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[permacult41950bdne-blog]

The Best Permaculturist in Byron and Tweed

The world of permaculture can be overwhelming. Even in its most basic form, it is still a journey of continuous change. To simplify your experience into small, manageable, immediate and tangible results, we offer short site visits to identify and design your next project. Most Next-Step Projects can be done DIY in a few days with materials costing between $200-$1000. If necessary, a short, two page briefing with overlays, drawings and references will be provided to get you off to a winning start. This is a good option for people with small spaces, or intermittent periods of free time. The briefing is crafted to capture all relevant design considerations into an easy-to-follow how-to guide. When life throws your timeline into disarray, the briefing will allow you to quickly revise and reinitiate when you're ready. It's also a helpful guide for you to communicate your vision to others helping you along the way. A generic list of project elements you could do is visible below under ‘Helping Hands'. Our Process We have two design types to support your permaculture journey, the Next-Step Project, and the Full Concept Design. An outline of each can be seen under ‘Services and Fees"‘. The design of a Next-Step Project can be considered as a short and logical quick-decision tool. The larger Full Design Concept is a wholistic and integrative appreciation process. In both design types, our appreciation process is briefly outlined below: Step 1: Define the Vision and Needs So what's the goal? In this step we help you define what is needed from the space, and more importantly, what isn't wanted. If possible, we have discussions, interviews and Q+A with all relevant stakeholders to understand the collective intention, and why for it. At the end of this step, we have a destination in mind. Step 2: Site Survey Let's get our nerd on. We examine sun diagrams, satellite imagery, topographical maps, meteorological records, council planning maps, soil composition, wildlife habits, prevailing plant performance, domestic animal presence, and of course human routines. At the end of this step we will have a your space sub-divided into ‘Zones', along with a stocktake of what resources we have to work with. You'll be surprised. Step 3: Challenge Matrix Let's get real. Despite all the wonderful visions and abundance of available resources… challenges lie within. This step allows us to identify those ‘problems'… and turn them to our advantage. Amongst others, we examine prevailing pests, weeds, disease, natural disaster risk and poor soil. By recruiting these challenges into our design, we're working with nature…and not against her. (You'll never win… not ethically anyway) Step 4: Design At our home page, you were introduced to David Holmgren. In his book, "Retrosuburbia: The Downshifter's Guide to a Resilient Future" He has gifted us with 12 design principles. We use these to help us formulate our design: The design step allows us to start formulating what project elements are feasibly possible, and more importantly, which are not. Each project element needs input of energy to thrive, we want the majority of our inputs to be provided by the waste output of another. We're trying to create a closed cycle of energy in the design. By using clever design we can minimise, or ever eliminate human effort required to close the energy cycle. At the end of this step, we have established what project elements to include, where they are located, and how to close the energy cycle. Step 5: Implementation Plan Nice chat, we've talked about it… now lets be about it. In this step, we decide how it's going to transition off a plan, and into real life. Very often the less glamourous project elements such as compost bins, worm farms and water tanks…. are a priority. This allows us to stockpile our resources in preparation for the more exciting project elements such as raised garden beds, food forest and poultry. At the end of this step, we have a priority order of project elements, and who is responsible for building them. This could be an opportunity to designate areas of responsibility to each of your team members. You'll be surprised how quickly children can intuitively take to permaculture practice. There is no shame in asking for professional help if you are a little shy on time or know-how. Constructing project elements well, the first time, will minimise your ongoing maintenance in future. Permaculture Designer Tweed