Review—looking at permaculture’s past…
An educational resource lost?
Is this another permaculture resource now lost? I looked online for the illustrator, Elaine Thornhill, because I thought permaculture practitioners might like to acquire a set of the educational cards, were they still available, but could not make contact. I review them here to document our permaculture past. All illustrations ©Elaine Thornhill.
IT IS what?… sometime maybe a couple decades ago and we are in Maleny, the funky little town in the hills behind the Sunshine Coast. I don’t know what it is like now, but back then there were perhaps a couple of those shops that I find it hard to classify. You know, those that sell craft products, nicknacks, a few books, essential oils, incense that you smell as soon as you walk in and a mishmash of other colourful stuff.
Whenever it was, we walk into a shop and look around. Just about to walk out, I notice a set of cards and pick them up to take a look. Permaculture Style Water-saving Gardening Ideas it says. I part with my $5.50 and walk out with a set 16 cards in my pocket.
Cards of ideas
I don’t usually do impulse buys. As my partner Fiona would tell you, I can take weeks reading reviews and assessing something before buying, or not. Sure, that is for substantial purchases but even with minor ourchases I have been known to look and then go mull over the purchase while I down a coffee. These cards, though, were cheap enough not to bother with that drawn-out process.
I look at the cards and read that they are printed on recycled paper and that, as the cover claims, they illustrate DIY approaches to water management in the garden. How do I classify them? Informal works of illustrative art, I suppose would be a more or less accurate description. They are line drawings coloured with water colour paint.
Going through the cards I find that they are more than water saving ideas. Some—those captioned Gardens are fun, Create an edible landscape, Have fun — create microclimates, A little garden in the kitchen—branch out into garden design ideas.
The remaining 12 cards focus specifically on water management.
Something familiar?
Something is bothering me. I’m looking at the Gardens are fun card and there is something familiar about it where it illustrates a garden bed made up of ridges in which the vegetable crop is planted, separated by troughs filled with compost and that retain water. Then I realise why is looks familiar. It is because APACE (Appropriate Technology for Community and Environment), the NGO I worked with on food security and farming projects in the Solomon Islands used the same garden design. We called it ‘tuku’ gardening and it was illustrated in our book, SAPA (‘sapa’ means ‘compost heap’ in Solomon Islands Pijin).
The other cards illustrate design strategies familiar to permaculture folk:
- designing microclimates in the garden according to orientation, slope and wind
- mixed cropping
- gardening in the kitchen with sprouts and containers for culinary herbs on the window sill
- reusing water from the kitchen sink to irrigate plants
- recycling food scraps as compost
- growing wheatgrass.
More than a useful resource
The plants illustrated in the cards are those of humid subtropical regions, such as Maleny is situated in. Those of us living in cool temperate climates would have to substitute species suited to our colder regions and also, perhaps, alter the plant spacing illustrated on some cards so as to admit more light into our gardens.
As a source of ideas and how-to the cards are useful for home and community gardeners. But they are more than that—they have potential for use in permaculture as well as gardening courses because they graphically summarise techniques for the garden and could make gardeners more resourceful and less reliant on external gardening inputs. The detailed illustrations of ideas could serve as visual guides for practical build-and-learn-by-doing experiments for course students.
Just as I am finishing this review something starts to nag me. It is that question of familiarity again. Why? The style of the illustrations, the line work, the watercolour — it seems familiar. Then I realise what it is. The artwork is reminiscent of the that of Western Australian permaculture illustrator, Brenna Quinlan.
So, there we have it. Two female illustrators whose work informs, educates and stimulates us and a set of cards now part of the bigger story of permaculture.
I don’t know if the cards are still available. It is a pity if they are not because, like Brenna’s work, they offer an alternative to the usual verbal and photographic means of teaching gardening in permaculture courses.
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