“Is it all worth it? If we do our best to heal the Earth and make our place in her a sustainable one, is there a good chance that we will succeed?…to my mind that’s the wrong question. Even if we could answer it – and we can never know anything about the future for certain, it would beg the question How do I want to live my life? So my answer to the question..is that I want to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem”.
Patrick Whitefield ‘Earth Care Manual’
Why Urban permaculture?
Our towns and cities are really important in terms of the future of applied permaculture and its proliferation into the community realm, Cities are where most people live and have the highest population density, and it is our cities are in urgent need of ecological restoration due to the heavy industry of the past and our over consumption in the present. If we want to meet the resource needs of our towns and cities whilst being mindful and caring of the local flora and fauna that share our habitats then we need to get off the straight line of linear thinking that locks us all into the hyper materialist consumer driven monetary system and move forward into a world where there is a semblance of balance and regard for all living entities. Being creative and using your permaculture imagination is what’s called for, try and think of buildings, structures and places that could be utilized grow abundance and fertility back into the urban landscape. We also believe that we by using our urban spaces to cultivate resources and good health that we also reaffirming ourselves on the commons, as commoners. So much common land has been lost over the centuries to capitalists initiated by crooked lawyers and legal bias. The commons are ours to take back, and if we are to address the transition from fossil fuels into a low impact age we going to need as much common land for community use as possible.
Using urban spaces to create abundance and wildlife habitat 
In terms of permaculture design within an urban setting, it is importent that we use our imagination when we begin to think about zones, instead of just looking at our own zone 0 front and back gardens and yards, we need to look beyond our homes and stretch the zones out into public spaces, there simply isnt enough room within most urban gardens to be able to grow much of the resources that we need to sustain us, so thinking about zones in public spaces seems to be a possible way forward in terms of providing for ourselves locally. Historically thinking about zones beyond our homes as also a good way of reclaiming the commons that has been slowly, but deliberately taken from since the original popular enclosures of the 1600s. We must also keep in mind that as we are living in these compacted urban zones that we must share and cooperate with others within these zones, here lies not only the possibility of providing our own local resources but also a great opportunity to develop and enhance communities within close proximity to our homes, this community building is absolutely essential for a low impact and caring future.
Parks – Parks are public spaces, we are the public, so we should really use our local parks as community resources. In the park close to where I live I have harvested and replanted willow, collected wild strawberries and blackberries, and used piles and piles of grass cuttings left by the council as mulch and plant food. On a yearly basis I also seed bomb areas of the park with mixed flower seeds as a means of attracting pollinators.One tip I would recommend for anyone who has a pristine and overly tidy and regimented park near their doorstep, disguise you’re planting in amongst other plants, and try and keep your growing within the given areas of the park, at least some of what you plant will stand a chance of surviving. As local communities we could also think about the idea of getting a group together and approach your local council about allocating some of the park to community growing projects.
Out on the Streets – Guerrilla Gardening is a great way of achieving a number of important things within the practice of Urban permaculture, firstly you are creating eco friendly habitats for wildlife by growing flowers, herbs and vegetables within our towns and cities, secondly, we are creating a local supply of resources, and thirdly we are adding some much needed beauty and colour to our drab consumer multiplex cites and towns. If we mix permaculture and guerrilla gardening together we come up with something like permablitz where a group of people get together and design and build a permaculture growing system. If we did Permaculture guerrilla gardening we could be much more precise about the types of plants needed for busy urban spaces as opposed to using just random plants and seeds.
Backyards – For any readers outside of theUK when I use the word Backyard I am referring to a small area outside the back of the house that is concreted or flagged in stone. Backyards are usually social quite small and surrounded with brick walls. Growing resources and sound ecological practice can easily be carried in the small backyards of the UK and other places with a little bit of thought and research. Backyards almost always have a good deal of vertical space in the form of walls, these walled areas can be used to support peas, beans, hops, cucumbers, tomatoes and a whole host of other plants. Wooden pallets can also put fixed to brick walls to provide further vertical space for growing your resources.
Back garden growing – If you have a back garden you will certainly be able to grow more than you could in a backyard as back gardens in the UK are usually bigger in size than Yards. In our back garden we grow dozens of different types of salad leaves and edible herbs, our back garden is our Permaculture zone 0, There are also a number of Ash trees at the bottom of our medium sized urban garden that have been coppiced for fuel for my rocket stoves in the summer and for firewood for our wood burning stove in the winter.Our back garden is also home to dozens of varieties of annual and perennial flowers that blanket certain areas of the garden most of the year round ensuring that pollinators and other beneficial insects have a safe habitat. We have been keeping chickens now for around six years and they provide us with eggs everyday, manure for the garden, and they eat slug and insect eggs over the autumn and winter months that would have otherwise lay dorment until the next growing season.
North facing garden and spaces – North facing gardens and spaces can still be productive for us despite their lack of sunlight. Last year myself and Mike visited Permaculture teacher Patrick Whitefield’s Sister Cristina in Bristol, Patrick had told me previous to our visit to check out her garden. I was really surprised to find a lot of different salad crops, flowers and walking Onions in this dingy ill lit space. Inspired by Cristina’s North facing garden I have now begun growing on our small but fertile North facing front garden, and up to now everything is doing very well, including cabbage, Purple sprouting broccoli, a dozen different types of salad and mustard leaves, climbing peas and beans and a few perennials herbs and flowers. North facing gardening is a project in progress for me and up to now everything is looking quite healthy.
Growing indoors – There are lots of opportunities to grow some of our resources in doors, new innovations in vertical growing can provide us with produce that is grown off the ground, that doesn’t take up surface space area which can be limited in many houses and homes. We always grow chillis and sometimes red peppers on our wind sills, the sills are also used in the early season as somewhere relatively warm where seedlings can sprout. At the moment our sills have sweet red peppers, purple basil and basil Genovese growing on them, the upstairs rear window sill which gets a lot of South facing light during the day has Chocolate Habanaro, Peruvian rainbow and Georgia flame chilli varieties growing there. You could even try growing rhubarb if you had a dark damp cellar space, or possibly even edible mushrooms, these two are certainly looking into if you have a cellar and are trying to utilise as much as possible.
Neglected land – The type of neglected land that we used close to our house is an area of council owned woodland that is very poorly managed, we coppice timber from this woodland on a yearly basis due to the fact that the area is choked out by trees and lots of new seedling trees. From this woodland we also harvest edible mushrooms from time to time. There are other neglected urban landscapes that can also be utilised to provide abundance sound ecological practice, it’s always worth checking what sort of industry has been in operation on the land you are thinking of using in case the land is contaminated.
Urban permaculture for our future world
Without Urban permaculture and the localization of our daily activities it is highly unlikely that we could make the transition from a fossil fuel based economic and industrial era to one based on abundance, balance and equality without an extreme struggle. If measures are put into place, like the Transition towns initiative then Urban Permaculture has the potential to feed us, provide us with natural remedies and medicines and a host of other useful resources whilst at the same time gradually bringing greater fertility and diversity into the area. For this to take place it is going to take a real hands on effort from our communities in working together to implement future measure. We must always keep in mind that cities have largely been designed based on industry and work, the separation of our resource supplies from our habitat has only been able to come about because the amount of energy available in fossil fuels, a move towards a localism of the future through urban permaculture is not retrogressive in any way, it is simply re-thinking our relationship with the landscape within an urban setting.
Steve