International Permaculture Day Celebrations

May 6 is International Permaculture Day! It's a day to celebrate sustainable, productive, and self-reliant households and communities. Check out the Australian and international events here.



For Melbournians, here's a local Permaculture Day event.

Sunday 6 May, Permaculture Celebration at Fairfield Community Garden

Time: 10am to 4pm

Address: 1 Hamilton St., Fairfield, Vic, (behind Interactive Learning Centre)

Come and join the celebration of Permaculture Day at Fairfield Community Garden!

-10:15am Weeding and mulching the paths
-11:00am Autumn Leaf Harvest (also a TD event)

Other highlights
- Gardening workshops
- Child's play area
- Book corner
- Sustainable finger food ( 12.30 to 2pm , by donation)
- Talks on sustainability
- Music and much more!

Please bring your picnic rug, food, cups, plates, cutlery, garden tools or skills to share and enjoy a day out in the garden!

Entry: $5 or by donation

Permablitz and Sharehood videos

Here's another cool time lapse of a permablitz I did back in Nov 2011. Thanks to Tim Metherall for filming the timelapse. In the background you'll see a fox-proof chicken coup and "strawyard" being constructed, with lawn cleared and veggie beds prepared in the foreground.



The special thing about this permablitz was that the Sharehood, an Australian community organization about sharing appliances and helping people get to know their neighbors, donated the seedlings. Everyone who came got to take a free veggie seedling home, the only catch was you had to take two, and give one to a neighbour and tell them about The Sharehood. The Sharehood "aims to build joyful, sustainable and resilient communities by encouraging people to get to know their neighbours and share with them." There's an online tool and services trading network. Learn more at the Sharehood or watch the little video below with Michael Green, who gave a workshop at the blitz. It's a great model for community building.

Michael Green from Sharehood from Raphaela Lee on Vimeo.

Translations of sustainable living brochures

I just found something really cool - Environment Victoria in conjunction with their Sustainability for Diverse Communities Resource Hub has provided translations of various sustainable living brochures. They're all available here. The translations were done by different organizations so the topics vary from climate change to water to chemicals to gardening and food. I think it's a great idea to have this information for different communities in different languages, especially considering how multicultural and diverse communities can be. Hopefully once people get access to this information, they can act on it.