Jen Hall, Katoomba permaculture advocate, grew up in north Wales where her grandfather was a gardener for a manor house in Anglesey - a small island off the north west coast of Wales, near Snowdonia.
It was freezing cold and windy but he grew rich crops of produce.
As Ms Hall recalled: "My sister and I picked fresh peas and strawberries, and ate them while we wandered. He made compost inside glasshouses. It was so hot inside that he grew watermelons and asparagus, all year round. At the end of the day, he brought home baskets of food - potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbages, onions, which my grandmother prepared and cooked to feed us. What a gift that was."
There was no waste - the vegetable scraps were composted, there were water tanks on the garden sheds and on the house - water was collected and used. Everything was retained within the system - nothing was lost - a true permaculture attitude.
Some 30 years ago, she met Rowe Morrow, a Katoomba local, a mentor, a writer and a teacher who has taken permaculture to camps and other communities around the world, teaching marginalised people to grow food under extremely challenging conditions. Ms Morrow gardened with Ms Hall and taught her permaculture "on the job", in exchange for yoga lessons.
Ms Hall recently completed a permaculture teachers training course with the Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute, where she met Sarah Daniel and Ryan Hoàng. Collaborating with them and other local teachers, Jed Walker, Amanda Argent and Rebekah Norton, Permaculture Matters has been born at the inner space in north Katoomba.
The group is now going to run a permaculture design course over six weekends: April 20/21 and 27/28, May 18/19 and 25/26 and June 15/16 and 29/30.
There is a free introduction session on Saturday, April 13, 10-11am, to get a taste of what to expect in the course.
This will include some of the benefits of permaculture such as: Save money (cuts down on food costs), positive health impact, improve the quality of what you eat and reduce your carbon footprint.
For more information or to register, visit www.permaculturematters.com.au or contact Jen Hall at theinnerspace96@gmail.com, when the full address will be passed on.
