Earthworks St Albans: Permacultural Training for People with Learning Difficulties
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 06.16.07
Permaculture just keeps on cropping up on the pages of TreeHugger. We’ve written about permaculturists greening the desert in the Middle East, and we’ve carried details of a small urban permaculture garden in NC. Last month we brought details of an innovative permaculture project in the UK called Offshoots, and now, thanks to an article in the latest issue of the ever-inspirational Permaculture Magazine (the article is unfortunately unavailable online), we bring news of another important project in the UK.
Earthworks St Albans was started as a reaction to a spate of closures of state-owned residential care homes for people with learning difficulties in the mid-ninties. It is now a registered charity that offers trainees, often with learning difficulties or mental health problems, work experience and training in horticultural and land-based skills. It has a two-acre site that is managed along ecological principles, and the organization is involved in conservation efforts, and in growing food for the local farmers’ market.
Horticulture has long been a traditional occupation for people with learning difficulties, but Earthworks considers itself different from many other horticultural training centres due to its rejection of the top-down management style, preferring to encourage input from the whole team. The main focus of the project is people centered, and the organization recognizes that production sometimes has to come second:
“Our primary task is to develop people’s skills and abilities. Production comes second. Unlike a commercial horticulture operation we have to accept a very high casualty rate for the plants we grow and a less than perfect build quality for the things we make. Seeds trickle through fingers or get buried under inches of compost; those that germinate may get mashed up or turned upside down. […] These may well be some of the most expensive (in terms of person hours) vegetables and herbs in existence! But growing and selling them gives many of our people a sense of pride in growing something as fundamental as good food.”
::Earthworks St Albans:: via Permaculture Magazine::
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- Urban Design After the Age of Oil: Notes from Day 1
I believe that the Permaculture Magazine folks use the term permaculture to just mean sustainable/green living, rather than the more specific use of the term as it applies to farming in a more integral and natural way. I only say this because I picked up a copy of the magazine a while back and was disappointed that they didn't really cover permacuture techniques as far as farming. Though it was a good magazine, otherwise.
I uplift St. Albans for this program. As a permaculture practicioner, I also work with mentally challenged and see the positive impact it has on their lives. PC teaches people to "care." We are a motley group of people who believe in appropriate technology and mimicking earth's systems thru fun, educational, outreach and team building.
Our gardens are over 30 strong at our Food Park in Nashville. The highlight of the "sight" is our composting lamd sculpture in the shape of a yin yang symbolizing balance.
These days, few of us are mentally balanced, so do what you can to support your local mental health outreach, especially if it involves permaculture!