"Permaculture is a design approach to sustainable living modelled on natural living systems integrating human settlements and natural environments... It's about designing systems that meet all the needs of humans and the natural world - without compromising ecological health."
The Auckland Permaculture Workshop will kick off in February, offering ayear-long course with monthly classes held on Saturdays and opportunities to attend one-off classes for those with busy.
Classes cover a huge variety of topics spanning philosophy and design to socio-cultural issues, tree crops, energy production and technology and soil sampling.
The course is run out of the Jasmax offices in Parnell, but there are plenty of off-site field trips showcasing integrated design sites including a trip to a commercial plot integrating forestry with persimmon, figs and bananas as well as trips to urban gardens.
The course is designed for people wanting practical design skills; skills which have valuable applications in areas as diverse as starting up a business to working with communities to build resilience to designing your own property, says Mackesy. "If people are wanting to learn how to live more sustainable and be able to apply ecological thinking to whatever they do, then that's basically what the course is about."
Co-founder, and designer for top architectural firm Jasmax, Gary Marshall stumbled across permaculture in the early 2000s. "I was doing furniture design and i was looking for something a bit more ethically and ecologically conscious."
Permaculture, says Marshall, is something that informs many of his daily decisions; "from where I live, to how I commute to work, to the place that I work, to what we're doing to our house to how I engage with the community."
Mackesy was introduced to permaculture whilst staying in Java. "A friend of mine, who I was living with, handed me a book called 'Introduction to Permaculture.' It was my 'Eureka!' moment... It took me a couple of years, but in 2001 I took some time off work and went to Australia and did a permaculture design certificate. Then I quit my job in Japan, moved onto a farm and never looked back!"
