Reasons to love Permaculture

Our instinct tells us there is something life-giving about humans sharing life intimately with other living things. Permaculture design allows us to make this dream reality. As we learn the design skills to build beautiful balconies, we learn skills to design creative, productive lives.

Balcony and rooftop trees cool the buildings, clean the air. They provide beauty. The people who live and visit these apartments probably feel a special spirit in the place. They have something unique. There is a reason for neighbours to talk to and support each other.

Trees need food to thrive. Humans need a place to put their rubbish and waste. In Permaculture, the solution to the human problem is the same as the solution to the tree's problem. Permaculture is about making good connections, networks of interdependance. "The Problem is the Solution"

Design to expand your life.

My balcony garden is my favorite 'room' in the house. You don't have to 'own' a space to enjoy it: your room is as big as my view is big. I spend many hours a day here. I write in my diary, study Japanese, and spend quiet time thinking. I brush my hair and hang out my washing. My plants are models for my illustrations. They are also my teachers, helping me to understand how life really works.

"Get maximum yeild from minimum space"

Sometimes magazines, T.V. makes me feel 'you don't have enough. You aren't enough". Permaculture teaches me how to get maximum enjoyment from minimum resources. It lets me generate value in my life, instead of waiting or hoping to get rich enough to buy it.

Design for Interdependance

In my balcony garden, basil is planted with tomatoes. Not only are they delicious eaten together, they help each other grow. The bug that bothers the tomato plant doesn't like the smell of basil, so it goes and eats something else.

Chives like lots of nitrogen. Peas have friendly microbes on their roots that take nitrogen from the air in soil, and feed it to the Plants nearby. Peas and chives grown with each other are stronger and healthier than peas and chives that only grow with their own kind.

This is called 'Companion Planting'.

You can do it the rest of your life. It is difficult at first to make freinds with people who are older, or richer, or messier than us. But when we persist, and find a way, we can bring a lot to each others lives. Life becomes surprising.

Design to nourish
In modern Japan and Australia, kitchen scraps are collected by truck, taken far away. In Australia, buried along with all kinds of toxic waste, in Japan it is burnt.

All the fertility and nourishment we took from the soil is lost forever. In Japan, it is even sadder: Kitchen scraps are mostly water, and don't burn themselves. For every kilo of food, a kilo of fossil fuel is added and burnt, turned into greenhouse gas.

My kitchen scraps go into my wormfarm, where after a few weeks, it is turned into clean, lovely fertilizer for my garden. If you cut the food small so it doesn't rot, there is no smell, so it is possible to do on a balcony, if it is shady.

If you don't know worms, you might think they are ugly and scary. But it is us humans that go around turning beautiful nature into ugly waste. And we don't even enjoy doing it. Worms turn waste into something useful again, and they love doing it. I want to support them in their quiet, peaceful work.

Watering Design to keep plants alive





See the round pot, and long-necked green pots? They will be buried in my potplants, releasing water whenever it is needed.



This is thousand-year-old desert technology. Water was precious, and heavy to carry. The arabs didn't want to sprinkle it on the ground, where it would quickly evaporate. They buried unglazed, pourous pots in the ground, so the water would seep out directly to the roots of the plants. The surface would be completely dry, so even if weed seeds landed, they wouldn't grow and compete with the useful plants.


We fill the black tank with water, and gravity feeds it down, to constantly give just the right amount of water to the wetpots buried by the potplants. Here I am, putting one in my passionfruit vine. It will be so relieved. Even though it has a forgetful owner, it can have a stable, good life.