Transition Culture

19 Dec 2008

Two great tools for keeping Holmgren’s Permaculture Principles in your mind all year round

This fantastic image and the following text come from the Permaculture Principles calendar;

Jim Walsh and his giant schnauzer Tom doing an easy 40 km/hr. “Tom and I have reached a maximum recorded speed of 64.8k/hr in this cart.  On a cool day he has pulled me around for 6 hours in one day and, like most working breeds, he loves doing it.  How great it would be if carparks were replanted with useful trees where happy dogs might rest before taking their owners home at the end of the day”.

As readers of Transition Handbook will know, David Holmgren’s 12 Permaculture Principles are key thinking and design tools for any work that is looking beyond our current dependency on fossil fuels.  Immersing oneself in them is extremely useful, and vitally important. We would all gain much by having them ticking away in the back of our head as one of our key thinking tools.

For that reason I want to give a plug to two recent outputs from the rather wonderful PermaculturePrinciples.com.  The first is the calendar from which the page above is extracted, which uses one principle for each month (handy that there were 12) with a memorable example to illustrate the idea behind it.  It is a beautifully designed and attractive calendar, with lots of space to write in. Transition Town Totnes’s ‘Nut Tree Capital of Britain’ initiative puts in an appearance too.

The other is a ring bound diary, packed with much more detail on each principle, and some great case studies.  It also contains recipes and tips, and some fantastic photos.  Each page has a tip at the top, most of which are common sense tips for saving energy and reducing one’s impact, although I’d imagine Tip #74 won’t be one of relevance to too many of you, “change your heated waterbed to a mattress”.

At this time of year there are of course lots and lots of calendars and diaries around, from nude farmers holding pumpkins in appropriate places to David Beckham (who still buys David Beckham calendars?) and things like ‘Whales of the World’.  For me, this calendar and diary are a great way of going about your daily business while at the same time subtly drip-feeding your mind with Holmgren’s principles in a way which is inspiring and practical.  Highly recommended.

You can read more about the calendar here and the diary here, as well as information on ordering them.