One of the things that I am really appreciating about being in the UK are the dry stone walls.

He makes us want to join him in that school. He describes the techniques of what he calls “Holzer Permaculture” with surety born of concrete success and the observation of ecological health but without the urgency of someone trying to convince us that he is right. Any urgency the work posesses becons us to join with the author in the “joy of cultivation” which comes from working together with nature.

Most often the starting point for developing a set of plants for a permaculture will be to look at lists of useful and edible plants in regional permaculture or related books. Sometimes, however, there are few or no such lists available. Or, like me, you may have a perverse inclination towards first principles and wheel re-invention in the hope of small gains in understanding or the development of new possibilities. If either of these is the case, you will need some way of sifting through the many plant species of the world.