In today’s interview, Dan Palmer of Making Permaculture Stronger, and David Holmgren continue their conversation about David’s design journey. In this episode they discuss founding Holmgren Design in the 1980s, David’s work as a professional designer and how that influenced his thoughts on permaculture over time, and the ideas that lead to his authoring Permaculture Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability and RetroSuburbia. Throughout, they share more about how David’s knowledge and understanding of reading the landscape developed.
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As I share this interview with you, if you’d like to learn how to read the landscape, David and Dan are working on a film to demonstrate and teach you David’s methods of Reading Landscapes. To complete this film, they’re looking to raise $35,000. As this podcast comes out, in early August, they’re at over $15,000 raised, with less than a month to go.
I see this video and the knowledge presented as vital if we’re going to implement permaculture and regenerative agriculture on a broad scale, which is one of the reasons I personally supported this effort.
You can find and back this effort at readinglandscape.org
Find out more about the development of David’s demonstration site and other work at melliodora.com. You can dive deep into his principles and pick up many of his books, including RetroSuburbia and the revised edition of Permaculture: Principles and Pathways at permacultureprinciples.com.
Dan is at makingpermaculturestronger.net.
After speaking with hundreds of guests over the years, and trading thousands of emails and phone calls with listeners to the show, every person I’ve been in contact with shared a unique story of how they discovered permaculture, learned design and then implemented these ideas in their lives and in the landscape. I found it interesting in these interviews between Dan and David, that, even as a co-originator of permaculture, David’s journey changed and developed so much over time, from those earliest days with Bill and developing the concepts that became permaculture, to deepening his design understanding in conversations and mentorship with Haikai Tane, the decades as a professional designer at Holmgren Design, and the implementation at his mother’s property and at Melliodora.
Wherever we begin, and however our path changes, as students and teachers, advocates and practitioners of permaculture, we can work together to create a world of verdant abundance.
From here, the next episode is a conversation with my old friend Eric Puro who updates us on how he’s transitioned from natural building to biotech, growing 10s of thousands of kilos of chaga mushrooms in the forests of Finland.
Until the next time our paths cross, spend each day exploring your design path, while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other.
Related Interviews
David Holmgren – RetroSuburbia
Revising Permaculture with David Holmgren
David Holmgren on Permaculture