Blog readers and local gardeners keep requesting a list of my favorite permaculture and gardening resources. This is probably not a complete list; however, these represent some of the books, strategies and research I’ve read and/or experienced:
BOOKS
Gaia’s Garden, by Toby Hemenway, is the usual go-to book for at home permaculture. The second edition has much more info for urban and suburban settings.
The Edible Front Yard, by Ivette Soler, is also very good, though it’s not permaculture, per se.This book emphasizes beautiful, edible ornamental vegetables, bushes and trees, coupled with expert tips on good landscape design, including color, structure and plant suggestions. A must-read if you plan to garden in your front yard, since this book will help you avoid raising the ire of lawn-loving neighbors.
The Backyard Homestead, edited by Carleen Madigan, has information on how to do just about everything related to growing and preserving your own food, raising livestock, making herbal medicines, pruning fruit trees, and more. It’s really a one-stop shop in terms of straight up information with lots of charts, calculations on land productivity, as well as specific suggestions regarding varieties and attractive, edible plant combinations.
Four-Season Harvest, by Elliot Coleman is the go-to book for cold frames, greenhouses and season extension. He shares a phenomenal amount of knowledge, which I am only just beginning to absorb. Thinking in 4-D (with the time factor) brings gardening even more into the range of multi-tasking. Coleman covers cover crops, latitude, daylight hours, chill factors and more. If you want to garden in three seasons and harvest in four, this is the book for you.
Year-Round Vegetable Gardener, by Niki Jabbour, is another excellent book to help you strategize for maximum harvest, despite climate challenges. I own both Coleman’s book and Jabbour’s book, as Jabbour’s seems less intimidating, and I like her excitement.
All New Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew, is considered a must-have by many people who garden in raised beds. I own a copy, and I appreciate the work he does to make gardening accessible for everyone. Based on my experimentation, “Mel’s Mix” for soil really does make a difference. I just don’t like orderly, rigid, square boundaries, so his gardening style doesn’t particularly suit me. I prefer the looks and growth advantages of round, tiered beds, and I also like making free form raised beds via sheet mulching (also called Lasagna gardening) and wood mulch (also called the Back to Eden Method). If you like tidy raised beds, then The All New Square Foot Gardening will prove a worthwhile book to own. If you just want some knowledge about soil, general information on raised beds and trellis ideas, then I’d suggest borrowing this one from the library.
Vertical Gardening: Grow Up, Not Out, for More Vegetables and Flowers in Much Less Space, by Derek Fell. I borrowed this from the Madison Public Library while trying to garden an extremely small space against a chain link fence. We now have a huge garden; however, I continue to implement many of Fell’s delightful suggestions. If I still had a small space, I would own this book for reference.
FILMS/VIDEOS
Back to Eden: This is the film that sparked my own interest in wood mulch gardening for rich soil and dramatically less watering. You can watch it for free online by clicking here.
Permaculture and the Sacred: a fascinating talk given by Starhawk to the Harvard Divinity School. You can watch it here.
Free Introduction to Permaculture Organic Farming Online Course with Will Hooker from NC State University: This is a 38 video series, filmed in an actual ag class at NC State. You won’t get credit for having taken the class, and you’ll need to bear with student interactions and class-specific questions; however, these talks are loaded with information!
PERMACULTURE DESIGN CERTIFICATE COURSES
This is a tricky category, because I have not personally taken anything beyond a weekend introductory course in permaculture. We did participate in a real site design and planting, and we learned a ton; however, this Friday-Saturday-Sunday event did not count as the 72-hour PDC course.
The Permaculture Design Certificate Course is a specific collection of teachings that enables anyone completing it to become a professional permaculture teacher or designer. If you have not taken the course, you are not legally allowed to charge for services that use the word “permaculture” in their description. Of course, you can still study and implement permaculture prinicples on your own, and if anyone wants to learn from you, just don’t call it “permaculture” instruction or design! Terms like “holistic gardening,” “radical companion planting,” “systems gardening” or “relationship in Nature” could all touch upon aspects of permaculture, depending on your interests.
On the other hand, everyone I know who has taken a permaculture design certificate (PDC) course considers it a pinnacle and paradigm shifting experience. Choosing a course depends on your priorities and interests. In some ways, it would be ideal to find a local-ish teacher so that what you learn applies to your climate and location. Any PDC course will encourage you to study your own plot of land across the hours and seasons, though, so you could also select a teacher based on personal resonance.
I’ve often thought I’d want to study with Starhawk‘s Earth Activist Training, if I ever opted to do my PDC. I like that she has studied in the Feri (Faery) tradition and I appreciate the ways she interweaves and grounds her spirituality into everything from gardening to relationships, ritual and politics.
My own major resistance to doing a PDC course is, ironically, that I don’t want to spend much time away from our yard. I read voraciously, and I generally dislike classes (unless I happen to be teaching them). By doing a highly disciplined, self-directed study, I can learn as I go — running outside to evaluate immediately how what I’ve learned might apply to our yard. Traveling to a class also involves transportation, which usually involves fluorescent lights, noise, odd food and sleeping arrangements and noise. While I can handle those things, I’m in a nesting phase and don’t really feel like traveling unless I feel deeply called to a particular area.
If you find yourself in the same boat of not wanting to or not having time to travel for your PDC, blog reader Alan Enzo of http://permacultureeducation.com let me know of an online training that follows the exact criteria of original permaculture design certifier, Bill Mollison:
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[A]nother major difference between our PDC course and most on-the-ground courses – Students get an intensive design experience with personalized instruction from highly-qualified instructors.