By Laura Stovel
As April draws near, many Revelstoke gardeners begin thinking of starting seedlings and designing their gardens. While it is still too cool to dig and plant outside, it is a perfect time to plan.
Permaculture offers an interesting way of thinking about land as a whole system, involving not only growing plants for food – if that is the goal – but also thinking about the relationships between all the parts of the ecological system: the water; soil; plants; microorganisms; insects; birds and mammals, including humans. In the words of permaculturalist James Stark, “in permaculture we are closing the ecological loop so waste products that come out of the way we live are turned into resources.”
At 7 pm on April 8, the Local Food Initiatives committee of the North Columbia Environmental Society will be hosting a film and speaker night on the topic of permaculture at the Revelstoke Community Centre. After the film Permaculture: The Growing Edge has been screened, Gregoire Lamoureux, a design consultant and instructor at the Kootenay Permaculture Institute in Winlaw will speak.
This is the last in a series of four films about food security presented by the NCES committee over the winter. As committee chair Melissa Hemphill said, “We want people to think about where their food comes from” and become more conscious of the way they spend their money.
NCES board member and event organizer Jennifer Greenwood said, “It’s about so much more than just gardening. I wanted people to walk away with a good understanding of how permaculture relates to local food production and how they can implement it in their own lives. We’re hoping to organize a permaculture workshop sometime this spring that Gregoire will come to teach, and will try to gauge interest in that at the movie night.”
