It’s a principle of permaculture design that the boundary between contrasting ecosystems, such as an estuary or a woodland edge, is particularly diverse and productive.The recent Paramaethu Cymru gathering produced some exciting new insights and directions by bringing together some of the different communities in Wales.

The Scottish Farm Land Trust aims to increase access to land for small-scale, ecological agriculture by purchasing land to be held in trust and rented fairly to new entrants and young people.

If there was just one thing to take away from meeting the SFLT it was this - watch this space.

After exploring the south of Scotland, from the East side to the West, I arrived to the Black Isle, a few miles away from Inverness, in the middle of the Highlands.

There, I met my new hosts Clive and Julie, a couple from London who had decided after almost two years of wwoofing in Northern Europe and in the UK to start a permaculture project of their own.

They bought a house with about 2.5 acres of land and woodland in August 2015, and since then have been working hard, designing and gardening. They were hosting a workshop over the weekend, so we spent the first couple of days after my arrival building the structure for a big hugelbed, that would be filled by the participants with wood, compost, cardboards and leaves.

There Permaculture Scotland Annual General Meeting will be held at 1030am on Sunday the 2nd of July

My name is Julie, and I am currently travelling in Scotland, visiting different permaculture projects in various places as part of a research project on the interactions between principles, values, and concrete practices in permaculture. I plan on visiting six or seven projects before the end of June, and to write a blog article on each of them, to tell you more about my experience, and to highlight some of my key findings and/or thoughts on different subjects. It is meant to be personal, and you may disagree with some of my opinions – I am looking forward to receiving feedback!

My name is Julie, I am currently travelling in Scotland, visiting different permaculture projects in various places. This is part of a research project on the interactions between principles, values, and concrete practices in permaculture.

I plan on visiting six or seven projects before the end of June, and to write a blog article on each of them, to tell you more about my experience, and to highlight some of my key findings and/or thoughts on different subjects. It is meant to be personal, and you may disagree with some of my opinions – I am looking forward to having feedback!

My first stop in this journey was at Graham Bell’s Red Shed – where better to start my research than by visiting the oldest intentional forest garden in the UK?

In April I will be starting a new, exciting project for the Permaculture Association in Scotland, investigating the relationship between permaculture activists’ worldviews and practices, as well as their own journey into permaculture. I am therefore looking for people among the ScotLAND network interested in this project and who would like to be interviewed. It would be more than ideal for me if I could be hosted in some of the ScotLAND centres for a week or two, helping in the garden and doing interviews.

Abstract

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In reality, if compared to ‘the average’ UK resident, our living conditions are pretty poor. We don’t have a flushing toilet. We don’t have hot running water. We don’t have constant electricity. When the hydro gets low, we have to resort to solar, which doesn't power everything so priorities have to be decided (do we power the freezer or the electric heater in our kids room?). And for the first 3 years we lived here, we had to carry water from a far away tap for all domestic purposes. I confess I do have a moan sometimes.