Our individual permaculture practices are rooted in the teachers we learn with. In the books we read to expand our knowledge. In the videos we watch on YouTube to answer a particular question. Or the documentaries we find on Netflix that give us a sense of connection to the larger world.
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Our practices are also grounded in the hyper-local. In the bioregion where we tend the soil and care for plants and animals. Among the communities, people, and cultures we come from and where we find ourselves at this moment.
As someone from the United States living in Central America, my guest today, Scott Gallant, shares his experiences in these different regions and how his location in the world influences his approach to design, universal lessons, and specific solutions. We also talk about the cultural and economic differences between Costa Rica and the United States, and adapting to our local conditions.
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Find Scott and his design work at Porvenirdesign.com. The design project he mentioned working on is Finca Luna Nueva Lodge. And he's part of a Permaculture Design Course in Costa Rica from November 13th to the 26th, 202 at Finca Luna Nueva and Brave Earth Community Permaculture Design Course
I would like to encourage anyone who is able to travel and visit permaculture sites within their own bioregion and elsewhere, including Scott’s invitation to head to Costa Rica. If you haven’t seen permaculture on the ground in a variety of contexts, it can be different from what we might imagine, especially as the techniques move away from the conditions in Australia that started the movement or the often discussed temperate climate food forest. Permaculture is, as Scott shared, different in all the places where it’s practiced as it spreads across the world.
I’ve often joked at times, though I still believe the core idea to be true, that if you wanted to you could create a permaculture design that looks like a Victorian tea garden. By applying our ethics, principles, strategies, and techniques to that form, the results can function within the ecosystem.
By imagining designs like that and being exposed to what people are doing and the practices they’re engaging in, the plants they use to fill out their design, and then how they incorporate it all together, we can be inspired and filled with ideas to take back to where we’re from and radically transform our ideas of what permaculture looks like in our landscapes and in our communities.