[permaculture-oceania] REPORT/ESSAY: Rosemary Morrow's new book a how-to-do-it text for DIY Permaculture

[Russ Grayson]

The Spring sky was cloudless and blue, the air refreshingly cool and the
blooms of Katoomba Community Garden's collection of rare apple varieties
brilliant white as an estimated 100 people gathered to celebrate the launch
of Rosemary Morrow's new edition of 'Earth Users Guide to Permaculture'.

Rosemary, modernly dressed in jeans and print T-shit - but no pearls this
time; Rosemary is the only gardener I know to wear pearls while digging in
the soil - her hair slicked with coconut oil (perhaps a new image for
Rosemary as a WEW - a Wild/Wise Elderly Woman?) was waiting at Katoomba
station. Unknowingly, a number of us had travelled separately from Sydney on
the same train. 

"We could have had a Permaculture party", said one on being introduced to
the rest there on the platform. Richard was one of those travellers, an ABC
video producer who once accompanied Rosemary to Cambodia to document her
work. Martin, too, seems to have been a film maker and Fiona Campbell and
myself made up the rest of this out-of-town group. The rest of the crowd
that gathered in the community garden was from the Blue Mountains.

The launch was a simple event befitting Rosemary's low-key approach to
community involvement. Jenny Kee, artist, clothing designer and
Permaculturist launched the book and I spoke about Permaculture and
Rosemary's role in it. Rosemary thanked all those that had helped with the
book and we enjoyed the food and the choice of three cask wines while we
made new acquaintances and revived others that had lapsed. It was a
convivial Saturday afternoon in the warm sun to acknowledge this latest of
Rosemary's contributions to the design system.

IN THE GARDEN APPLES BLOOM
Katoomba Community Garden was certainly the best site to launch the book. It
has only a small patch of annual vegetables and would perhaps best be
described as a community-managed arboretum of rare apple varieties. These,
white blooms bright in the afternoon sunlight, line a wide path to form an
avenue and dot the garden throughout. Thoughtfully, the gardeners have
labeled the varieties.

Katoomba's is a welcoming garden. A sign at the entrance invites the casual
visitor to walk through. There are no fences, just a plank bridge across a
ditch. As visitors enter they pass the vegetable beds and the mudbrick
storage shed and cobb oven. Evident on the garden's fringe are the native
plants established as part of the garden, a small reforestation project in
itself. 

Inside the community garden a crew of five clay-stained people were busy
finishing a large, paved, patterned performance circle for the community
garden's Spring celebration of arts, crafts and song on October 15.

PAST STUDENTS AND PRESENT FRIENDS
Many hands rose when I asked the crowd how many had heard of Permaculture
and who had done a Permaculture course with Rosemary. It was mainly the same
hands that rose to both questions, something that spoke of Rosemary's
predilection for acting in her local area. I realised, then, that this
gathering was more than just the Blue Mountains Permaculture network, it was
also a testamonial to the work of Rosemary Morrow in the region in which she
lives. 

"I'm a person who works locally", Rosemary said when we went to her house
after the festivities. So true, and the afternoon's events were evidence of
that.

Rosemary started teaching Permaculture in Sydney in the early 1990s. It was
then that Fiona Campbell and I met her, when she asked us to teach a couple
subjects in her Permaculture Design Course at Pittwater. After that, she
disappeared again to Vietnam or Cambodia, two countries that have absorbed
so much of her energy over the years. Rosemary revisited Vietnam only a
couple months ago (see: www.pacific-edge.info for Rosemary's letter about
disaster planning in coastal Vietnam).

A NEW EDITION FOR NEW TIMES
The world changes and books need updating if they are to address current
circumstances. The world of 1994, when, I think, Rosemary's first edition of
this book appeared, was in many ways a different place than it is today,
over a decade later.

That Rosemary has made changes to the text and included a number of sections
such as 'social Permaculture', 'adding resilience to design' and 'designing
for disaster' - a community-based approach to security in the face of
natural and human-caused disasters - is welcome and timely, especially now
that global warming and peak oil may come to challenge us.

The 1994 edition of this book appeared as 'Earthkeepers Guide to
Permaculture'. The new edition changes 'Earthkeepers' to 'Earth Users'. The
original book proved popular because Rosemary's focus was on the
implementation of Permaculture rather than the theory alone - that had
already been taken care of with Bill Mollison's 'Permaculture -  A
Designer's Manual' and Mollison and Reny Slay's 'Introduction to
Permaculture'. 

"This is a practical book", Rosemary told the people gathered in the garden.
And it is - the language is plain English and the illustrations clear. A
folio of colour prints in the middle of the book illustrate the themes.

There's all that you would expect in a Permaculture manual - garden design,
community economics and Rosemary's iteration of Permaculture's design
principles. This, too, is welcome. Principles have to be adapted to
circumstances and reinterpreted to suit new times. Rosemary lists
attitudinal principles, with outcomes, as well as strategic principles of
design.

So, what's missing? Very little, I think. As an alternative urban food
systems advocate I would have liked more on those food systems though
Rosemary briefly covers community gardens, community supported agriculture
and similar. I would also have liked more on how to make medium density city
living more sustainable, however little work has been applied to this
question even by planners, architects and local government, let alone
Permaculture, so I can't complain.

Illustrating Rosemary's ideas are the line drawings of Rob Allsop. Rob is
'The Quite Permaculturist'. Where some shout their accomplishments out loud
and others like me prattle on about Permaculture in text and image, Rob just
does it and says little. So, lest invisibility befall him, I feel compelled
to highlight the work of this accomplished illustrator and photographer. Rob
is an old associate of Rosemary and has travelled to Cambodia to participate
in food production and other projects (and, yes, Rob is available for hire,
I think, to illustrate the writings of others - sorry Rob, couldn't help
placing a free ad).

ROSEMARY AND THE NEW LOCALISM
In an article in an online current affairs journal, I coined the term 'the
new localism' to describe the ideas of Helena Norberg-Hodge about
'relocalisation' (republished at: www.pacific-edge.info > 'Time for a New
Localism says Norberg-Hodge'). The new localism can be summed up as the
deliberate practice of sourcing as many of our needs locally (or regionally)
as practical. 

Relocalisation includes the already popular notion of buying local food from
farmers' markets and retailers (or growing it ourselves in a community or
home garden), but Helena takes it further by suggesting that we recognise
local talent, like local musicians and performers, rather than import big
names all the time, and that supporting local business leads to local
economic development.

Relocalisation increases the resiliency of towns and suburbs and to some
extent pads the impact of global markets. What Helena suggests is developing
a viable and strong local culture that includes the economic, food supply
and entertainment, among other factors, in its ambit. What she seems to be
suggesting is what Permaculturists would have once called 'bioregionalism'
(the term seems less-common nowadays, but I may be wrong about that).

Thinking about Helena's new localism, I see that this is exactly what
Rosemary has done in the Blue Mountains without appending a catchy name to
it. As I said before, this became evident through the numbers at her book
launch an in comments made in conversation.

I'm not Rosemary's PR but I have to say that I hope that we acknowledge her
quiet contribution to sustainability and recognise the example of her
practical, humane and dogma-free way of making real her spiritual beliefs in
life.

And the book? Yes, even if you have the first edition there's more in this
new one that justifies the investment. Read it and learn, think, plan, make
and do. And in doing know that you are basing your actions on the knowledge
and experience of one of Permaculture's true 'elders', an unpretentious,
all-too-modest woman who through straightforward, common sense ideas and
personal example is transforming the lives of those that come into contact
with her. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
RUSS GRAYSON
journalism, online content production, photojournalism, instructional
manuals, media services for overseas aid

PO Box 1045, Manly, NSW 1655 AUSTRALIA
info at pacific-edge.info
P: 0414 065 203
www.pacific-edge.info

TerraCircle international development team, Oceania
www.terracircle.org.au

Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network
www.communitygarden.org.au
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^