Urban Permaculture

“Permaculture” originally being a fusion of “permanent” “agriculture” suggests from its name that it is mostly appliable in rural settings, where land and soil are more easily accessible than in most other places.
But Permaculture wouldn’t be permaculture if it wasn’t appliable to a lot more settings than the rural- and home-scale garden setting. Actually Permaculture, being a design tool for any kind of process, is appliable everywhere. And it’s role in designing urban settings where food production and community building aspects intertwine has been a great one since Permaculture came into existance in the 80s.

Urban Permaculture should get our attention since it plays a significant role in reacting on the causes for climate change and its consquences.
Climate change, not only results from too much CO2 in the atmosphere, but mainly from the destruction of the natural cycles of water and carbon mainly by industrial agriculture. Which is first and foremost put into place in order to meet the needs of ever-growing cities.
If we transfer the food production, the energy production, the production of medicine through medicinal herb gardens,… bit by bit back to the cities, back to where it is needed, this means that less and less land needs to be used for production outside the cities. This means that this land can return to wilderness and take back their role in the life cycles of the planet.
Cities are by their very basic existance out of the natural loop, but why not trying to include natural processes in urban, human-made systems as well? Why don’t we try to transfer urban spaces, like “useless” representative lawns  into thriving and productive gardens?

Urban Farm Jadal – “Greening the camps” project, Jordan

Creating an urban garden from recycled materials

Urban gardens come along with many benefits, and here are some of them: improved indoor air quality, lowered risk of respiratory disorders, as well as chronic headaches and eye irritation, increased levels of empathy and compassion through attention and care given to plants, improved human mental wellbeing as well as productivity levels, access to fresh kitchen ingredients in your own home, increased awareness about the need for improving our environmental impact. Urban gardens beautify the environment, increase biodiversity and act as a shelter for bees, insects and small animals.

Moreover, it is possible to build urban garden with very cheap materials by reusing old bottles, tires, old plastic items and a variety of materials that otherwise would most probably end up in landfills, therefore contributing to the pollution of the environment.

We have  a small collection of ideas how to become active in your city and bring more of  earth care, people care and fair share to your neighbourhood. Creating an urban garden from recycled materials, how to compost and produce soil while living in a flat and how to make seed bombs. You can find more info about these activities in the menu above.