The Permagardens Foundation
Elizabeth Bisno – Executive Director – elizabird3@gmail.com
Peter Otiende – Director of Global Initiatives – otiendex@gmail.com
David H. Albert – Board Chair – davidalbert1717@gmail.com
(805) 770-0870
NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO GO WITHOUT FOOD!
Permagardens
An adaptation of permaculture and bio-intensive gardening, Permagardens are a climate- and water-resilient method that makes it possible for families to grow large amounts of nutritious food all year round, including during the dry season, close to home.
Climate change has added misery to the lives of so many people who depend on subsistence agriculture. Not only is there less rainfall in some places, but rain is concentrated in fewer months, feeding a cycle of increasing floods and droughts. Often, there are no ways to store rainwater, droughts are increasing the ‘long walk to water,’ and agriculture is often failing.
Pioneered by former Peace Corps volunteer Peter Jensen of TerraFirma International, Permagardens were found to yield four times as much food as a regular kitchen garden, because they make the most of available water (including runoff from nearby roofs and soil. They are “double-dug”, so that both the topsoil and subsoil can be enriched with manure, compost, and wood ash, increasing the nutrient availability and water-retention capacity of the living soil. This is especially important in the dry seasons, when it enables plants to keep grow even where drought now otherwise results in climate-induced malnutrition. Similar water security is gained for small agricultural plots, using ridged gardens, also double-dug, with water draining thus draining through the swales, instead of running off, now stored underground and thus available regardless of the climate.
Permagardens are rooted in water resourcefulness. Every puddle breeding malaria mosquitos is water not working for the community. Every flash flood washing out roads is water also not irrigating farms and fields. Every piece of land standing bare next to people’s homes or schools, is land that is not feeding children and families. We can’t change the climate (well, we have, but that’s another conversation), but we can adapt ourselves to making better lives for each other, with simple, easily implemented concepts, and use of local tools and resources.
When successful, Permagardens make families less vulnerable to fluctuations in climate, employment or marketplace. This in turn preserves homelands, resilience, and the health of living systems.
The Permagardens Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization – IRS ruling pending. All contributions The Permagardens Foundation are federally tax exempt to the extent allowable by law.