Sustainable Tarpon Springs - Convergence

I hope I am not alone in reading articles from numerous unrelated sources lately, discovering many to be describing similar cultural and human transformations.  I realize I may choose sources that have some similarity, but whether I’m reading health information, scientific discoveries, or gardening information - many are ‘converging’ in a growing awareness of the connection of all living things.

This past weekend, January 11 - 13, the First Annual Florida Permaculture Convergence happened.  Yours Truly would love to have been there, but perhaps Jimmy and I will be ready to attend the Second Convergence next year!  This year we will rely upon many friends who are part of the permaculture design movement that is happening here in Florida.  (If you haven’t heard the word ‘Permaculture’ until now, it was coined by two fabulously forward-thinking Aussies, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, and officially used as a title in 1978 when they established the Permaculture Institute in Tasmania.)

The core tenets behind permaculture design are to model our garden landscapes off of the way Mother Nature works in an integrated and holistic manner, creating self-maintaining agricultural systems to ‘take care of the soil, take care of the people, and share the surplus.’  The design concepts of a permaculture garden mimic both the appearance of nature’s chaos and nature’s symbiosis, establishing miniature edible paradises that are self-perpetuating, attracting the right birds, reptiles, and healthy insects through understanding of ecosystems.  Often permaculture includes techniques for agroforestry, natural building and rainwater harvesting also.  Nothing more perfectly demonstrates ‘sustainability’ than a thriving permaculture garden!

When we thought of moving to Florida, we never imagined we would run into such a wealth of passion towards permaculture.  We’d only dreamt of actually having space to try the methods we’d read about in Bill Mollison’s ‘Designer’s Manual’ or Toby Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden.  Year’s before, we were inspired by the Mollison video series we’d bought, The Global Gardener which contains viable solutions to many global agriculture crises due to bad land and soil management.  The video showed Mollison traveling all over the world to both enhance and affirm restorative systems based on the principles he observed in nature.

What we found in Florida, especially Sustainable Tarpon Springs, was an unlikely but wonderfully synchronistic convergence of people who are seriously drawn to the same things and are becoming certified as Permaculture Design Consultants!  There is a very healthy movement here to implement permaculture design techniques, learning from nature and sharing information - both successes and failures - with the gardening ‘community’ at large.  Wherever you go to celebrate the movement of cooperation with Mother Nature, you will find local permaculturists teaching soil building, worm farming, composting, and so on.  You may even find us sharing these things at the Tarpon Sunday Market on occasion!

There is a convergence underway!  I just love the word ‘convergence’ itself because defined it is:  ‘The tendency of unrelated animals and plants to evolve superficially similar characteristics under similar environmental conditions.’  Doesn’t that perfectly describe what is happening here in Tarpon Springs and what has drawn us all to this wonderful community?  Be a part!  Converge!