Eric Stewart walks the talk

Eric is one of the more dedicated and enthusiastic designers we have met. He didn’t wait to finish the course, but got one project started during the PDC itself, creating a food garden at a Habitat for Humanity site in Pasco County. He has shown many other people the advantages of permaculture through personal contact and an active permaculture web site, Codegreencommunity.org, that provides support and information to permaculturists in the greater Tampa Bay area. And most recently, he has become co-founder and one of the driving forces of a local food co-op in Pasco – Suncoast Food Co-op. https://www.facebook.com/groups/264378686981983/?ref=ts&fref=ts

He has transformed his yard into a food forest jungle complete with a pond ecosystem and much more – showing his neighborhood how to make food, not lawns. And he is selling the food he grows to the cooperative. How much carbon is he reducing by growing and selling food locally, eliminating thousands of miles of travel and the energy and pollution associated with pesticide and herbicide use, and by setting the example, influencing others to do the same?

Living Bridges – permaculture design inspiration

This is a wonderful example of the type of design solution we are interested in accomplishing with permaculture. Working with nature, rather than against her, the people of Meghalaya in India have created a beautiful design for a bridge that will survive heavy flooding. This is an exquisitely  aesthetic and informative 5 minute video that you won’t regret viewing, or forget!  How could we incorporate the lessons of this amazing design solution?

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/13a16e6996096942

Toby Hemenway Urban Permaculture Design Workshop Nov 3-4

Urban Permaculture Design for a Fear-Free Future – Designing Resilient Gardens and Communities in Cities and Suburbs

Toby Hemenway, internationally renowned author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture – the best-selling permaculture book in the world for the last seven years – is coming to Tampa Bay to present an exciting workshop.

Toby will teach you how to find, harvest, and integrate the many resources in our cities in sustainable ways, including getting access to land for organic gardening, creating business guilds and networks, using the pattern language of the city to create more abundance, creating public space in neighborhoods, building urban ecovillages, and more.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to learn urban permaculture design
from an international expert

Call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832 to sign up or find out more information.

$190 for the entire weekend! Special rates for students ($150)  and couples ($340).  Register via PayPal or call Bob.

November 3 & 4, 2012. 9 AM – 5 PM

Mocassin Lake Nature Park, Clearwater, Florida

Urban Farming, Forest Gardens, and More

How can we create resilient, regenerative cities and suburbs? Permaculture, an ecological approach to design, shows us the way. Though land may be limited, cities are rich in other resources, especially human resourcefulness. This workshop will offer specific techniques and strategies for food production, energy security, and community resilience in metropolitan areas.

Toby will share the passion, focus, wisdom and wealth garnered from his decades of experience with resilient living via urban permaculture design.

You will hear examples, see pictures, learn about the specifics and participate in class exercises that will engage you and leave you with tons of practical and hands-on ideas for your own yard, neighborhood and city.

Learn about:

• Forest garden design and use – get your questions answered.
• Social, economic and energy aspects of city and town life – practical solutions that work.
• Urban food, water and land issues and how to solve them.
• Visible and invisible structure design for the specific challenges in cities and towns.

Toby Hemenway is one of the most popular designers and teachers in the world.

This workshop is filling up fast! Call today to reserve your spot.

Bob Lawrason 727-831-5832

Learn about Urban Permaculture Design from the Best

Toby has over 20 years of experience as a permaculture designer and teacher and has visited and designed hundreds of sites. You will tap into this wealth of experience and learn from his successes and failures, giving yourself the confidence to move forward quickly with your own projects.

Whether you are an architect or landscape designer, urban planner, green business owner, gardener, farmer, or interested in local food or energy security, sustainable living, the Transition movement, ecology, or community, you will learn many tools to improve your abilities.

Learn to leverage the special opportunities that cities and suburbs provide.

About Toby Hemenway

Toby has been an adjunct professor at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and is currently a field director at the Permaculture Institute (USA). Toby has presented lectures and workshops at major sustainability conferences such as Bioneers, SolFest, and EcoFarm, and at Duke University, Tufts University, University of Minnesota, University of Delaware and many other educational venues. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Whole Earth Review, Natural Home, and Kitchen Gardener. He has contributed book chapters for WorldWatch Institute and to several publications on ecological design.

Check out Toby’s website, www.patternliteracy, for the great info in his latest articles.

“I will never look at the world in the same way. This course has changed everything.”

B.W., Santa Fe

“This was a transformative educational experience for me. Thank you!”
A.B., Bremerton, WA

“Toby’s teaching is well-organized, effective, and clear. I love the examples of permaculture principles in action, especially in an urban setting.” M.J., Hillsboro, OR

Register via PayPal on this site to reserve your spot, or

Call Bob Lawrason today

727-831-5832

to sign up or find out more information,

Apprenticeship opportunities in Tampa Bay

We are offering apprenticeship or “shadowing” opportunities to course students in several exciting projects we have ongoing. We are working on all of these from the Tampa Bay area, Florida. There is a lot happening, a lot that needs to be done and if we work together, the sky is the limit!

- Plan and implement a permaculture design for a city park.

- Plan and stage multiple food forests designs for Pine Ridge reservation.

- Work with Greenwood neighborhood on planning a permaculture community garden, and get it created.

- Help with fall planting and ongoing care for an expanding permaculture edible perennials nursery.

- Sit in on strategic planning for broadscale implementation of sustainable urban farming with Sustainable Urban Agriculture Coalition of St Pete.

- Work on creating and expanding financial permaculture models, including innovative urban farming cooperative ventures, link-up, beneficial connection and integration of permaculture energies around the Bay for mutual benefit, start up businesses that get support from the existing community, time banking, etc.

- Work on community projects, including art gardens, neighborhood place-making, etc.

Our new name – Grow Permaculture!

We are changing our name to more closely reflect our mission.  We are focused on spreading the knowledge and practice of permaculture everywhere, to create more abundance, resilience, quality of life, and healing of both people and the earth.

Our projects include using permaculture to improve conditions in high poverty urban and rural areas with degraded lands, and working with schools, governments and organizations to educate people on the regenerative possibilities of conscious design.  We create demonstration sites so people can see, feel, taste and smell what that is like.

These are non-profit activities that are supported by our for-profit education and design business.  We offer high-quality education and aesthetic edible landscaping and other permaculture services via this service.

We feel that a Permaculture Guild has a very specific function of coordinating permaculture activities in an area and providing support and resources for professional permaculture designers and those who want to become professionals.  While we do provide support to the permaculture community in a number of ways through volunteering and other resources, we feel a better way to describe the relationship is as a sponsor of Guild activities.  It is not our main function to coordinate or facilitate all of the permaculture activities in our area, as a guild would do.

We love the abundance and regeneration inherent in the word “Grow” and we feel there is nothing more appropriate or needed than nurturing and growing the concept and practice of conscious design – far and wide!

Design services

We consult, design and install sustainable systems in your home, business, or farm, that can help you save money and live healthier, all in environmentally friendly ways.  We address the four necessities – food, water, shelter and energy.  We can consult in just one of these areas, or all of them – we offer a full range of services, from advice, to design, to installation.

Click here to introduce yourself and let us know how we can help.

FOOD

Edible landscape design and installation

We design landscapes to be both beautiful and functional.  An edible landscape is:

• Organic
• Natural – we design gardens to work with natural systems, rather than fighting them
• Easy to care for –  less work than conventional gardens
• Aesthetic, beautiful and interesting
• Healthy, providing nutritious food year around
• Economical – skip the fertilizer, and reduce your grocery bill with fresh, healthy food you grew yourself

We offer an unusual selection of attractive plants, both native and non-native, that grow well in Florida conditions and will provide abundant food in small spaces.  We can also give you great advice on what to plant, when, and how, if you want to do it yourself but need some help getting started.  We can usually save you at least the amount of our consulting fee and can provide you with a lot of quality information in a short period of time. Interested in selling your food? We can help with that too.

Aquaponics

Do you live in a small space, but you would like to produce your own healthy, organic food?  Try aquaponics.   Aquaponics is water efficient, energy efficient closed loop system for providing a large amount of food in a small space, even an apartment!

WATER

Rain catchment, irrigation and water filtration systems

We can provide your irrigation needs via rainwater catchment, so that your plants are getting the purest water available to them.  We also provide whole house filters and items that make your water come to life and bring you new levels of health and vitality.  Want to use pure, filtered rainwater for all of your needs?  We install rainwater catchment and filtration, or help you to do it yourself.

Ponds

Enjoy the aesthetics of a backyard pond that is a naturally balanced system. When you have all the elements of nature present, there is very little care needed.

Natural pools

Tired of putting chlorine in your pool? Would you like to use that resource to produce abundant food, and have a beautiful natural pond in your backyard?  We can convert your pool to a pond, using wetlands techniques. These are very aesthetic additions to your yard, and can also be stocked with fish and edible plants. The pond can be linked to an aquaponics system that can boost your vegetable production tremendously, as well.

SHELTER and ENERGY

Solutions for more sustainable living in your home – we offer energy reduction analysis, consultations on planned renovations, and partnerships with green architects and builders to maximum energy savings, aesthetics and integration of the built environment with the natural world.

Click here to introduce yourself and let us know how we can help.