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March 5, 2009
Xeriscape Conference Part 2
The first day ended with two excellent speakers. The first was Brad Lancaster who is a permaculture teacher, designer, consultant and co-founder of Desert Harvesters. He has taught programs for the ECOSA Institute, Columbia University, the U. of A, Prescott College, Audubon Expeditions, City of Asheville, North Carolina and many others. He also helps design integrated water harvesting and permaculture systems for homeowners and gardeners. His topic for the day was, Water Harvesting and Sustainability. His talk included why we need to change how we look at water in our own personal space, how to evaluate and then change our current water use. Methods for reducing water consumption included; using less power, rainwater collection (tanks and redirection of output), the use of greywater and landscape design. He ended with live the change you want to see.
He has written several good books on Rainwater Harvesting and has come to Flagstaff to lecture, so you may have heard him. His talk was educational, practical, and very entertaining. His humor came out when he included the words Scare-City and A-Bun- Dance (which he did with his 6 foot 6 body) in illustrating the extremes of water management.
The lecture that followed was by Toby Hemenway the author of Gaia's Garden: A guide to Home Scale Permaculture. It has been a best selling book for the last 6 years and outlines a design approach based on ecology for creating sustainable landscapes, homes, communities, and workplaces. He is from Portland, OR and is a member of ReCode Portland, a citizens' initiative to eliminate code obstructions to sustainable technologies such as greywater re-use and natural building. He has written many articles and was the editor of the Permaculture Activitist.
Permaculture to me has always seemed complicated with so many things to consider, but he made the topic seem logical and easy, as well as important. He outlined some simple principles for assessing a site, talked about growing guilds (corn, beans and squash) and their use in designing landscapes, about doing more with less, including redundancy in your plan, and last of all a 7-fold path to water wisdom. His principles included: increasing organic matter in the soil, mulch to prevent evaporation and keep the roots cool, contour the soil to hold water, plant densely to provide some shade for the soil, arrange plants by water needs, harvest the rain and water wisely. The two that sometimes don't make the lists are contouring the soil and planting densely. His book is a must for anyone wanting to learn more about permaculture, and his presentation enjoyable and beautiful to look at with many examples of landscapes.
My last entry will be next week about 2 or 3 more speakers. When and if I get a CD I will post its availability on the website.
Thanks,
Loni Shapiro
Posted by maxmaddy at March 5, 2009 6:58 AM