I have also learned a lot about the ecology of the eastern broadleaved forest from Jacke’s books. Since then I’ve modified the design based on observations of the yard combined with insights from Holmgren’s and Bane’s books. I used the first edition of Hemenway’s book to design the property Mike and I live on when we bought it 14 years ago.
I have also read some of the books published by teachers of permaculture design, such as Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison, Peter Bane’s The Permaculture Handbook, Toby Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden, David Holmgren’s Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, and both volumes of Dave Jacke’s Edible Forest Gardens. Thus I am reasonably familiar with the ways that those who teach and take the course understand its uses and promote it to the public and each other.
While I have not taken the permaculture design course, for reasons that will be covered in part 2 of my critique, I have read every issue of Permaculture Design and its predecessor magazine Permaculture Activist (PcD/PcA), the magazines published by permaculture teachers in the US for each other and those who have taken the standard 72 hour permaculture design course, for the last 17 years. I think that people who want to explore the possible applications of permaculture design to the current situation will do better to spend their money on books and and their time on putting ideas they glean from the books into practice as opposed to taking the permaculture design course. While certain techniques presented in the permaculture design course may ease the difficulties of life during an age of decline, I see evidence that those who learn permaculture through the design course rather than on their own may come out of the experience less well prepared for the realities of decline in some respects. Results obtained in this study are currently used in criminal investigations, and are a nice example of how scientific detectives can help their “real World” colleagues in identifying delinquents.This post and the next take a critical look at the way that permaculture design is promoted and practiced in the US. We present findings obtained from tree-ring, wood anatomical and dendrogeochemical investigations performed on root, stem and leave material from the assumedly poisoned trees and show that massive amounts of chemical elements – supposedly in the form organic pesticides with high Al, As, Fe, Cr, Ni contents, aluminum phosphides or glyphosate-based pesticides – were injected into 36 boreholes drilled into the roots around September 2016. During an initial inspection, a large number of boreholes was found in the root plates of the dying trees. After the sudden, unexplained death of several old Black poplar (Populus nigra) trees along the main alley in fall 2015 and their subsequent removal, the dying of five additional, neighboring Sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus) and English walnut (Juglans regia) trees in 2016 promptly triggered a suite of criminal investigations at the property.
The investigation presented here looks at a series of old-growth trees that were supposedly poisoned inside a protected, nineteenth century grove in Switzerland. In this paper, we analyze a case of clandestine tree killing and look into ways through which evidence left by delinquents can be analyzed a posteriori with state-of-the-art approaches. In some cases, trees may become the subject of dispute between neighbors, which sometimes ends in tree death after months or years of dispute.
The systematic killing of trees is usually aimed at eradicating pests or alien plant species susceptible to harm existing natural ecosystems.