Food not Lawns

In August 2008, my wife Michelle and I returned to Calgary, Canada, after spending one year travelling abroad in search of sustainability solutions. With backgrounds in mechanical engineering, our “sabbatical” started off in Denmark – we were drawn there by the lure of technological solutions to energy issues. After several months of volunteering and filling our brains with information (wind energy, solar applications, passive buildings, biogas, plant oil engines... and more) we ended up back in North America prepared to explore the U.S. and Mexico in our plant-oil powered Westfalia.
 
January 15, 2010

Ravis Sustainable teamed up with Pacific Permaculture to offer our inaugural Permaculture Design Certificate Course in central Alberta.

It was an amazing experience - in fact hard to put words to. I will default to feedback and comments received from our students:

"Fantastic Experience. Life Changing. Thanks!"

- Martin Scholz, Red Deer.

"I knew that this would be a life changing course going into it and it hasn't...

August 26, 2009

We are very excited about our new partnership with Clean Calgary and the first Introduction to Permaculture course that Rob facilitated for their organization.

Clean Calgary is an urban environmental organization with a mission to empower Calgarians to create healthy homes and communities through environmental education, products, and services.

The course spanned six Thursday evenings, with the last evening of theory a hands on lecture in our back-yard (pictures shown above).

We also replaced some lawn...

July 22, 2009

Another food forest installation in Calgary - yipee!

The group of students from our Springtime Introduction to Permaculture class taught through Clean Calgary got together one beautiful Saturday and helped turned fellow classmate, Barry Clements, front yard grass into an ecological and permaculture inspired garden.

The goal - replicate, as much as possible, the forest ecology. Forest ecologies are robust, self reinforcing, non-polluting and sustainable. Lawns are a highly inefficient use of space, water & money and significantly contribute to the degradation of our environment. Lawns instill isolation, gardens create community.

Empowered with knowledge gained from their course and eager to make positive change this group set out to create a space that provides food, sanctuary, creates community, inspires us to reconnect to the earth and context ourselves as a part of, not separate from, nature.

...

July 21, 2009

This past week-end, we set out to help Rob Sinclair & Lauren Mangion transform their urban Bowness lot into a permaculture-inspired oasis & garden. Lauren took my “Intro to Permaculture” course in January and was inspired to take some next steps….. I offered to help them out with the design and implementation.

With some basic principles in mind we wanted to create a place where conscious garden design has been melded while respecting nature’s most basic principles. 

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May 28, 2009
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