Just came across these.

http://www.richsoil.com/

http://www.permies.com/forums

Here's another resource for this collection (some great stuff here.)

Friends of the Trees has a listing just recently of Permaculture Convergences:

http://inlandnorthwestpermacul...

Good to see that Permaculture has made it here . I've been an avid reader of everything on the subject since one of the sisters brought Gaia's Garden home from the public library a few years ago. We have lots of gardens here at the monastery; landscaping to sooth pilgrim souls, vegetable to feed us and our guests... Like many monasteries today, woman/man power is the crunch and we know we aren't doing everything we should with our 220 acres, woodlands, wetlands, wildlife, goats sheep, chickens... With the sisters' encouragement I started turning the smaller enclosed area we keep for our private use into sort of a permaculture pilot program, with stone walls, piles of branches/twigs/compost, lots of fruit trees, berries, herbs, comfrey, raised beds... and then my health did a nosedive. Right now it appears I am going to live. Still, while I've been out more again this summer which is encouraging, I've just been puttering around; my indoor light garden keeps my sanity.

So I won't be a heavy user of this (or any) forum (with the possible exception of the sempervivum which got me into this when I got hooked by some serendipitous seedlings), but I'm getting the Permaculture badge to give it some free advertising and I'll be a cheer leader around the edges!

Go with God.
Mother Raphaela

Sister Rahaela. So good to see you here.

Many many years ago I went to the monastery at San Juan de Capistrano. I was intrigued to see the sister's gardens back behind the walls of the monastery. There were vegetables mixed with flowers, and some roses climbing the old walls. What were they doing? What kinds of gardens would the sisters have? Of course we know that monks for centuries have grown their own food at the monasteries. But so far as I know, no one has told us what were their gardening techniques? what did they grow? I suppose the California monasteries are quite different from those in New York state.

Permaculture. it should be a perfect model. Winter gardening? Do you do that? You can read more about Permaculture in our Permaculture forum and find sources there for further reading.

Jonathan, I have a damaged nerve in my face and sadly, can no longer tolerate temperatures below 68 degrees... Which makes me effectively house-bound here the majority of the year. I escape to visit friends and family in Florida and California for a few weeks every winter to keep my sanity; the rest of the time I stay happy with a large indoor light garden...

So while I know all about the theory of winter Pemaculture-style gardening, the reality is up to others.

Thank you for responding. We nuns don't do anything stranger than any other gardeners. I'm grateful a number of friends have pitched in to help the nuns keep up some of the perennial borders I put in before my health self-destructed. Any time I've had to putter has been put into keeping some sort of order amongst the chaos of my semi-permaculture garden...

Mother Raphaela

A good read about permaculture is Masanobu Fukuoka's book - The One-Straw Revolution
Here's a link to a pdf version, it is about a 3MB file
http://library.uniteddiversity...

Thanks for posting the link. I haven't read One Straw in a while--it is always enlightening.

Some may be interested in the permaculture gardening method of Paul Gautschi. You can watch the Back to Eden film about his permaculture garden here...
http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/

There's also a guy on youtube that has videoed Paul's garden tours..he is not selling anything
Back To Eden Garden Full Tour-- https://youtu.be/QGyuNZ8JkrU