PERMACULUTRE DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION SERVICES
We offer a range of services in the field of permaculture design, regenerative farming, site assessment, both on site and virtual
Regenerative Site Assessment & Design Service
Our once off site visit is a site survey that unearths a range of potentials and challenges on the site regarding internal and surrounding dynamics that can be used to your advantage. We offer permaculture design suggestions and provide a basic report to set you on your way towards developing self-reliance in water, soil health, food, security and other elements needed to support a high quality of life.
If you are in the market for a property that you wish to use for permaculture or Self-Reliance purposes, we can advise you before purchase, of its potentials and challenges, so you do not make a costly mistake in purchasing a property that is going to be very difficult to manage and develop into your dream home. Many properties on the market have been repeatedly purchased and sold due to less than obvious issues that the buyer does not perceive at the time, which show themselves, sometimes, only years down the line.
Regenerative Water Harvesting Services
All regenerative land-use systems require a range of different water catchment, storage and use systems that enable long term water sustainability that are not technology dependent. Our designs are earthwork based, cheap to establish, easy to maintain and create a long term regenerative infrastructure to support a range of ecological production systems.
We will visit your site and assess it for its water harvesting, storage and use potentials, as well as water cycle restoration system, and suggest a range of design and management strategies that will ensure you move off the water-grid and maximise the water potential of your property towards water self-reliance.
Food Forest Design Services
Food Forests are the most productive and resilient food producing systems. Once they are established they produce a wide variety of perennial foods with very little inputs for 100’s of years into the future. We can help you design and implement food forests for any context and to any scale and budget.
We are able to help establish food forests via mentorship or directly on-site , with advice, links to resources, plant materials and follow up management.
THE KEYLINE SCALE OF PERMANENCE
The scale of permanence is a tool developed by farmer and engineer PA Yeomans Australia in the 1950s as part of a strategy for farm use he called keyline design. The scale was the backbone of this system for whole farm planning.This system inspired Bill Mollison in his development of the Permaculture Design System and since then has been used by practioners of Ecosystemic design as nested heirarchy of approach to design and establishment. Over the years this scale of permanence has been adapted and extendend into more relevant detail to the permaculture design process.
The basic idea is that, as one moves down the list, the elements of a farm system become less permanent; that is, they take less energy to change and are less permanent as a factor for planning, as indicated by the graphic.
The eight factors occur each in distinct levels ordered by amounts of time and energy. Yeomans used ‘relative permanence’ to discuss the time-scale element for each factor. The flip side of this is the relative difficulty needed to change that factor, which can be seen as an amount of energy.
While all of the scale’s factors are understood to be inter-related parts of a complex whole that will exhibit dynamic interplay between levels, the specific order of his scale is hierarchical (in both the nested and ranked senses of the word), and based on scales of time as well as energy.
Basically what you do to the top levels affect the levels below, and the higher levels. Next, along the vertical y-axis of the graph, the higher up the factor (also higher in the hierarchy of the KSOP) the more energy it takes to make a change, and the more difficult that will be. These are the slower changing variables of any system, setting the context.
Thus when using the scale of permanence as a guide for design and implementation, we always begin with the top of the scale and move down. For example Climate is the most important influence in a design and any site. It is the hardest to influence and has the biggest impact on all the layers below. All design and implementation must be done in relation to and through the lens of your climate context.
Next is Landshape, which is a direct result of the impact of climate upon the site and takes huge amounts of energy, money and effort to make any changes on it, and even then only minor in the form of earth moving equipment. Furthermore reversing any changes is equally energy intensive.
Water is a direct result of the interplay between climate and landform and is a bit easier to affect through boreholes, dams, swales, etc and so on down the scale.
We have made our own adaption to this scale, bringing it into practical use for the process of design. The inspiration for this change is based on our own experience and that of other practioners in the field such as the Regarians Platform.
When we assess a Site for design or for viability as an effective context for successful human life support potential we will always use this KSOP as our guideline. It is an incredibly effective tool in guiding the Permacutlure Design Tool and has become an intergral tool in that endevour.