Welcome! Whether you are into learning some new skills, or whether this is your life work, we’re glad you are here. We’re in Summer mode at the moment as we grow and tend community gardens. Please, take a look around, consider joining our newsletter. A few of our recent and current projects, include:
- City of Ottawa Community Gardens and Community-led Green Initiatives Review through Hoffmann Hayes. See the City’s Engage Ottawa page too.
- Ontario Parks Association Community Gardens Training
- University of Toronto Scarborough Campus Farm Master Plan (2023) – we worked through Hoffmann Hayes on this with Shift and Spruce Lab
- Niska Park, Temiskaming – we’re working with Trophic Design to bring a permaculture perspective to this wonderful new community park;
- Earth Tending Green Infrastructure Training Program with Spruce Lab – a part-time, paid employment training program (supported with core funding from Miziwe Biik) for Indigenous people living in the Greater Toronto Area. Training sessions are led by Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts, and are designed to braid together Indigenous Knowledge with industry green infrastructure practices.
- City of Charlottetown – we consulted on their growing Community Garden Program, helped generate a Community Garden Policy and Community Garden Guidebook;
- Permaculture Institute of North America – we consulted the PINA team on revamping operations in support of a more integrated permaculture community; we co-designed a new pilot program for PINA with Paula Westmoreland of Ecological Designs;
- The City of Mississauga’s Urban Agriculture Strategy, launched in 2022 – permaculture ethics helped frame the work and brought a focus on equity deserving groups and collaborative work to grow urban agriculture and its social and ecological;
- University of Toronto Scarborough Landscape and Public Realm Master Plan (2022) – we helped weave in a permaculture perspective to help transform the 303 acre campus over time.
VIDEO: We’re pleased to share a 3.5 min video about Permaculture in Ontario. The video offers a quick visual tour of what’s happening in Ontario, and shares a couple of useful tips on how to use the Permaculture in Ontario map.
INTERVIEW SERIES: We’ve started a project to record interviews and stories of local farmers, producers, consumers, food system activists, and others who are engaged along the food supply chain from “farm to table.” Hear the first interview below, and learn more about the project that inspired the series.
STAY TUNED: Consider joining our newsletter for updates.
CONTRIBUTE: We continue to welcome submissions or updates to the Permaculture in Ontario Map, so that we can promote permaculture events, locations and educational offerings again at a future date. You can submit your project here and check out the map here.
Here’s a wordle of some work around what the Permaculture in Ontario community of practice is focused on…