Sustainable and resilient solutions to diverse garden and landscaping challenges? You’ve probably heard of this before?
Words such as circular economy, food forests, agro-forestry, and sustainable urban farming are currently trending!

Here at Michael Lowe Designs I try to incorporate most, if not all of these principles into my design approach. I believe that in order to strive for and maintain resilience in today’s climate, we need to try & integrate at least 3 of these principles into our designs.

Just as nature relies on many integrated circular systems, so do our gardens! If we disregard this fact, we find pests and diseases tend to exploit the resulting weaknesses!

You may have even heard of the acronym O.B.R.E.D.I.M?
This is one of the most important permacultural tools to carry with you in your RT (Resilient Toolbox)!

O.B.R.E.D.I.M. stands for:

O = Observation
B = Boundaries
R = Resources
E = Evaluation
D = Design
I = Implemenation
M = Maintenance

What is permaculture?

The Basics

Permaculture combines three key aspects:

1. An ethical framework

2. Understanding how nature works

3. A design approach

This unique combination provides an ethical framework to design regenerative systems at all scales, from home to bioregions.

The word ‘permaculture’ comes originally from permanent and agriculture i.o.w. permanent agriculture. It is about living lightly on the planet and making sure that we can sustain human activities for future generations, in harmony with nature.

Permanence is not about everything staying the same.

1. It is about stability, deepening and enriching soils, harvesting & purefying water.
2. It’s about regenerative thriving communities in self-reliant biodiverse spaces.
3. Its about practicing a more sustainable form of agriculture, social justice, peace and abundance.

There are many other tools that can be used in the Permacultural design process such as P.A.S.T.E. , S.W.O.T. and the input and output analysis, to name a few.

If you are keen to find out more, a fantastic resource and blog for all things permacultural can be found here: http://www.newschoolpermaculture.courses/2012/08/my-design-toolbox.html

More interesting, useful and helpful links can be found
on my links page.
So head on over there right away if you want to get started on your journey towards self sufficiency and ethical sustainability!