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Permaculture Course

October 28, 2017 by Organic Welltree

River, River, where do you go?
With your water, the colour of tea
underneath your stoney bed
do you flow to the wide green sea?

No! Said the river, I flow inland
Deep on deep beneath the rocks and the sand.
Under the Alder and the Willow tree
where the wild people will find me.

Australian Song, composer unknown

This is the song we sang at on the last day of the course. We stood in a circle under trees and on the banks of the River Earn. James Chapman taught us this nice song and we sang it together. Then we got our certification about for the successful completion of a Permaculture Design Course. It was wonderful to sing at this place mean there while the birds tweeted and the river rushed. We had two very interesting weeks together and all were a little bit sad that the time came to say good bye.

In the last those two weeks we learned a lot about the design process of gardens and fields. Usually we began every morning at 09:30am with the plant of the day and learned so? something about elder, moos?, chickweed, hawthorn and many other plants. Then we got instructions about the design process like the survey, brief, goals, aims, ideas and research. In workshops and small groups we created some models and samples about these themes.

Important aspects were the permaculture ethics:

  • earth care
  • people care and
  • fair shares.

The elements shall be the base for all permaculture projects.

During the course we visited the “Apple Man“ near Bankfoot. He is passionate about growing many old and new varieties of apples trees in a permaculture way. We are sure that we’ll buy our apples trees from him!

We also visited Tombreck Farm at Loch Tay. They use Permaculture Principles and have recently become a Scottish Permaculture Land Centre. They rebuilt many of their farm buildings and built some new homes with natural materials such as straw, Douglas Fir timber, and sheep’s wool. The buildings are fitted with solar panels and eco friendly.

On three occasions we visited Comrie Croft and Tomnah’a Garden. Sam of Tomnah’a Garden gave a lecture about fungi breeding and fungi as natural fertiliser. We enjoyed the guided tour by the manager of Comrie Croft and we had an opportunity to see the original map of Comrie Croft ground from the 18th century. As a final task we designed a garden and a field in a permaculture manner. We were in the group that designed a field at Comrie Croft, the other group designed a garden at Combruith House. We presented the results after two days of work to Sam from Tomnah’a Garden.

We had two very interesting weeks and we leaned a lot about permaculture which will be helpful in designing our own garden.

Here are some links regarding Permaculture:

James Chapman Permaculture expert, book author and courses

Tombreck Farm Loch Tay

Comrie Croft

Permaculture Association UK

Graham Bell Expert in Permaculture, courses, book author and plant sell

Sepp Holzer Permaculture pioneer, book author, project advice, courses, international lectures