Heather Jo Flores

Permaculture Womens Guild

Delicious, drought-tolerant, easy to grow…what’s not to love? by Heather Jo Flores I can’t stop eating them. There’s a fig tree at the place where I am staying and I can’t seem to keep them out of my mouth! It’s a huge tree, maybe 50 years old, sprawling across the low wood fence and dropping down into the neighbors’ yard. They don’t mind. Every October, both houses get more figs than they know what to do with, just from the one tree. It’s a Black Spanish, and it’s famous among fig aficionados as being one of most prolific, cold-hardy and easy…

Permaculture Womens Guild

Essential tips for online entrepreneurs, especially if you’re relatively new at this and have spent any time at all resisting learning about “marketing” because it’s yucky.`

Permaculture Womens Guild

releasing old pain by dealing with grief, caring for your body, making art, and getting dirty

Permaculture Womens Guild

Whether you are an old expert at seed stewardship or a new gardener with a budding curiosity, saving seeds from your home garden to grow and share can be one of the most rewarding experiences of the season. By Heather Jo Flores This old-world skill is best learned experientially, and within a community of fellow seedpeople. But here are some tips to get you started, even if you only have a small garden. Selection Some plants are much easier for beginners. This has less to do with ease of harvest than with whether or not the plant needs a large or…

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Heather Jo Flores “Contact with the soil reminds us that we are an integral part of nature, rather than feeling shut out and excluded. The simple acts of growing and eating our own food, recreating habitats in which nature’s diversity thrives, and taking steps to live more simply are practical ways of living which connect us to an awareness of Nature’s seamless whole. Permaculture is a spiritual reconnection as well as an ecological strategy.” — Maddy Harland. What is permaculture? Strictly speaking, “Permaculture” is a combination of the words “permanent” and “agriculture,” spliced together, and used to describe a methodology for…

Permaculture Womens Guild

An easy, circular permaculture design process for gardens, community projects, creative work, and so much more. By Heather Jo Flores (excerpted and fully revised from my 2006 book, Food Not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community.) Whether we realize it or not, all of us are designers; for good or ill, much of what we do is design work. And all design is ecological design in that it either hurts or helps nature, whether it was intended to or not. As gardeners, whether forging paths, building beds, or pruning trees, we are…

Permaculture Womens Guild

Translation: Essential steps towards the survival of the human species by Heather Jo Flores Here are ten top strategies for saving our water and ourselves. They are in no particular order of importance — we’ll need to do them all, and more, if we are to reverse the tide of scarcity, pollution, and corporate control that threatens us today. 1. Eat Organic Food and Support Local Organic Agriculture. Organic methods don’t use harsh toxins that pollute the water. Organic farms and gardens emphasize mulch and other soil stewardship practices, which means less erosion and/or salination of the soil, and less runoff and damage…