larger woody shrubs, which we wanted to secure in the ground before mulching. The lesson learned in this step was that holes do not need to be very deep if digging into an already sunken bed. Most of us had to refill our holes quite a bit to secure that the top of the root-ball would only be equal to the top layer of mulch. Some shrubs planted included: nanking cherry, western sand cherry, lead plant, rocky mountain bee plant, sea buckthorn, serviceberry, and siberian pea shrub.

With shrubs secure, it was time to begin the mulching process. As with any sheet mulching, we sourced what we had on site: cardboard, compost, and straw. We laid our weed barrier (cardboard) down first, then did three alternate layers of compost and straw with a final layer of topsoil. Kenzie watered the mulch consistently as it was constructed and while remaining plants were planted. The day was finished once the final layer of straw was placed and the drip line wound through the Garden.

Time and time again I am amazed at the power of community. The rapidity to which we weeded, dug, planted, watered, mulched, planted, and mulched was rather mind boggling and completely owed to the willingness and strength of our twenty workshop students. Beyond being a day of learning and accomplishment it was also clearly a day of laughter, joking, and play. The premise of the workshop was to combine lecture with hands on work and I believe there is no better way to learn. We alternated between feasting on the many yummy snacks provided by participants and Ekar farm under the shade and working under the hot sun. Lectures consisted of principles behind permaculture, proper planting techniques, sheet mulching techniques, and plant and species selections. A handout detailing the design process was distributed to participants and the facilitator’s receipted feedback. Permaculture does not happen without community, that is why gatherings such as this past Gardening like Nature workshop are essential to the cultivation of greater local independence. It was a true gift to be able to work with so many motivated people and to help people remember such a natural and beautiful was of farming.

The past six months for me has been a complete immersion in the world of permaculture. I received my PDC in January with very little awareness of the art, and then moved to the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute, where I interned from March to June. Three weeks ago I made the transition from the remote CRMPI site to the city of Denver to work with Wild Green Yonder Permaculture and other Urban Agriculture enthusiasts. The reason for this move lies in firm beliefs of the importance of food justice for all people, the importance of healing people and places through working with soil and plants, and the importance of educating people. The recent transition has really rounded out my understanding of permaculture and the past three weeks have been full of inspiring conversations with many people working to counter a failed system that drives the mainstream.

There is immense potential for food production within the city of Denver as well as all cities. Closing loops by tapping into the waste stream of the city provides an abundance of organic materials as well as food and building materials. There is also an abundance of people in the city. This means there are a lot of people to feed, but it also means there are a lot of people willing to work. The key is education, especially of the youth. The GrowHaus is currently running a summer program for teens teaching about gardening, healthy foods, and healthy lifestyles. So far the classes have been an incredible success and continue to improve as the students become more enthusiastic about their future with food awareness.  People from all backgrounds recognize the benefits of a healthy diet but most people are denied that option.

A favorite project of mine that I have found in the city is SAME Café. SAME is an acronym for So All May Eat. It was started by a young couple Brad and Libby who spent years volunteering in soup kitchens. They noticed how these meals attracted only a certain group in need and desired creating a place where ALL people gathered to eat healthy, local, and primarily organic meals. The entire café is on donation basis and accepts work trade for meals. It is projects like these that truly inspire me and are needed to teach people about the importance of localizing our businesses, feeding people, and creating community. Another fantastic movement is the Denver Handmade Homemade Market. Two of these markets have taken place and they are a blast! The purpose of the market is to support people in their passions and hobbies on a home scale level. Crafts, produce, lotions, teas, granola, bread, cheese, and even haircuts are made available for trade or suggested donation. People are incredibly talented and should be allowed to pursue these passions sustainably. I love the market because it inspires people to create and share with each other and also demonstrates the non-dependence on corporate production and destruction. The city is an extremely important place for permaculture enthusiasts to be because permaculture does not exist without community and in this environment we can support each other in all our projects. The Salon of Urban Permaculture is a monthly potluck and discussion for people interested in farming, gardening, permaculture, community… anything. Two meetings have been successfully held with great talks and delicious food. We are hoping for these gatherings to continue to grow in the months to come. It is my deepest hope that we are in the beginnings of a new world and it is very exciting to be able to assist this movement and work with so many people positively working for change.

Salon of Urban Permaculture: “Local Abundance”

Saturday, June 12, 5:30-8:30 PM

City of Cuernavaca Park, 20th and Platte

Free

The Salon of Urban Permaculture is a monthly gathering focused on building skills and community around permaculture in Denver. Each SoUP gathering showcases a different urban permaculture site and includes an informal talk, activity or workshop based around that month’s theme. People of all levels of familiarity with Permaculture are encouraged to attend.

Last month’s gathering drew over 35 people for an electric discussion centered around “Becoming Native to This Place”. This month’s SoUP is themed “Local Abundance”, and will take place this Saturday, June 12th at 5:30 PM along the Platte River, at Cuernevaca Park on 20th and Platte street. The discussion will be facilitated by recent PDC graduate Marcel Templet. Bring a small blanket and a little basket of goodies to eat/share!

Permaculture at the Home Scale and Public Consultation

Sunday, June 13th 12:30-2:30 PM

4046 S. Quebec St. Denver, CO 80237

$10 suggested donation

Curious to know what the Wild Green Yonder’s home consultation service looks like? Want to get a few tips for how to apply permaculture thinking in your home/yard? This Sunday, we’re opening up one of our consultations to the permaculture public at the home of Jeri Ho in Southeast Denver. We’ll be discussing the essentials of permaculture at the home scale, assessing Jeri’s goals for the site, walking the property, developing specific recommendations of what to plant and build, and suggesting resources for further research.

Denver Handmade Homegrown Market Club
Friday, June 25th 6:00-9:00 PM
Green Spaces, 1368 26th St (between Walnut and Larimer)
Free to attend, $15 to vend

The Denver Handmade Homemade Market is an alternative market for food/goods produced in local homes and backyards. The first market was a smashing success, with everything from hand-knit baby clothes to delicious fresh bread up for sale and barter. The next one, on June 25th, is sure to be even more bustling! Sign up to sell, or just come to meet Denver’s up-and-coming food entrepreneurs and sample their wares.

Want to move beyond organic gardening to the next level of sustainability?

Pssst – it’s not too late to plant!

Got a late start on the garden this year? Not to worry! There are still plenty of seeds that would love to meet the soil one of these warm June evenings. Beans, Beets, Chard, Corn, Eggplant, New Zealand Spinach, Squash, Peppers, Sweet Potato and Tomato all make great June starts! For more details about what makes sense to plant right now, check out WGY’s updated Front Range Planting Calendar.

- Adam

(View full-size image here)

Human environmental interaction, public health and accessibility of technology are some of the most formidable social problems of the twenty-first century. Community gardens and metropolitan agriculture initiatives lower the rate at which food and supplies must be introduced into a city, provide an abundance of nourishing produce, and empower individuals to become engaged citizens.

The last two decades have also ushered in the creation of faster, lighter, more agile, ever connected, and cheaper technologies. Digital media offer the possibility for new realms of public discourse and participation. To optimistically read these changes, posits new realms of digital democratic public dialogue. Despite technologies’ reduction in price, not everyone can afford them. In addition, our nascent digital devices are worthless without ubiquitous connectivity, or the necessary media literacy to effectively and critically engage with media. The result of the digital divide is a discourse, which has not reached its full potential.

The Digital Garden on Leetsdale is an experimental space that works to combine the positive environmental and individually empowering effects of a community garden with the discursive potential of digital media. The goal will be that digital installations like a wireless hub, computing lab, online communal space (content management system) and various thematic digital art pieces, in combination with a working sustainability park and community garden, will bolster dialogue. Sustainable structures, serving as common area and storage will be functional testaments to environmentally friendly building techniques. The conversational potential of this juxtaposition promises to be beneficial and unique. Topics like sustainable design, networked civic engagement, and urban reclamation will all arise in context of the green space.

The project will work with Kinda Collective – a Denver area artists’ collective – and their immediate community to build a teeming collaborative gardening environment that is informed by the digital media. The gardens will improve the urban environment, provide fresh, locally grown foods, bring the diverse groups of the neighborhood together, and empower its participants.

In combination with this person-to-person and environmental interaction, the digital media will grant anyone opportunities to bridge the site-specific conversations into the digital realm, where greater human/environmental themes might be discussed. The free connectivity, computers, and literacy training through on-site classes and the community website will ensure that no one is left out of the dialogue. The digital art installations will pose questions about human-environmental interaction, though sensorial experiences.

The space will also work to demonstrate alternative lifestyle, building, and food production practices to the community by example. The weekly gardening routine and exposure to the space will suggest a lifestyle symbiotically connected to the environment. The straw bale buildings and construction workshops will teach beneficial home sustainability tactics. The permaculture-steeped community gardens will inform the community about new modalities of agriculture.

Free programming throughout the life of the project will include topics like gardening, sustainable living, environmental, community organizing, digital art, and technological literacy. These elements will make the sustainability park a thriving and vital community resource.

The Digital Garden on Leetsdale has two events coming up that are free and open to the public:

Community Meeting

March 31st 2010, 7pm

4500 Leetsdale

Join us for a community meeting to learn more about the space, discuss what you could get out of the garden and what’s at stake for the local community. Garden plot and permaculture guild applications will be available. There will also be free dinner.

Sheet Mulching Workshop

April 10th 2010, 10am

4500 Leetsdale

Learn the basics of sheet mulching first hand as we prepare the Digital Garden for planting. We will transition the workshop into a potluck BBQ and lawn games as the day progresses.

For more information, visit digitalgardenleetsdale.com.

Thursday, 3/18, 6:00 – 8:30 PM

Green Spaces Denver, 1368 26th St

6:00 pm “Zero Forks” Potluck (Finger Food/BYO napkin), live music

7:15pm Permaculture Panel

RSVP on facebook

Heard about permaculture but not quite sure what it is? Want to connect with other people practicing permaculture in the area? Join us for a potluck and panel discussion with some of the area’s premier practitioners of this unique system of sustainable design. The teaching team at Willow Way Wellness, a permaculture site in North Boulder, will provide an introduction to permaculture and discuss some of the some of the cutting-edge projects they’re involved with in the Denver/Boulder area.

Topics will include:
~ Upcoming Permaculture classes and design courses in the Front Range
~ Ecological building
~ Extending the growing season
~ Purification of water & soil using biological processes
~ Beneficial uses of Fungi
~ Permaculture business models
~ Connecting with plant wisdom
~ The Permaculture design proces

Fortunately, there’s a ton of information out there about how to get the best yield with a minimum of maintenance and resource use. Unfortunately, that info isn’t always organized in the best way for visual learners like myself – so I’ve decided to create a couple tools to simplify the garden planning process.

The first is a Denver-specific planting calendar for some of the most common garden vegetables. It’s intended to make the often-arduous process of figuring out which seeds to start indoors and when to plant them a little bit easier.

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The second is a web of companion plants to aid in designing polycultures – groupings of species that mutually aid each other. The arrows in the web point towards the plants that are helped, and the thickness of the line indicates the number of sources I found that mentioned a positive association. Red lines are plants that are suggested NOT to plant together.

Enjoy – and don’t forget to check out the Wild Green Yonder’s two-part Ecological Garden Design class this March for many more in-depth resources and ideas!

I have a love/hate relationship with my tree lawn.  It used to be  a 15 x 24 foot strip of weedy, sun-baked, and compacted land that neither the City nor I wanted to spend any time maintaining.  My lady Sabrina and I don’t really do much out there.  Our relationship to this lawn is predominantly visual: we’re almost always just looking at the space and not walking around within it.

My first attempt at landscaping the lawn was a half-hearted shot at making it into a wildflower meadow.  I bought some yarrow, grama grass, lamb’s ear, and blanket flower, planting them at intervals amongst the weeds.  I bootlegged and planted some sunflowers from a highway median to see if they’d like it better in our tree lawn.  After planting, I just let the weeds go, and to be honest, it was a beautiful front lawn, even if it was more wild than flower.  The weeds filled in around the plantings nicely, and created a very lush habitat for hundreds of spiders, grasshoppers, and crickets.  We had a green, healthy, if a bit alternative front lawn that I could look at with a smile.

Then the City inspector came and cited us for having our weeds taller than 6 inches.  I debated whether or not to dispute their definition of “weed”, knowing full well that any definition presented would be easy to circumvent.  In the end, though, I chose to sheet mulch the lawn to bring it into compliance. Sheet mulching, also known as lasagna composting, is a permaculture technique of building soil in place by putting down a weed barrier, layering various components of organic matter and letting them decompose naturally. I’d heard that it was a great way to bring a disturbed or neglected area to life in a short period of time, and was curious to see for myself what the process was like.

After a quick phone conversation with the inspector, who was very pleasant, I had some basic guidelines for what was allowed out in the lawn.  It’s a pretty simple matrix: keep the streets and sidewalks clear, make sure it looks as if it’s maintained, and keep the vegetation low enough around the edges that car doors can be opened without crashing through undergrowth.  Fair enough.

1. Mow and edge

I mowed the lawn down to almost bare soil around the plantings and rounded up the materials I’d need.  Adam Brock tipped me off to a pile of brick rubble in his neighborhood that was waiting to be disposed of, and after hauling some home and laying it out, I dug out a bit of a trench to hold the bricks on end as a border for the mulched area.  We didn’t want any of the mulch spilling out into the street or onto the sidewalk, and the brick serves as our woodchip dam in addition to adding a bit of urban flavor to the area.

2. Weed barrier and carbon layer

Next, I had an opportunity to use some weed-blocking fabric that we had leftover from another project.  Sabrina had acquired several garbage bags full of shredded office paper and some mulched up leaves, which form the bulk of the mulch for the project.  After cutting the brick trench out, I started spreading the office paper down, mixing in lots of the leaf matter to a depth of 3-4 inches, and then covering it up with the fabric.  I cut around the existing plantings and left room to develop small plant guilds around them next year.  The fabric lasted longer than I expected, going all around the perimeter, and even a strip into the center of the lawn.

3.Top Mulch

The next day, each layer of mulch got a thorough soaking to help the breakdown of the materials. Our neighbor’s landlord had a few cubic yards of woodchips to get rid of, and this is what I used for the top layer.  I hauled it over in our recycling bin, and laid it down about 2 inches thick on top of everything else The look of the finished lawn is quite sparse – I’d like to eventually figure out how to integrate something edible.

Reflections

Of note here is that this process differs from most recommendations for sheet-mulching in one significant way: I have no compost/organic matter layer.  I’ve instead opted to use the (hopefully) decaying weeds and leaves as a green mulch, along with all the waste paper and cardboard.  Some may cringe at my use of office paper, but it is a significant carbon source in my compost pile, and breaks down very well there.  Most printed materials now use soy-based inks, so I’m not concerned about contamination.

Also notable is that this project cost exactly nothing but time and labor for me to do.  All the materials were either on hand (the fabric), reclaimed (the brick), gifted (the woodchips), or waste (the paper and cardboard).  It fits with the character of the house and the rest of the landscape, and will never need mowing or watering.  It’s also interesting that these projects are typically tried in the spring months, but without a ready supply of leaf mulch blowing around and accumulating everywhere, the project may have been more difficult.  Something to keep in mind if you’re planning on waiting until spring.

Sure, I’d rather be biking to work in a t-shirt than a down coat, and I’ll take peaches fresh off the branch over homemade preserves any day. But when I’m surrounded by a culture addicted to perpetual growth, the end of the harvest gives me a much-needed reminder that contraction is just as important as expansion. Indeed, it’s the way all life operates. Without dead leaves rotting on the ground, the soil would eventually be robbed of its nutrients. Without fallen trees, there would be no light on the forest floor for new seedlings to sprout. And without a nightly dose of sleep, our bodies and minds would lose touch with reality and crash.

Still, as an entrepreneur, putting that understanding into practice can be mighty tough. When I’m on a roll with the Wild Green Yonder, I’m almost constantly pushing past my own limits: sending one more email to that awesome contact I just met at a conference, composing one more tweet about a revolutionary gardening technique, promoting my classes in one more place.

To be sure, success in a new venture depends on being ridiculously dedicated and thorough. But paradoxically, I’ve found that my biggest insights, my most creative moments, come when I force myself to unplug. Like fallen leaves breaking down into rich humus, the fertile grounds of innovation are only nurtured when we drop our temporary commitments, take a deep breath, and reflect on the larger picture of which our current situation is a part.

To me, that larger picture would seem to place our cultural zeitgeist in an October of sorts, as well: though we continue to reap the fruits of the great fossil fuel harvest, the first of chills of a different season are here. Does the coming winter of energy descent spell the end of the good times? Certainly not. It merely invites us to use our foresight and maturity to with the roll with the changing season, and preserve the precarious abundance we’ve gathered for the future.

In the meantime, though, there’s still leaves on the trees, and the sun is warm on my shoulders. I’m called to put away my laptop, take a deep breath – and marvel at the bounty.