A Collabortive 12-month Project between Permaculture Australia and Savour Soil Permaculture.
WHAT IS IT? A year-long challenge to demonstrate what you can grow in your 90m2 space, documenting and sharing all along the way what you do, how you do it, and what you harvest.
WHO IS THIS FOR? Everyone who grows food! If you don’t have 90m2 of garden in your own space, you can combine forces with neighbours, friends, your local community garden, and seek to find answers together. Get creative!
WHEN IS IT RUNNING? The challenge begins on International Permaculture Day – Sunday 3rd May 2026, and ends on International Permaculture Day – Sunday 2nd May 2027. Participants will submit monthly reports and check ins to share how the experience is going throughout the year, with results published regularly.
WHAT IS IT FOR? Gathering information about challenges, solutions, ideas and results. Being able to see how different climates, soil types, and other considerations affect the growing experience right across the country.
Across the country, people are growing food in wildly different ways. Different climates. Different soils. Different constraints. Different tools. And yet, we rarely get the chance to look at our systems side by side, with real numbers, real observations, and real honesty. This friendly 90 m2 challenge is an invitation to change that.
Rather than a competition focused on winning, this is a shared experiment in abundance, resilience, and good design. Each participant commits to observing and documenting up to 90 square metres of productive growing space over a 12-month period — including vertical spaces like trellises and fences, and sharing what they learn along the way.
The aim is simple but powerful: To grow as much good-quality food as possible, while also tracking diversity, pest and disease pressure, labour, and seasonal challenges. Weight alone doesn’t tell the whole story, so this challenge values polycultures, system health, and adaptability, not monocropped shortcuts.
Permaculture practitioners have access to an enormous toolkit, no-dig beds, food forests, biological inputs, ferments, wicking systems, living mulches, intensive annuals, perennial systems, and more. This challenge creates a space where all of those approaches are welcome, documented, and visible, so we can collectively see what works, where, and why.
By sharing methods and outcomes openly, we move beyond opinion and anecdote. We start building a body of lived evidence that helps all of us design better systems, systems that are productive, resilient, and appropriate to their place. This is not about proving who is “best.” It’s about learning together, improving together, and celebrating the many ways abundance shows up in different landscapes.
Throughout the year, participants will document their efforts, processes, and harvests. The results will be openly shared for all to see what works, and where, and how. A nation-wide collaboration of food growers everywhere to demonstrate how permaculture can impact your food growing efforts.
This project is a collaboration between Permaculture Australia and Savour Soil Permaculture.
Get in touch to register your expression of interest! You will be contacted with more information before the challenge begins on Sunday 3rd May 2026.
Ian Lillington, Castlemaine, Djaara country, Central Victoria. March 2026
Permaculture first hit the headlines with a splash in 1977, when Bill Mollison and David Holmgren were interviewed on Terry Lane’s show on ABC Radio National. Radio was bigger than TV in those days, and the phones were hot with people wanting to know more. The book, Permaculture One, was already in draft form, and the publicity from that interview led to a contract with a global publisher {Corgi/Transworld}. Permaculture One was printed in Maryborough Vic, and published in 1978.
Permaculture emerged in time of ferment in the mid 70s. The Limits to Growth report in 1972 and the Oil Crisis of 1973 brought sustainability issues to the fore. The peace movement, the anti-war campaign, the Cold War and multiple liberation movements were in full swing.
When David met Bill in late 1974, Mollison was immersed in the radical edge between his University lecturing, campaigning to save the Franklin river and work with palawa people of Lutruwita, the island state known as Tasmania. David was a student of Environmental Design {ED} at the Tasmania College of Adult Education. Originally from West Australia, David was a young traveler, looking for a course that suited his dissident outlook. ED was a radical experiment in Tertiary education – set up by Hobart architect, Barry McNeil. There was no fixed curriculum, timetable, and a large budget devoted to visiting or residential guest tutors. [see David’s personal history here – https://holmgren.com.au/writing/personal-histories/ and also the book Permaculture Pioneers – 2011 – https://au.permacultureprinciples.com/product/permaculture-pioneers-ebook/]
Bill was one of those visiting tutors and became an informal mentor for David’s thesis, which was to become Permaculture. In 1975, permaculture got a mention in print, in the WA Nut Growers journal. Bill mentioned a student, David Holmgren and his permaculture thesis.
The first widely read article was in the Tasmanian Organic Grower magazine in 1976. David says: “in ‘76 we co-authored an article about permaculture, which was jointly published in the Tasmanian Organic Gardening and Farming Society magazine and in the student newspaper of the TCAE, which was called The Feral Gazette !” [ref A Chance Meeting – https://holmgren.com.au/writing/a-chance-meeting/ ]
During 1977, David’s thesis was gradually being tweaked for publication. David supervised Janet Mollison who was redoing his illustrations that would become the graphics for Permaculture One. A spiral bound version was sent to publishers after interest generated by the ABC radio interview. One interview that Bill referred to when he gave a talk in October 1977, where he said “Fortunately, the first talk I gave on permaculture was on Radio 3LO (ABC Melbourne) after a 13-day petrol strike. [probably 14-27 April 1977 — see https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110735031] – I think I got 30,000 converts! The whole point about it is, when you look around you and realise that you have a 40-mile walk to the nearest useful plant, you begin to realise the ridiculous situation you’ve evolved into. You’ve done that because you’ve put it on somebody else at a distance to do your food producing, when you don’t have to do that.” Through 1977 Bill was promoting the idea of permaculture, travelling and giving talks around Australia and on radio. The talks excited people because Bill linked growing food and fibre in permanent forests, with the energy crisis and with human survival. {Remember petrol had quadrupled in price in the mid 70s following the oil war of 1973}. He also talked about design that was an essential part of sustainable living. In a talk to Organic Gardens, in October 1977 Mollison said:
“Humans have done some remarkable things with plants over the thousands of years that we’ve interacted with them. So in the Mediterranean region we get the carob and the olive and the chestnut, which in their original forms were almost useless to us, but have been evolved to be extremely useful species. And techniques evolved with them.
We can now (and it’s only in very, very modern times that we could do so) assemble plants from all over the world that were so evolved over thousands of years by people residing in very small tribal areas.
We can do this and it works. We put them in fairly quickly and they evolve and they close up and there’s very little maintenance in those systems, and yet the yields continue to come out. Basically, you’re instituting a forest in which you leave the forest intact but take the products.
But there’s a lot more to the total design system than that, in that what faces us is a certain decline in energy, a possible hiatus in certain energy systems and, very certainly, an extraordinary over-use of energy in food production.
As an example, Australia probably achieves about six per cent efficiency in food production, that is for every 100 gallons of petrol we put through the farm gate, we get the equivalent of six gallons of petrol back.” And “Cities are energy sinks. Energy comes in, but very little comes out. Mostly things to consume energy come out – things like tractors come out, things like artificial fertilizers come out. Cities can very quickly alter the energy picture. By going over to permaculture, we can reverse that.”
Bill was connecting with Terry White, Max Lindegger, Phil Gall and others who were to become early practitioners. Recently graduated, David stayed closer to his new home in Tasmania and focused on gaining practical self-sufficiency skills. Pic of Terry White, hands on head, and Max Lindegger [far left] at the first International Permaculture Convergence at Pappinbara, NSW, 1984.
Counter culture and communications.
There were interviews on radio from late 76. Bruce Hedge at 3CR [Melbourne Community Radio] – interviewed Bill a few times. Bruce later wrote many articles about permaculture in Earth Garden magazine. Probably the first interview of David and Bill (in Hobart ABC studio) was in late ‘76 by Robin Ravlich – a young and innovative radio journalist who joined ABC in 1975.
Newsletters of organisations were an important way of communicating. Terry White who heard about permaculture on the radio invited Bill to Maryborough in 1976, and went on to edit and publish the first Permaculture magazine in 1978. Co-incidentally in the same town that Permaculture One was printed. [pic of Terry handing over the archive of early magazines to Ian Lillington]
[pic of mags 1,2,3 – they cost $1.60 at first!]
Permaculture concept presented at Festivals
The Counter-culture generated festivals that later became Confest, which is still running every year. In 1977 there was a big build up to the Down to Earth festival planned for Bredbo near Canberra. https://confest.org.au/index.php/about/history David had not seen Bill for much of 1977. David visited Melbourne from Tasmania and stayed with Venie, his mum, who was in Melbourne in autumn/winter 1977. After David’s father died, Venie had started on a round Australia [radical for that time] and by mid 1977, she was volunteering at the Down To Earth festival office in Collingwood. [see Pic of her autobiography A Sense of Direction, 2008 ].
International travel was expensive in those days, but Ina May Gaskin, who had helped found the self-sustaining community, The Farm, with her husband Stephen Gaskin in 1971 were VIP speakers from the USA. Ina May is an American midwife who has been described as “the mother of authentic midwifery.”[1]
Bill and David co-presented a permaculture workshop was under a peppercorn tree at Bredbo. They were happy to have 100+ people attend. David presented other workshops too. He had arrived ahead of the opening – volunteering his practical skills to help set up infrastructure – with 20,00 people expected, but there were limited resources, and a risk the event might be cancelled due to the chaos. But David and others provided leadership and skills. He was concerned about how much this ‘alternative’ festival relied on resources from the mainstream and that led to a home-grown festival for Jackey’s March in Tasmania.
**********************
So, before the book, Permaculture was already a big thing, at least in alternative circles. Workshops on earth building, building biology, tools and technology, intentional communities, finance and land ownership, and spiritual practice went on to influence the seven ‘petals’ of Holmgren’s Permaculture Flower – see https://permacultureprinciples.com/flower/ .
Permaculture was influenced by and had on-going influence on many of the domains discussed at these festivals. Permaculture was avidly studied by those seeking to live more sustainably and homesteads and urban communities became testing grounds for permaculture living.
Permaculture Connect Inc. is a grassroots community initiative founded in 2019, to bring together people who want to live by permaculture values. Rooted in the three core ethics, Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share, the group exists to nourish the land while strengthening human connection.
While food growing and edible gardens are central interests, the focus reaches far beyond harvests. Members share a commitment to regenerating landscapes, improving soil health, and leaving the earth in a better condition for future generations. Equally important is the social fabric that Permaculture Connect weaves.
The group creates opportunities for like-minded people to meet, learn, and support one another through shared experiences. Monthly gatherings rotate across properties in the wider Brisbane region, pausing briefly over the December – January holiday period.
Events range from garden tours to hands-on workshops and creative skill-sharing sessions. Past activities have included tool-sharpening demonstrations, weaving workshops, mending circles, and a popular sustainable cook-off where teams prepare meals using only homegrown ingredients.
These gatherings spark meaningful conversations, foster friendships, and strengthen community resilience, benefits that extend well beyond the garden gate and contribute positively to mental wellbeing. Permaculture Connect is free to attend, with a gold coin donation welcomed to support running costs.
Permaculture Australia’s Permafund has the pleasure of receiving updates from many permaculture projects around Australia & the world who have received small grants from Permafund. All have their own unique combination of flora and fauna, resources and climatic and cultural factors which drive locals to apply permaculture principles to projects in unique and innovative ways.
This often includes using organic solutions to keep local wildlife from decimating gardens while supporting biodiversity and ecological balance. Sometimes that involves small creatures – such as companion planting to attract beneficial insects, or hand-picking caterpillars off vegetables, or introducing lady bugs to manage aphids. Thinking a little bigger, here in Australia we may need to net fruit trees to exclude cockatoos in order to obtain a yield, or tree guards to ward off wallabies.
But when it comes to managing large animals, Friends of Wildlife in Myanmar really “takes the cake” – with a need to keep Asian elephants from trampling their permaculture plot! They are using strategies including planting bio-fencing with elephant-unpalatable seedlings.
Friends of Wildlife (FOW), with support from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Myanmar, works to conserve Asian elephants and to mitigate human–elephant conflict in nine villages of Taik-kyi Township in southern Bago Yoma, Myanmar (Burma). To reduce human–elephant conflict, FOW has established eight Elephant Emergency Response Teams (EERTs), an Electric Fence Management Group, and a village-level network.
FOW’s current project involves developing one of the villages, Shwe-Myine (Ywar-thit) Village, as a model for community-based conservation. This village consists of 63 households. While the village faces multiple challenges, including Myanmar’s political situation and some men having to leave due to conscription, women have actively taken leadership roles. Activities include awareness, training, home gardening, permaculture, fish farming, and community forestry – while strengthening inclusive governance and empowering the community-based organisation or sustainable resource management.
This project is supported by funding from both Community Conservation Inc (US $ 10,000) and Permaculture Australia’s Permafund (AU $2,800). FOW is using this funding strategically to cover 15 activities in order to meet their three main objectives and is an example of donated dollars stretching further when converted to another currency.
Activities 1-3 of FOW’s project involve meetings to address Objective 1: Increasing Awareness and Behaviour Change.
Activities 4-10 involve training activities in the following areas to meet Objective 2: Capacity Building.
Community forestry management
Fish biology / nursing the fingerlings
Home gardening
Bio-fertilizer
Ethics and Principles of Permaculture
Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO): Organizational development and financial management
Conservation ethics
Organic home gardening and greening
Permaculture Practice
Community forestry
Elephant Emergency Response Team
Activity 13, Permaculture Practise, involves a permaculture plot which is 100 feet long and 80 feet wide. It is located beside a road that is sometimes used by wild elephants.
During a one-year reporting period, wild elephants entered the village on four occasions. The Elephant Emergency Response Teams (EERT) responded successfully to three incidents, and no damage occurred. On another occasion, two wild elephants entered the village at around 2 a.m. The response was delayed, and some fences were damaged. Friends of Wildlife support the EERT with essential equipment, including batteries, torchlights, and streetlights. In addition, they are establishing bio-fencing by planting 420 elephant-unpalatable seedlings. The planting was carried out in September 2025, and survival monitoring in December 2025 showed a 97% survival rate.
Between December 2025 and January 2026, several permaculture activities were completed. This included soil preparation, development of the permaculture zoning design, and selection of suitable plant and crop species. In addition, 4,300 seedling bags were prepared in the home nursery to support village greening activities, home gardening, and the permaculture plot.
FOW plans to implement the permaculture design with an aim to create a low-maintenance and climate-resilient system. It also provides clear learning zones for villagers and integrates food production, soil health, water management, and biodiversity.
Zone 1 will serve as a learning and management hub. It includes the existing hut, mango and cashew trees, a rainwater harvesting tank, tool storage, a notice board on permaculture principles, and a seating area for training.
Zone 2 is the intensive demonstration area located near the hut and water source. It will include raised keyhole garden beds, vertical gardening, and a nursery and seed bank. Crops will include leafy greens, vegetables, herbs, and mulch-rich beds.
Zone 3 is a semi-intensive food forest. It will feature fruit trees, nitrogen-fixing plants, and an understory of medicinal and multipurpose crops.
Zone 4 will focus on staple crops for household food security, such as cassava, sweet potato, maize, and legumes grown through intercropping.
Zone 5 is a buffer and biodiversity area on the northern side of the plot. It will include bamboo, native shrubs, and bee-friendly flowers to provide protection and wildlife habitat.
The design also includes water management measures and clear pathways connecting all zones. Simple signboards will explain key concepts such as mulching, nitrogen-fixing plants, and food forest layers.
Throughout project implementation, FOW has coordinated with CCC to provide rotating support to villagers. For education and demonstration purposes, FOW plans to conduct monthly village trainings/talks, school visits, and farmer-to-farmer learning sessions. Practical demonstrations will cover composting, mulching, intercropping, and natural pest control.
We congratulate FOW on the progress they are making in improving environmental sustainability in diverse ways despite the unique and significant challenges faced in Myanmar, and look forward to hearing more updates in future.
Community Gardens Australia, Grow It Local, and Permaculture Australia have announced an exciting national partnership to deliver the 2026 Community Growing Conference series — a powerful collaboration set to provide a major boost to food growing communities across Australia.
In 2026, Community Gardens Australia will lead the delivery of its annual State Conferences (formerly known as Community Garden Gatherings), with Grow It Local and Permaculture Australia coming on board as key partners. Together, the three organisations represent tens of thousands of local growers, garden leaders, permaculture practitioners and sustainability advocates nationwide.
The partnership brings together complementary strengths: CGA’s national leadership in community gardens, Grow It Local’s innovative digital engagement and storytelling platform, and Permaculture Australia’s deep expertise in regenerative design and education. The result will be an expanded conference experience in every state – with high-profile speakers, practical workshops, inspiring guest appearances, and dynamic networking opportunities.
These conferences are designed to do more than inspire — they will equip communities with the practical skills, governance knowledge, partnerships and confidence needed to grow thriving local food systems. From soil health and seed saving to volunteer leadership, governance, inclusion and climate resilience, the 2026 program will provide tangible tools to strengthen gardens at every stage of development.
But this partnership is about more than just conferences. Throughout 2026, the three organisations will actively support and amplify each other’s work – cross-promoting initiatives, collaborating on storytelling, sharing networks and expertise, and aligning advocacy efforts where possible. Together, they will also explore ways to measure collective impact, expand awareness of community food growing, and increase participation across diverse communities. By working in alignment, the organisations aim to build stronger visibility, deeper engagement and greater national momentum for local food systems.
By working together, the three organisations aim to:
Increase participation in community food growing.
Strengthen collaboration between community gardens, permaculture groups and local home food growing networks.
Build leadership capacity within volunteer-led projects.
Support resilient, regenerative local food systems across urban, regional and rural Australia.
Measure and demonstrate the collective impact of community food growing nationwide.
Importantly, the partnership ensures equal branding and shared visibility across all 2026 conferences – reflecting a united movement committed to growing food, community and connection.
“This collaboration signals a new chapter for the community food growing movement in Australia,” said Naomi Lacey, Director of Community Gardens Australia. “When organisations align around shared values, the impact multiplies. Together, we can reach more people, strengthen more community gardens, and inspire the next generation of growers.”
“The opportunity to form this partnership and contribute in this way is the very essence of our purpose,” said Bronwyn Chompff-Gliddon, Secretary of Permaculture Australia. “Our primary role is as an enabler of the autonomous movement of Permaculture. What begins here has the potential to feed into many other future endeavours.”
“This is a truly exciting partnership that will help get more Australians growing, sharing and eating locally grown food.” said Darryl Nichols, Co-Founder of Grow It Local. “Growing food is climate action, waste reduction, biodiversity restoration and community building rolled into one – and it delivers powerful health and wellbeing benefits along the way. Because when you grow food, you grow far more than just a garden. Lettuce do this!”
With food security, climate adaptation and community wellbeing increasingly front of mind, the 2026 Community Growing Conferences are set to be a landmark moment for Australia’s grassroots food movement – and part of a broader, coordinated effort to grow the movement well beyond a single event series.
Growers, volunteers, educators, councils and community leaders are encouraged to get involved — whether by attending, presenting, volunteering or partnering locally.
Great trainers are sharing, motivating and supportive. They demonstrate Permaculture by practicing what they teach with a wide range of examples. And they give ideas for other situations beyond their own. They understand other cultures and environments.
35 years evolving
My name is April Sampson-Kelly. Only a few people know what I do, which suits me. I don’t want to be a celebrity. I enjoy the freedom and flexibility of anonymity. And I have practiced and taught Permaculture for 35 years. Now it is time to share my insights and growing concerns for the future of online training.
My early childhood was spent on an army base where a lonely clump of bananas surrounded the septic tank. There were no bird calls, just dogs howling. But when we settled in Wollongong I was suddenly surrounded by beautiful beaches and forests. And a strong sense of place and belonging.
My father had wanted me to be a software writer. He believed that computing was the future and people would work less. And so, in 1986, I got a computer trainee-ship at the local university. By 1993 I had some basic computing skills and a supportive partner and mother. I also had a masters in Creative arts. I knew how to research. And I knew how to teach complex skills. And I had a baby and a toddler. So, I knew how to work. I still loved my environment. And I was fascinated with Permaculture. And I wondered how it would fit in the emerging world of the internet.
Computer games and internet pages last century were painfully slow and had no graphics. Every word mattered. But the fun thing was the equality. Gender didn’t matter. How you looked didn’t figure. Content was all that mattered. And so, I set about to create the first online Permaculture course.
In 1996, my mother and I drove across Australia. We visited my birthplace in Perth and went to the great International Permaculture Conference and Convergence. Thanks to the tireless work of Ross Mars and Permaculture west, the proceedings are still available. And there I met a lot of amazing Permaculture people. And at the Convergence, I saw a small discussion group in a back corner talking about Information Technology [IT]. I told them my idea to start online teaching and they all started offering support. Even Bill Mollison chipped in and said he thought that online teaching could work. And there was a need.
Land-based Permaculture Design Courses are often run by charismatic leaders. So, to make online training successful we offered something different. Our online courses were self-paced, flexible, organised and tailored for the student needs. Also, we adopted a student-focused approach. And I applied my research experience, enthusiasm and applied knowledge to explore many aspects of Permaculture. I was truly lucky to have an informal mentor in Stuart B. Hill. I could ask Stuart deep questions and he would answer straight away. And for this I am forever grateful. Decades later, we had a vibrant food forest and some creative fun. Ted Trainer said – it is not work if you are having fun. We had fun.
Education serves 3 functions
1. Share knowledge and ideas for a wide range of conditions.
2. Motivate and support participants into action
3. Connect people to build resilience through community and integration with their environment.
Sharing Knowledge and Ideas
Knowing how to do something doesn’t mean we know how to teach it. Teaching is a craft in itself using psychology, and communication systems. Teaching Permaculture pulls apart a complex holistic system to show the parts and then describe how the parts interact. The instructor needs to clearly show how they have applied the principles in their own practice. And they need to show examples from other situations. Or at least help their participants find out more about their situation.
Motivating and Supporting
When we motivate participants, we need to follow through. Our support mustn’t end when the course ends. This is where the social design is essential in the growth of Permaculture. Teachers must foster others. The traditional formal education system in the western world has a deeply entrenched economic and academically competitive framework. We must do better. We need to learn from one another, support good work and foster diversity.
Connecting and Providing Ongoing Support
We all grow when we build a network of experts and a community of knowledge keepers.
All training requires an understanding of the work, an ability to break it down, then reconnect the ideas. But online training has extra pitfalls. Online participants are less at risk of being disconnected from their fellow, the ideas and the trainer.
Become a leader in Permaculture Training. Contact us to join our Online Advanced Permaculture Design course starting March 18. April at www.permaculturevisions.com
Permaculture Week began as a simple idea in the Yarra Valley (Victoria, Australia): create a shared moment in the calendar where permaculture could be visible, accessible, and celebrated beyond individual sites and courses. Initiated by Permaculture Yarra Valley, Yarra Valley ECOSS, and PEACE Farm; the first Permaculture Week brought together local talks, garden visits, workshops, and gatherings. There was no central festival and no single organiser running everything. Instead, it was deliberately decentralised, with events hosted by community groups themselves. That principle has remained at the heart of Permaculture Week ever since.
Now entering its seventh year, Permaculture Week has grown well beyond its regional beginnings. Events are now held across multiple Australian states and increasingly internationally, reflecting the expanding relevance of permaculture as a response to ecological, social, and economic challenges.
Permaculture Week 2026 will run from 21–29 March, aligned with the autumn equinox in the Southern Hemisphere. This year’s theme, “Regeneration: People, Place, and Planet,” highlights regeneration as more than landscape repair. It recognises the interdependence of healthy ecosystems, strong communities, and empowered people, including future generations.
At its core, Permaculture Week is about participation. There is no expectation that events be large, polished, or resource-heavy. A short talk, an open garden, a working bee, a film night, a walk-and-talk, or a shared meal can all be powerful ways to make permaculture visible and welcoming. Events may be free or ticketed and are shaped entirely by local hosts.
A key focus for 2026 is creating accessible entry points for new and younger audiences, while continuing to value the depth of experience held within established permaculture networks. By opening gardens, sharing stories, and creating spaces for connection, Permaculture Week helps bridge generations and invite fresh energy into the movement.
All events will be showcased on the national hub, www.permacultureweek.org, making it easier for people to discover what’s happening in their area and for local efforts to gain wider visibility.
Whether you’re part of a long-established permaculture group or just beginning to explore regenerative living, Permaculture Week is an opportunity to contribute in a way that feels achievable and meaningful.
This March, the invitation is simple: share what regeneration looks like where you are.
In 2025 Permaculture Australia awarded eight small grants to organisations in South East Asia and the Pacific. When the grant round was launched permaculture teachers and groups helped spread the invitation to apply. One of the successful grant recipients was Asharprodip Somaj Unnyan Songstha (ASUS) an organisation in Bangladesh seeking support to run a permaculture course in their community which is in a region where Rowe Morrow and other members of PA have taught permaculture.
Following the funding being received. Rowe was sent a letter from the Executive Director of Asharprodip Somaj Unnyan Songstha (ASUS), Poritosh Kumar Mridha. Rowe described the letter as ‘lovely and heartfelt’ and great to share.
In his introduction Poritosh wrote “On behalf of ASUS, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to you and the Permafund team for your generous support of our mission. Receiving this grant is not only a milestone for our organisation but a vital initiative for the ecological and social healing we aim to foster in our community.”
“Please be assured that the ASUS team is fully committed to implementing this project with the highest standards of integrity and care. We look forward to sharing our progress and the stories of growth that your support has made possible.“
With Best Regards,
Poritosh Kumar Mridha”
More details about ASUS and their project to spread permaculture activities in the Sundarban’s coastal region of Bangladesh. will be shared in future Permaculture Australia newsletters.
All donations made to support Permaculture Australia projects are greatly appreciated and can be made here.
Gatherings have always been part of permaculture. Before newsletters and acronyms, people met around kitchen tables, the backyard fire pit, in the shed, or garden. Nothing new needed to be invented; it was simply about noticing what was already there and making the least change for the greatest effect.
Spreading across sixteen locations, from Oberon to the Clarence Valley, neighbours have chosen a day of the month to bump into other permaculturists at their local. Since 2022, ‘Permaculture at the Pub’ has become the working title for something that is not a formal group or event, but an idea shared. Just as you might meet friends to watch the game on a Friday night, these casual meet-ups are about soil, seeds, and curiosity.
Like fruiting bodies of a broader mycelium network of people, knowledge, and curiosity, these meet-ups appear where conditions are right: interest, availability, timing. Some may be fleeting. Others recur again and again. They are small signals of a living system of relationships, ready to sprout wherever the network is nourished.
A typical get together looks like anywhere from half a dozen to twenty or more folk catching up over what they have been up to for the last month in their garden or in the community. The first Thursday of the month is when we began meeting up in our little village of Paterson.
Certain questions come up. When does the talk start? Who is presenting? Could there be tours, seed swaps, produce shares? All familiar impulses. All well-worn permaculture ground. These have been gently set aside. Not because those things aren’t valuable, but because each addition makes the door a little heavier to open.
Requiring little, the invitation is wide. You don’t need a garden. You don’t need to be growing food or designing systems. You can arrive curious, unsure, or just wanting to see who else nearby might be thinking along similar lines. The point isn’t instruction. This space asks not for the bravado of expertise, but for the quiet care to connect. When the same rain falls on everyone at the table, the conversation tends to stay grounded in what is common.
The word “pub” can carry certain connotations, so it’s worth clarifying that alcohol is not the focus, nor will a pub setting suit everyone. In the original sense of “public house,” what matters is the idea of shared civic space. In rural towns, pubs often serve many roles: they are the local restaurant, playground, bottle shop, book club, and community hub all in one. Families can attend without needing separate childcare, and for many communities on the land, the pub is a practical venue. Some have chosen different venues or formats, and time of day, setting, and tone are all locally adaptable.
Much has been written about social systems as plainly as ecological ones. This approach grows from Mollison’s teachings about resilience arising from density of connection rather than control. Landscapes don’t hold together because they’re instructed to. Communities don’t either.
One of the most encouraging aspects has been seeing Permaculture Design Certificate students take this idea and quietly run with it. After the intensity of a PDC, there’s often a gap between finishing a course and embedding practice into daily life. These informal, recurring meet-ups have become a way for students and graduates to stay connected without creating hierarchy or obligation.
These gatherings are small gestures against the drift of disconnection, against the tendency to lose touch with the land and one another. Conversation moves between gardens and towns, knowledge passes sideways, and trust settles into the spaces people share. It is here, in the ordinary rhythm of returning to a shared table, that community grows, not through planning or instruction, but through the consistent work of connection.
Maplewood Permaculture are lead teachers on the Permaculture Design and Homesteading Certificate Course held twice-yearly in collaboration with Limestone Permaculture, in addition to providing permaculture design and consultation services.
We understand Permaculture as being an ethical & principled ‘Whole-of-Life’ framework, a regenerative design science and a way of seeing land, people and livelihoods as interconnected systems. Across the Hunter Region in NSW, this way of thinking is resonating strongly with small landholders who are seeking resilient, productive and meaningful relationships with their land. That interest has also been growing within our local & state government organisations like Councils, Landcare & Local Land Services!
Our latest collaboration is through the Permaculture Principled Small Farm Series, a new seven-workshop program hosted by Hunter Local Land Services and delivered by Limestone Permaculture, in partnership with Yeo Farm. Booked out within three weeks of opening workshop registrations, the series confirms what many of us in the permaculture movement already know: people are hungry for whole-system design knowledge grounded in real-world application.
A Permaculture Lens for Small Landholders
Small landholders are a vital and expanding part of Australia’s agricultural landscape. While their properties may be modest in scale, the cumulative impact of good or poor design is significant. Permaculture offers an ideal framework for this context, emphasising observation, thoughtful design, efficient use of resources, and the stacking of functions to achieve multiple outcomes from the same elements. This workshop series has permaculture as its backbone. It begins with core permaculture ethics, principles and the design process itself—supporting participants to move beyond isolated techniques and instead develop coherent, regenerative property plans. These foundations flow through every session, ensuring that practical skills are always linked back to whole-system thinking.
Learning across Scales, United by Design
Workshops alternate between two contrasting but complementary permaculture sites:
Limestone Permaculture, a one-acre demonstration homestead and micro-farm designed to show how intensive, diverse systems can thrive on small footprints
Yeo Farm, a 100-acre permaculture-designed Australian White sheep enterprise with integrated market garden exemplifies permaculture design at a larger agricultural scale.
By learning across these scales, participants see that permaculture principles remain consistent—whether designing a backyard food system or a broad-acre grazing landscape. What changes is the expression, not the ethics or logic.
From Principles to Practice
As the series progresses, permaculture design theory is translated into applied, site-based strategies, including:
Intro to Permaculture x2, an introduction to permaculture ethics, principles & the design process!
Building Climate Adaptation, focusing on improving drought, fire & flood resilience & responding to climate variability by highlighting water is life & trees protect life!
Practical Guide to Low Tech Earthworks, from using low-tech swales and contoured earthworks to slow, spread and store water while building soil carbon.
Insitu Compost Gardening for Soil Health & Cycled Production, focusing on in-situ composting and biological nutrient cycling within productive gardens.
Poultry Integration & Management, Integrating chickens, ducks and turkeys with trees, plants and structures for mutual health & welfare.
Espalier Orchard Systems – Integrated, Efficient & Multifunctional, combining fruit tree espalier + pest exclusion and vegetables in space-efficient, multifunctional designs suited to small properties
Each workshop reinforces the permaculture idea that elements are most successful when they are intentionally connected for mutual benefit. Programs like this demonstrate how permaculture can move confidently beyond the margins and into mainstream land management conversations, supporting both families and regions to thrive under increasing environmental pressure.
About Limestone Permaculture
Limestone Permaculture is a one-acre demonstration homestead located in the village of Stroud, NSW, designed and developed using permaculture design processes and principles. Our work centres on education, ethical land stewardship and empowering people to design regenerative systems that are productive, resilient and deeply connected to place. Limestone Permaculture currently collaborates at the local and state government level with a future goal to collaborate at the national level.
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