In Carolyn Hartt’s South Tacoma yard, straw covers the grass. Self-seeded brassicas poke up through the soil, dried stalks feed the birds. A reclaimed swing set supports a grape vine, a barrel makes organic compost and an even bigger one catches rainwater. Inside, buckets transfer shower water to flush the toilet.
What Hartt is doing is permaculture: a land-use design philosophy that aims for sustainable living, or ‘permanent-agriculture.’ It incorporates food production with energy conservation, provides natural habitats and feeds the soil, recycles resources and promotes ecological harmony. It’s a design concept that’s been around since the 1970s and has seen recent workshops in Olympia and Seattle. This weekend it’s hitting Tacoma in the city’s first-ever certified permaculture design course.
“Permaculture studies relationships in a healthy ecosystem and brings that model into current human existence,” explains Hartt. The South Tacoma restaurant server has been practicing permaculture for three years now after training in California, and she’s one of the teachers for the Tacoma course.
Stretching from February through September, the course is being organized by local nonprofit Sustainable Tacoma Pierce, and covers a variety of topics one weekend every month with local teachers. Students can just attend the lectures at King’s Books, or pay for the entire hands-on course to gain a permaculture certification that can be used privately or professionally.
But what exactly does permaculture cover? Everything to do with basic living, it seems. The Tacoma course includes growing food, recycling gray water (water already used for showering or laundry), soil analysis and composting, land design, animals, native food foraging, natural house building, solar technology and community building. A concurrent Olympia skills workshop gets into growing edible hedges and building solar water heaters. Permaculture, say proponents, is a philosophy that can range from growing veggies on your balcony to creating an entire sustainable village such as the Bullock’s Homestead on Orcas Island.
For Sol Riou, who’s transforming her yard into a produce market, permaculture is an ongoing process. A co-founder of Sustainable Tacoma Pierce early last year, Riou is one of the forces behind the Tacoma course, and lives in a North End home that’s halfway into a permaculture design by course leader Kelda Miller. Her backyard near the alley was converted to mounding vegetable beds last year by a group workshop, and features the permaculture standbys of edible perennials and self-seeding brassicas and root vegetables, all mixed together for diversity, soil nutrition and minimal human effort. Straw mulches everything – permaculture encourages natural earth-turners such as worms rather than conventional digging – and the beds, like Hartt’s, are curvy, to maximize edges where there’s more bio-diversity. In front, Riou is planning to cover the entire lawn with fruiting trees, shrubs and ground covers, with a swale of water-loving blueberries to cope with the drainage from her rain-barrel.
“Permaculture involves design that comes from observing and mimicking natural systems that create abundance,” says Riou. “A lot of it is just common sense and not wasting anything.”
That includes not wasting energy. A part of traditional permaculture design is the use of nine zones radiating out from the living space, in order of daily use. Zone 1 is annual vegetables, close enough that you can dash out for ingredients for your breakfast. Then come herbs and fruit, animals such as chickens, and finally a buffer “wilderness” zone for wildlife.
Marisha Auerbach farms a property southwest of Olympia that adapts these zones on a large scale. A certified permaculturist who’s teaching the Olympia workshops and several of the Tacoma ones, Auerbach is in demand up and down the West Coast while maintaining the land at Wild Thyme Farm eco-retreat. Her Zone 1 includes curvy, leaf-mulched vegetable beds brimming with medicinal herbs, greens and strawberries, while a greenhouse includes self-seeding tomatillos, sage for pest control and a fig tree. Nearby is her “food forest,” six rows of fruit trees underplanted with berries, herbs and mushrooms. Her lawn-mowing, fertilizer-giving cows live in the barn, and on the property’s border is a native forest. Auerbach has more plants than she can give away, more produce than she can eat, and a staggering diversity of species – another permaculture priority.
“Simple permaculture solutions can help you save money and energy, and be more involved with nature,” Auerbach says. But the philosophy goes beyond the individual, she stresses: “By covering the earth with plants, you prevent erosion, enhance the soil for wildlife. We should be caring for the planet as much as serving our own needs, because without the earth, we won’t survive as a species.”
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568
rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com
Permaculture courses
What: Tacoma Permaculture Design Course
When: Begins Feb. 19, then monthly through September; 7-9 p.m. public Friday lecture, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekend workshops.
Where: Friday lecture at King’s Books, 218 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma. Weekends at Waldorf School, 3315 S. 19th St., Tacoma, and other locations.
Content: Course includes growing and foraging food, sustainable energy, gray water, land design and more. Variety of teachers led by Kelda Miller.
Cost: Friday lecture $5-$10, complete course $650-$800. Work/trade will be considered.
Information: 253-565-2599, www.divinearthgp.com, sustainable tacomapierce@gmail.com
What: Olympia Permaculture Skills Workshops
When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. March 27-28, then monthly through October.
Where: Various locations
What’s involved: Topics from building edible food hedges and solar water heaters to winterizing homes. Teachers are Marisha Auerbach and Jenny Pell.
Cost: One workshop, $250; three workshops, $600; all eight, $1,400
Information: 206-949-0496, www.permaculturenow.com
Do-It-Yourself
A wealth of permaculture information is available in books (such as the original treatise “Permaculture: A Design Concept” by Australian Bill Mollison) and on the Internet. Two good local sites are www.divinearthgp.com, run by Kelda Miller, and www.herbnwisdom.com, run by Olympia-based teacher Marisha Auerbach.
