Suburban Renewal - One backyard at a time

Earlier this week we learned from Bill Mollison of the Permaculture Research Institute that permaculture is a design system which incorporates Nature's principles to support human life without degrading habitat and ecosystems for all other life forms.

In this vid by Peak Moment TV: Community responses for a changing energy future, host Janaia Donaldson visits Jan Spencer in his Eugene, Oregon, permaculture home and garden.



What did you think of Spencer's use of urbanite? We're seeing this term more and more for concrete, steel and wood mined from urban lots, buildings and highways as the old is torn out and replaced. Keep this in mind when we get to the discussion, way down the road, about whether the world of Ordinary has always existed as we find it now, or whether villagers learned from a past much like our present. If their society evolved from one something like ours, what did they do with the cities and highways? Where did all those buildings and the stuff inside them go?

We're in the garden of Eden

The only job we have left on earth that can express our humanity, is to return other species to their place, and take our place, which is a small place in the total system.

Bill Mollison

In parts 5 and 6 of In danger of falling food, Bill Mollison takes us from a rain forest to an African desert plateau nearly completely denuded of vegetation, then to Crystal Waters Permaculture Village, and finally to a 67 year old garden he calls the garden of Eden.

Note: This is a continuation of the hour-long film In grave danger of falling food by 220 Productions. The segments stop and start mid-sentence. See May 19 and 20 posts for parts 1 and 2, 3 and 4, respectively.

[Permaculture] has to be the mainstream agriculture of any future society.

Bill Mollison

People say to me, will permaculture work? I say, will plants grow?

Bill Mollison

I give gratitude to 220 Productions for making this film available on YouTube and to Bill Mollison and the others of the Permaculture Research Institute for teaching us all how to recognize our place in the natural system. I give gratitude as well for their showing us how to build a world much like the Village of Ordinary.

Next: We'll take a break from the world as garden and I'll introduce you to two amazing men who sat across the table from one another, made eye contact, and shook hands. One of them spent 25 years in jail for shooting to kill the other. He nearly succeeded.