Maddy Harland’s permaculture garden on TV

I spotted on Emma Cooper’s blog that Maddy Harland’s permaculture garden is going to be featured on TV soon, seeing as I’m in something of a ‘lets recommend things on iplayer’ mood, I strongly suspect this will be worth watching.

Maddy is the editor of Permaculture Magazine, which is kind of required reading really, good stuff. I should have an article in the next issue, looking at monastic history and its relationship to sustainable land use.

Maddy also blogs a great place to go if you have any interest in permaculture.

Her garden is a mature forest garden and from what I’ve seen and read before its a great example of permaculture in a real setting.

So anyway, the programme is part of gardening guru Alys Fowler’s series, which glories in the name of The Edible Garden, it’s going out on BBC2 at 8.00 pm on Wednesday 7th April 2010. If you have a TV, you could watch it there and then, if you’re like me, then you can catch it on iplayer afterwards.

Warmly recommended.

inspirational permaculture garden

Check out this ‘step by step‘ documenting of how one family transformed their modest urban back garden into a small forest garden, using permaculture techniques.

Its a really good example of how one can use imaginative approaches to take a permie approach to gardening, without the need for massive acreage or established woodland.

This couple have taken their lead from books and planted up a nice herb spiral which I am once again besotted by. Crucially they have taken their time and built it up slowly, carefully designing it as they went.

My one gripe (I always have one) is the amount of money it must have cost, I did some mental calculations and worked out it must have been pretty pricey. However, I guess most of it will be self renewing, and so can be expected to pay for itself over time. I am also slightly concerned about the amount they harvested this year, which doesnt seem to be very much… however I guess that productivity can only be expected to increase.

In sum, I think this is an inspirational project, with plenty to be drawn from, it’s well worth a look and a mull over. Beats boring old conventional gardening anyhow