2025 Rocklyn Ashram
Permaculture
Design Course
with David Holmgren, Beck Lowe & Guests
28 Feb – 15 March
Featured Courses
2 Week Residential
Permaculture Design Course
Permaculture Design Course
What is Permaculture?
Popularly seen as a ‘cool’ form of organic gardening, permaculture could be better described as a design system for resilient living and land use based on universal ethics and ecological design principles. Although the primary focus of permaculture has been the redesign of gardening, farming, animal husbandry and forestry, the same ethics and principles apply to design of buildings, tools and technology.
Applying permaculture ethics and principles in our gardens and homes inevitably leads us towards redesigning our ways of living so as to be more in tune with local surpluses and limits.
Permaculture is also a global movement of individuals, groups and networks working to create the world we want, by providing for our needs and organising our lives in harmony with nature. The movement is active in the most privileged and the most destitute communities and countries. Permaculture may be Australia’s most significant export for humanity facing a world of limits.
from David Holmgren’s book RetroSuburbia
In this video, produced by The Food Forest, in 2010, David reflects on how permaculture can be used as a template for survival and abundance
Latest Writings
Saving Warners Track: Jackeys Marsh Forest Festival Aftermath 1983
Listen to David reading this piece: Heritage restored Warners Track in Tasmania was built by farming pioneers in the 1890s in the Meander locality of northern Tasmania to provide access from Jackeys Marsh up to the alpine summer grazing pastures of the Central Plateau. It followed the old Aboriginal migration route and, before the highway
Fresh Ways to Think About our Environment
I welcome this opportunity to join others in thinking and acting creatively for our collective future whether in or outside local government. As a contribution to the mix, I want to very briefly frame fresh ways to think about our environment as a foundation for our common and more local future.
A table of many stories
How old are ‘old growth’ eucalypts?
How long can they live?
What is the origin of rainforests that support an overstory of widely-spaced massive old growth eucalypts?
From our online PDC participants...
I feel so inspired to continue learning about and practicing Permaculture at home and in my community.
~ Sarah
The online format has allowed us to learn with people from all around the world...
~ Jess
Investing in this PDC has been some of the most rewarding and important time and energy I have ever spent.
~ Megan
Live Online - Permaculture Design Course
With David Holmgren, Beck Lowe & Guests
Featured Videos
Changing Habits for Self-Reliance and Resilience
David Holmgren — Sustainable Living Festival 2018
David Holmgren — Decolonise Your Lawn
About Holmgren Design
David Holmgren is the co-originator of the permaculture concept following publication of Permaculture One, co-authored with Bill Mollison in 1978. David is globally recognised as a leading ecological thinker.
Melliodora is a small specialist publisher dedicated to producing a limited range of books and other media by David Holmgren and other authors. Our titles aim to support individuals in their personal permaculture journeys.
Melliodora is a 8700m² (2¼ acre) property situated on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria. It is one of the best documented and well known permaculture demonstration sites in the world.
Latest News
2024 Venie Prize winner
Congratulations to Isabella G. Mead for writing the winning poem of the 2024 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize, Melt Ice. Here is what judge Tim Loveday had to say about the poem: Melt Ice is a work that speaks back to our colonial inheritance with an acute and painful awareness of how our complicity as
Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Wrap Up
Many thanks to all those who attended the screening of Reading Landscape with David Holmgren at Melbourne’s Cinema Nova as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. Here are some snaps of the night:
We Need to Protect Prime Farm Land on the Edge of Daylesford
This letter by David Holmgren, first appeared in The Wombat Post. I would like to add my voice to the need to protect the prime farm land on the edge of Daylesford that is currently the focus of proposed rezoning for residential development in East St. The farmland land on volcanic soils to the
From the Archive
Saving Warners Track: Jackeys Marsh Forest Festival Aftermath 1983
Listen to David reading this piece: Heritage restored Warners Track in Tasmania was built by farming pioneers in the 1890s in the Meander locality of northern Tasmania to provide access...
Read More
Fresh Ways to Think About our Environment
I welcome this opportunity to join others in thinking and acting creatively for our collective future whether in or outside local government. As a contribution to the mix, I want...
Read More
A table of many stories
How old are ‘old growth’ eucalypts? How long can they live? What is the origin of rainforests that support an overstory of widely-spaced massive old growth eucalypts?
Read More
Where did all the wombats go?
Like my Koala essay, this piece records ideas I have held and shared over many years. I have resisted the temptation to begin any serious process of research to support...
Read More
Koalas: A Conservation Conundrum
Since hunting koalas for their furs ended earlier in the 20th century, I thought it strange that in many places they seemed to be rare and sickly while in others...
Read More
