[OKC] NYTimes: The Permaculture Movement Grows From Underground

[Shauna Struby]

NY Times article on permaculture design - the concept flows into the
mainstream - and the upcoming Oklahoma City course gets a mention at the end
of the article! Scott Pittman, of the Permaculture Institute in NM, who will
be teaching our Oklahoma course
<http://www.permaculture.org/nm/index.php/site/class-4/>  is quoted
throughout. 

 

The Permaculture Movement Grows From Underground

By MICHAEL TORTORELLO

 

AS a way to save the world, digging a ditch next to a hillock of sheep dung
would seem to be a modest start. Granted, the ditch was not just a ditch. It
was meant to be a "swale," an earthwork for slowing the flow of water down a
slope on a hobby farm in western Wisconsin.

 

Highlights:

 

*        "It's an ecological theory of everything," Mr. Cody said. "Here's a
planet Earth operating manual. Do you want to go along for a ride with us?"

*        Yet in recent years, Mr. Mollison's ideas seem to have bubbled up
from underground, into the mainstream. "I just trained the Oklahoma National
Guard," Mr. Pittman said. "If that's any kind of benchmark." The troops, he
said, plan to apply permaculture to farming and infrastructure projects in
rural Afghanistan.

*        This "guild" of complementary plants is the opposite of annual
row-crop agriculture, with its dead or degraded soil and its constant demand
for labor and fertilizer. Permaculture landscapes, which mimic the ecology
of the area, are meant to be vertical, dense and self-perpetuating. Once the
work of the original planting is done, Mr. Mollison jokes in one of his
videos, "the designer turns into the recliner."

*        Permaculture should be practiced at home. Commuters can be
sojourners at courses in Brooklyn (permaculture-exchange.org), San Francisco
(upisf.com), Oklahoma City and Albuquerque (permaculture.org).

 

Full article here ::: http://nyti.ms/pJWsRa 

 

Shauna Lawyer Struby

imagine, innovate, collaborate, transition

Co-chair, Transition OKC

Past-president, Sustainable OKC

www.goinglocalokc.org <http://www.goinglocalokc.org/> 

www.sustainableokc.org <http://www.sustainableokc.org/>  

Fresh Greens blog <http://freshgreens.typepad.com/> 

 

 

 

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