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Customer Reviews:
interesting
A great basic introduction to the subject. The book is very short, but was enough to inspire me to want to learn more about permaculture and how I can apply it to my own life.
Extreme gardening with a global mission 
Permaculture is a small but active section of the Green movement which focusses on transforming the way we produce food by designing schemes whose key feature is the integration of woodland with food crops through "relationship placement" and the close study of microclimates so as to maximise yields and minimise labour inputs. There are places in the world (mostly the Anglo-Saxon parts of it) where permaculture has formed the basis of successful experiments in communal living and production - Crystal Springs near Brisbane and a number of farms in the UK, and one of these was the subject of a BBC Natural World programme in 2009. The author of this pamphlet, Patrick Whitefield, is keen to point out that permaculture is wider in concept and impact than simple organic food production - it requires large inputs of intelligent design, and more importantly, a transformation of people's attitudes to the planet.
So permaculture has global ambitions, in line with the rest of the Green movement. There is a global crisis (climate change, reliance on fossil fuels, industrial agricultural production). The crisis must be tackled by people thinking globally and acting locally, reducing consumption, curbing population growth, creating a smaller-scale sustainable society.
This is where "the rest of us" part company with this booklet. By all means use it as an aid to enjoyable intensive gardening with a frisson of self-sufficiency, but use Patrick Whitefield's The Earth Care Manual (Permanent Publications, 2004)if you're serious about it.
The rest of us are also a bit uneasy about going back (apparently) to a world of subsistence agriculture, where swords have all been beaten into ploughshares and the oil companies have gone out of business. Like all utopian visions, the question has to be asked "how do we get there?" Marx had a similar vision for industrial society but Lenin had to construct some unpleasant ways of getting there (whatever happened to all those kulaks?). How do you persuade people in a democracy to volunteer for the Green programme? And where's the science that says it's all technically possible?
Enjoy the gardening!
a delicous nut 
what a great little book, when i first got it i was dissapointed by its small size, but as with many nuts - there is a whole lot of protein and other good things in a small package!!
the book is a great introduction to permaculture, perfect for the beginner who wants to know about farms, gardens, and city living and not just to specialise in one area. It has great examples and is very well written and has a great biblio at the end to give lots of info sources.
to sum up, its a great mulch from which to grow ideas!
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