The Permaculture Podcast

My guest for this episode is Stephen Harrod Buhner, who has authored numerous books on plants and herbalism, including The Lost Language of Plants, Sacred Plant Medicine, and the book that introduced me to his work: Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers. This last one is a definite for any home brewers library. I interviewed Stephen [...]

This episode is an audio version of “All Roads Lead to Permaculture” an article written by a friend of the show Andy Russell, who runs the excellent blog Autonomy Acres. Andy reached out to me several months ago and ever since then I’ve been following his work through his website. When I read his post, [...]

My guest for this episode is Eric Toensmeier, author of numerous books and articles on permaculture, including the much lauded Edible Forest Gardens with Dave Jacke. He joins us to talk about his next book, which he is seeking to support with a crowd-funding campaign via Kickstarter. That book Eric is working on, and needs [...]

My guest today is Steve Gabriel, a permaculture instructor with the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute, and an extension office aide at Cornell University, who researches Agroforestry and Mushroom cultivation with Dr. Ken Mudge. Our conversation, broadly, covers Agroforestry, what it is, the various techniques, and what we can learn from these practices as permaculturists. Mushroom [...]

My guest for this episode is David Holmgren, one of the co-originators of Permaculture, and author of some of the fundamental books on this subject including Permaculture One and Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability. I wanted to talk to David because of my curiosity. His contributions to this field are many, but what I [...]

My guest for this episode is Pam Warhurst, co-founder of Incredible Edible, chair of the board of the British Forestry Commission, and a speaker at the TEDSalon London, in the Spring of 2012. I was struck by her work in planting edible landscapes because it happens with volunteers, not a whole lot of money, and [...]

My guest for this episode is Josh Robinson, a permaculture practitioner from San Diego, who is part of the team that operate the San Diego Sustainable Living Institute. Their organization is devoted to doing on the ground education and to serve as a hub to connect people with information and ideas in the San Diego [...]

Adam Brock of The GrowHaus returns to continue the thread of Invisible Structures that began in the last episode with Bill Sommers. There we talked about Community Developed Finance, here Adam and I speak more broadly about Invisible Structures and his emerging Invisible Structures Pattern Language This invisible structure theme began when I first spoke [...]

Bill Sommers, President of The Permaculture Credit Union, and a banker and businessman with over 30 years of experience, returns to talk about community developed finance. During the conversation we begin talking about what this idea is, and then move into the options available, the ways we can use banking, and financial education, to give [...]

Here’s my story. How I went from my early days as a young child picking strawberries and spring onions out of my parent’s gardern, finding permaculture and producing this podcast, and looking forward into the future. I didn’t have permaculture parents. Though my father could, and still can, build many many things out of wood, [...]

My guest for this episode is Dr. Wayne Dorband, a scientist and entrepreneur in Colorado. Our topic for this episode is his recently opened Green Hacker Space, a location where individuals can come together to make and create sustainable solutions, whether those are personal projects where they need access to specialized equipment, or to prototype [...]

My guest for this episode is John-Paul Maxfield, a business owner from Denver, Colorado, who launched a sustainable agriculture company that began as a successful commercial composting business. The journey began in 2009 with a truck and $9,000. Now he and his team are on the next stage of that journey, providing products and tools [...]

While I work on this episode, snow falls outside forming a fresh winter blanket upon the earth. Grass sits dormant, hidden beneath. The tops of onions, overwintering in beds to produce seed in the spring, appear unruly and ready to awaken from their cold sleep. The Pine and Hemlock wear coats of white while the [...]

As promised, with the release of this episode corresponding to my wife’s birthday, here’s something light hearted for you all: the first single from Charlie Jones’ forthcoming permaculture inspired album, Permaculture: A Rhymer’s Manual. This track is “No Such Thing As Waste” and comes from David Holmgren’s 6th principle, Produce No Waste. I received this [...]

This episode is a listener question thanks to a good friend of mine, Tony, sending an email for me to check out a recent video by Toby Hemenway on Redesigning Civilization and a question. His question: Say, for the sake of argument, that we lived in a fully functional Permacultural society (as to how large [...]