guilty as charged L,

take a look around our site you may find some ideas/help within.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

Thanks Len, will do :D

Or you could always try this one....

Regards,
Shax

Here is a link that might be useful: GardenWeb Permaculture Forum

we used to have some good chat in that forum shax,

but sadly like the usenet newsgroup forum (altDOTperma/ture) as well it has pretty much dried up, new people get scared off with chat of expensive quite unnecessay courses. not supposed to mention oz permacultire dot org here (very muffed up but should lead you there)some chat not much truely perm c but.

len

G'day, Len.

Yep, sad about the decline of those forums...also sad that permaculturists generally are so very pedantic and exacting on their instructions on a system that by its very nature, needs to be flexible. And for my last whinge, embarrassing and shameful that so many so-called "qualified instructors" are being opportunistic and as you say, charging big bucks to enlist people into doing their courses!

Regards,
Shax

thanks shax,

yes it all should be simple practise, if you don't have a flow form then don't make one just so you can say you have one or it can be seen and then becomes a conversation piece (like the copy book swale, very obvious and can be obtrusive in your landscape but many hard case pc'ers won't even look at other more simple swalling methods because they aren't so obvious), that goes against the spirit of perma when lots of man made processes are added and all the planning the person gets lost in planning to do and never achieves it. and productivity is swallowed up by too much imput.

too much being seen to and not enough doing, and of course everyone who takes on a pdc then thinks they can hang out their shingles to make money.

you do what fits and forget the rest.

sadly i think the damage has been done by those who's greed killed the goose that may have laid the golden egg (to me the golden egg being benefits to the environment and simple living standards), long before the golden egg could ever come along.

i reckon i used to wake up each day well almost chuckle, just to read the posts in that newsgroup, it was such a viable group, lots of new people were encouraged without the need for cost, then those who promote profits first blew it out of the water.

take care my friend.

len

All I have to say Black cat is - give him the gravel, and take over the lawns for your permaculture based veg beds - LOL.
Otherwise, try building raised waterwicking beds for the long dry summer :http://outbackharvest.blogspot.com/2008/09/wicking-worm-beds.html

A blog that will have much to interest you I am sure.

Another idea would be to build raised no dig beds.
My choice would still be to take over the lawn. If it grows good grass the soil is probably much better than the gravel area and you won't have to mow the veg beds :-)
While not a purist, I figure that if you want to use permaculture ideas, then it should be all of the yard, and not just a little bit.

Cheers, and happy veg growing, Jan