I am often invited to give permaculture or sustainability talks and workshops to groups across Ireland and abroad. Recently I was invited to give a permaculture talk to another gardening group. On the 5th of June 2025 I will present to the Kenmare gardening club in Kenmare County Kerry at at the Gateway Methodist Church building. It seems I’ll have free reign to go where I want with it.
General is Hard, Specific is Easy
At first glance this seems like an easy assignment. Pemaculture is a vast subject. I have a lifelong vocation to sustainability and have already a nearly a decade behind me in professional permaculture design. I certainly won’t run out of things to talk about. The difficulty is however, how to choose what exactly to talk about from the vast galaxy of permaculture topics.
This problem is illustrated very well in a case alluded to by Robert Pirsig in his classic book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”1. His situation was that some of his creative writing students were struggling to find something interesting to say. One student attempted a short essay on “The United States of America”. She may as well write about permaculture – it’s too vast, too impersonal. Pirsig suggested that she narrow’s it down to the town she lives in. Still too big. His next suggestion is to narrow it down to the main street. Still nothing. In desperation he ordered her to write about the first building starting with the first brick!
Limits are the Mother of Design
As the story goes, the “first brick” intervention unlocked something for the student, and a wonderful essay was handed in exceeding all expectations. The well known expression “necessity is the mother of invention” comes to mind here. Where there are limits, creativity comes to the fore. Preconceived notions and accepted wisdom aren’t much use when you are literally staring at a brick in the wall. Your first attempt at looking at this brick wall may seem pointless at the beginning, but the most mundane brick will have a subtle pattern in the surface texture that may speak of its origins or a pattern that reminds you of something else entirely. Now you’re creativity is freeing up, and the result could be a whole novel. This kind of creativity is analogous to genuine mechanical problem solving, where the solution is far from apparent at the beginning, and lateral thinking is required.
In my permaculture design practice I have often noticed a parallel phenomenon: the most difficult, most constrained project sites are invariably the easiest to design and the best sites, in a conventional sense, are the hardest, requiring the most careful observation to design well.
Far Away Fields are Green (and Hard to Design)
Compare for example two scenarios. One is a small back garden, walled on every side, and shaded by a large tree on one side. The other site is a large open field with deep fertile soil. The second site may be “better” in the classical sense of having better growing potential, but all that potential must be weighed up. That first site, the small back garden, will be easier to design by virtue of the limiting factors of size, sun traps, shade, requirements of the household and limits of what would be socially or legally acceptable in an urban setting.
The large, fertile, relatively unconstrained field in question is a real site that I designed, which also happened to be in County Kerry. In that case (as with the majority of large sites) an elevation contour map obtained by drone mapping revealed the subtle undulations of landform. I then used the landform to inform the design of water systems, pathways, roads and access, trees and shelterbelts, structures and down through all systems and elements of the design. This approach is called Keyline Design and is the design foundation of the regenerative agriculture movement.
Sustainability Talks for Environmental Groups
How does this help me prepare for giving talk about permaculture? I guess if I use examples they should be small and be terribly constrained! And those constraints should be familiar to the people attending the talk. Well, the next talk is on in County Kerry on the west coast of Ireland and the audience are gardeners, so some constraints that come to mind are: rain, flooding, acid soil, wet soil, slugs, wind and storm damage, coastal exposure and of course the recent drought we experienced. OK good start!
Functional and Aesthetic Garden Design
There is design, and, well, there is another kind of design. To some people design means aesthetic design – something that looks beautiful and pleasing to the eye, or calming to the mind. Other people are more concerned with functionality and aren’t so interested in appearances in and of themselves so long as the thing works in a mechanical sense. It’s important to know who you are talking to.
Again Pirsig noticed this split in his writings. This split runs throughout society in almost all fields of human endeavor and those who firmly operate in both realms of thought are usually in the minority (unfortunately?). It is interesting that the very structure of the human brain has the same split – the left hemisphere is mostly concerned with rationality, logic, spatial awareness and is “the minds eye” whereas the right hemisphere deals more with feelings and is the seat of the unconscious realm.
How Many Engineers does it take to do a Permaculture Design?
Similarly there are, broadly speaking, two classes of gardeners. One can be in it for appearances – which in itself can satisfy a deep psychological need for order in our environment – or one can be into gardening for self-sufficiency.
This may be surprising but I think I would find it easier to explain permaculture design to a group of engineers than a group of ornamental gardeners because the design in this case is related to the design of a functional system rather than an aesthetic collage. Invariably however the natural beauty produced as a by-product of this functional design surpasses anything that can be contrived to merely titillate the senses.
Is a Grecian Urn a Work of Art or Technology?
Art always exists as an outlet, a form of personal personal therapy, which may or may not be shared with others. But that art can also be technological in nature. Both the artist and the inventor become inspired through a similar process to create something novel. Intentionally creating something however with a preconceived aim of just pleasing the senses is quite something else apart from that which is born out of a labour of love coming about through overwhelming inspiration.
Permaculture for the Self-Sufficient Gardener
Gardeners desiring to become more self-sufficient will be easy to teach. The potential benefits that a good design system can give to the self-sufficient gardener are huge. They might have already have come across the term permaculture or may even have taken a course in permaculture design before. I would say though that even these gardeners are more often interested in specific cultural techniques rather than in any broader, high level design methods. They will certainly however (as I have) run into the problems that arise from pursuing gardening projects without an overall holistic plan. I call this the activist approach to gardening. People with a predominantly activist learning style have to experiment and “just do it” in order to learn. In fact we all do it this way but the activists do it fastest.
What’s your learning style?
I am certainly a theorist by nature , and use this quality to make a living as a permaculture designer. For inner growth and personal development however, I know that I benefit from balancing this trait with a healthy dose of active experimentation in order to learn and grow. I believe that everyone has natural gifts to share with the world but, also that part of our life purpose is to develop new characteristics that become “second nature”.
Permaculture for the Ornamental Gardener
Using permaculture for primarily aesthetic reasons is a contradiction in terms and may even be contrary to the Ethics of Permaculture. I don’t advertise to the ornamental grower as I am busy serving the people who want to learn sustainable design systems or who want their project sustainably designed. With my public speaking engagements increasing however, I need to connect with people outside of the sustainability congregation who may be eavesdropping at the door to the sermon and near the threshold for conversion! If I were a sustainability proselytizer, what common ground to start with? What do most of us have in common?
The Permaculture Home
Most of us have a home of some sorts. Many of us care about the colour, style, appearance and size of our homes but practically all will be concerned with the functionality of the building. The national housing standards have nothing to say about paint colours or architectural styles but are concerned with lighting, heating, safety and heath. The housing standards therefore are functional in nature. Perhaps this is a good arena with which to connect with the audience? I could present images of a series of beautiful homes from around the world designed for radically different climates or purposes to ours, and ask the audience how they rate them. This should get the collective functional thinking cap on. For example think wigwam, teepee, yurt, igloo, bamboo shack, stone castle and so on.
Permaculture is about Putting Things in their Place
After the uproar dies down about my awful home design choices I could introduce some well built, concrete home examples that have all the right features but positioned in an inefficient manner in relation to each other. How about a house with a urinal in the kitchen for convenience? Or shall we place the bathroom in an outhouse at the far end of the garden? How about walls made of glass for a lovely view, or just open space so we can hear and feel the refreshing wind and rain from the comfort of our living room?!
The feelings that such outrageous suggestions may give rise to are quite close in nature to those which I must deal with as a functional landscape designer on a daily basis. Imagine my discomfort of seeing struggling vegetable gardens located under the shade of big trees, robbed of water, light and nutrients while a lawn basks in the sun! Imagine how I feel when I see ideal water storage points in the landscape cut through the center with a vain attempt at drainage. I see the entire landscape is a canvas to be filled in with native nitrogen-fixing shelter-belts around each field to increase farm productivity naturally and restore our woodland habitat simultaneously.
Natural Buildings and Earthships
I must mention here that permaculture design improves enormously even on homes that are commonly perceived as well designed and functional. Using permaculture design we produce homes matching these features but built from natural locally sourced materials, by collecting and treating rainwater, by producing energy, by creating little to no waste and by having a lower embodied energy.
There are many wonderful examples of such structures at the Hollies Centre for Sustainability in West Cork: You can look at some of the images here https://thehollies.ie/cob/
Source: https://thehollies.ie/picture-gallery/
Unnatural “sustainable buildings” are not sustainable
We seemingly get away with the current model of construction due to the obscene use of resources only possible through the one-off exploitation of the Earth’s fossil fuel reserves. In geological time this exploitation period is very brief, though it lasts many of our life-times. Bill Mollison and David Holmgren coined the word permaculture from the terms “permanent agriculture” or “permanent culture” and in contrast to the current global economy, seeks to provide for our needs from local, renewable resources.
The Path to Permaculture
Perhaps the lecture audience and I will connect over a shared sense of design outrage, and can together go in search of the design tools to put this world to rights. Or better again, a glimpse of another kind of world may be had through the lens of an image of a beautiful cob house or a terraced vegetable garden, both seeming to spring from the very ground. Who can tell? I’ve often been amazed when past course participants relate how the seemingly simplest aspects of a talk or workshop have inspired them.
For me these anecdotes serve as an inspiration that I myself benefit from embracing the “activist within” and just doing more workshops, albeit imperfectly, albeit not knowing what seeds of thought will germinate.
Get in Touch to Book Sustainability Skills Talks and Workshops
If you would like a permaculture lecture or a sustainability skills workshop for your group, students or workplace then please get in touch!
About the Workshop Facilitator
Paul Lynch is an independent sustainability consultant, permaculture designer and orchardist based in West Cork, Ireland. He is co-author of the Mayo Energy Audit 2009 – 2020 and has worked in biomedical R&D engineering in Ireland and in the renewable energy industry in Ireland and Spain. Paul has designed and built several off-grid renewable energy systems and has worked on hundreds of permaculture design and orchard projects across Ireland.
Paul’s teacher bio: https://www.permaculture.org.uk/user/paul-lynch
All sustainability Courses Past and Present listed here.
Get 10% off Sustainability Workshops
If you would like 10% off off all Ansa Permaculture Design private workshops then make sure you are a subscriber to my newsletter and always be in the know when new workshops are announced!
Subscribe for 10% off sustainability courses here.
References
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig, Morrow,1974 ↩︎
One thought on “Sustainability Talks for Local Groups in Ireland”