Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture - 2nd Edition

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Discussions about online activism and direct action in the form of demonstrations often focus on their impact on the external world. After a year where many forms of community organising, engagement, and activism had been forced to move online, this colliding of actions-on-the-ground seemed draped in symbolism: now more than ever there is a clamouring for change, and physical spaces must play a front-and-centre role in making that happen. Nestled amongst the concrete and steel facades of the towering offices of Holborn Viaduct in Central London, the community built-and-run Garden offered a platform for celebrations of sustainability and environmental action. This revised and updated edition also features a chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space.

Nourishing discussions in community spaces and direct action on the streets; work undertaken on the self, and work undertaken out in the world; an online platform making its first debut in a physical space – the many faces of environmental action both tangible and intangible turned to look at one another, each distinct yet sharing the same body.The world didn't come with an operating manual, so it's a good thing that some wise people have from time to time written them. Social media offers a platform for mass engagement, but for the individual that engagement is restricted by design to be isolated. During the national lockdown, concepts such as mutual aid were brought to the forefront of public consciousness, with mutual aid groups becoming commonplace across the country. To minimise waste, the site was created using sustainable temporary structures, with benches and tables made from recycled pallets and scaffolding boards.

Platforms such as Climate in Colour are lauded for their capacity to instantaneously reach an audience at scale – yet, what is often lost in these discussions is that this mass outreach is atomised and individualistic. After the lunch, everybody came together to share the conversations that they had – people from all walks of life, of all ages and backgrounds, bonded over their shared experiences, and offering empathy and sympathy where it was needed. The world didn’t come with an operating manual, so it’s a good thing that some wise people have from time to time written them. The total social value generated by Gaia’s Garden was measured using the Housing Association Charitable Trust’s Social Value Bank, following guidelines from the HM Treasury Green Book. The finished scheme will feature a publicly accessible roof terrace with views towards St Paul’s Cathedral.A career change followed, and Toby and his wife spent ten years creating a rural permaculture site in southern Oregon. Tell us what you did and how the project, event or installation enlivened the place in a creative way? Makeshift wooden walls sheltered a stage and a smattering of wooden benches amongst an ethereal meadow of planters, streaming banners, and artworks. The project platformed five young female creatives, who programmed events raising awareness of sustainability and mental health – vital topics for the 1,500 guests who attended.

Dominvs Group also partnered with urban transformation charity Urban Growth to design the Garden, using an innovative, circular approach to materials use. Gaia's Garden is enlightening and required reading for all people who desire to make their home's landscape healthy, sustainable, and healing. The Gaia’s Garden primary focus was to bring young people from underprivileged backgrounds to enjoy green space whilst reconnecting with both the city and nature to improve community wellbeing.Although a temporary scheme, Gaia’s Garden was key to this strategy, and the project’s materials were reused in other local developments as a circular economy is a key theme of Dominvs Group’s social sustainability. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful.

So why now, of all times, is there now such a tangible pivot towards creating new community spaces in our cities? Toby Hemenway was the author of the first major North American book on permaculture, Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, as well as The Permaculture City. A small sandwich board invited passers-by inside – offering a place to sit, eat, commune, and simply exist. This revised and updated edition also features a new chapter on urban permaculture, designed for people in cities and suburbs with limited growing space. Dominvs Group worked with Culture Mile and creative agency Play Nice to create ‘Gaia’s Garden, which also formed part of the Lord Mayor’s Culture and Commerce Taskforce’s ‘Enhancing the City’ initiative, which sought to fill repurposed commercial spaces across the City with carefully curated creative activity to animate the area and drive footfall.Gaia’s Garden is simply the best permaculture book ever written, and is in the running for best gardening book ever written. Gaia’s Garden is one of the more important, a book that will be absolutely necessary in the world ahead. Dominvs Group funded and provided the site for Gaia’s Garden, a not-for-profit community garden located in the heart of the City of London. Help keep independent queer-led publishing alive and unlock the BRICKS WORLD Learner Platform, full of resources for emerging and aspiring creatives sent to you every week via newsletter. The thriving green space brought 1,500 people, predominantly from under-represented communities, back into the heart of the City as part of the City of London’s Culture and Commerce taskforce, boosting London’s post-pandemic recovery.