On Thursday, Snookie Parrish and Kim Gordon's Garden Class from the Seaside Neighborhood School, visited CFH Design Studio's urban permaculture homestead. Ms. Parrish and Ms. Gordon have been teaching the students about organic gardening and living lighter on the land. The students learn through hands-on experience at the Corner Garden that is located to the East of the Seaside Neighborhood Scool on Quincy Circle. Their garden is an edible garden and most of the garden infrastructure was recycled, re-used, or donated by individuals or local businesses.

Kim wanted to show the kids a real life example of a local family that is actively working to reduce their environmental footprint. So, she arranged a field trip to our home.

When they arrived, I greeted them outside, as it was a beautiful day, just before the Spring Equinox. There were five students and they presented me with a sweet little gift of two organic German Butterball potatoes in a ceramic pot. I have two potato growing bags where they will live for the next few months.

We started by talking about some of the volunteer succulents that have sprouted up around the front porch and two bottle brush ferns that I recently discovered to be as old as myself. We then talked about the house and some of the things that were incorporated into the home to reduce its environmental impact like building to dimensional lumber sizes to reduce waste, large overhangs to protect the structure, using...

I'm going to jump right in, so follow along.

Fighting to maintain status quo planning regulations, for fear of losing one's personal property rights, often results in the rights of others being suppressed. When one group clamors to maintain the current planning regulations, they essentially reduce everyone's choices for housing, employment, transportation, and sustainable living. With the proposed EAR amendments, Walton County has found itself at a crossroads; it has the opportunity to explore other ways of doing things, or stay the path for fear of the unknown. The Planning Commission is open to and needs community suggestions. The Planning Department is doing the best they can with the tools they have available to them, and the NIMBY's and 's abound. Now, there's a new acronym to chew on.

So what does all this mean? What it means is that the current Comprehensive Development Plan and Land Use Development Code are written in favor of planning elements that encourage people to spread out across the land, removed from essential services with very little rhyme or reason. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with that is that not everyone favors this type of living arrangement and it greatly reduces the opportunity for other living arrangements. This type of regulation was fine when very few people actually lived here, though with higher population and more need for employment and services, spreading everyone across the land like peanut butter eats...

What is this...Permaculture?

When discussing eco-design and living, no conversation would be complete without permaculture. The word itself is a

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or a frankenword from the words 'permanent culture' or 'permanent agriculture.' Two Australian dudes, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, coined the term in the early 1970's when they were developing solutions in response to the oil and environmental crisis at that time. It finds its origins in the simple concept that we all need food to eat and without sustainable agriculture, sustainable culture is an impossibility. Imagine that?

Fast forward to 2009, Permaculture is being revisited and re-evaluated as a solution for creating beyond sustainable communities. Permaculture is an ethics based design system that adheres to a set of principles and includes renewable energy systems, green building, sustainable agriculture, and water harvesting, among other elements. These elements are designed to work together to create closed loop or cradle-to-cradle solutions. The ethics for Permaculture are simple: care for humans, care for the Earth, share the surplus, and every being has intrinsic value. Between Holmgren and Mollison, there are 24 principles total. One example of a principle is "produce no waste."

Permaculture is a versatile design tool that can be applied to large parcels of land, a small urban structure, or even one's personal life. A permaculture design can be divided into...