Available for download is David Holmgren's essay "Retrofitting the suburbs for sustainability", which was adapted from a public lecture given at the Aldinga Arts Eco-village in Adelaide in January 2005.
Read MorePermaculture
Topic: Suburban resilience
Firewood: Sustainable and appropriate energy source
Full text download for David Holmgren's essay "Firewood: Sustainable and appropriate energy source", originally published in Renew Magazine Issue 90, January 2005, published by the Alternative Technology Association.
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Garden Agriculture: A revolution in efficient water use
First published as an (edited) opinion piece in Water Volume 32, No. 8 in December 2005, 'Garden Agriculture: A revolution in efficient water use' by David Holmgren discusses food futures...
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Bushfire Resilient Communities and Landscapes
Available for download is the Hepburn Bushfire Plan, a 52 page discussion paper focused on David's home community of Daylesford and Hepburn where it is already influencing community and local...
Read MoreBushfire resilient communities and landscapes presentation
Climate change and peak oil demand we change our behaviour, organise our households and reshape our communities and landscapes for greater self reliance and resilience. The threat of bushfire provides...
Read MoreNational Permaculture Day
This short video is of the National Permaculture Day celebrations in Daylesford on 30 April, hosted by the Daylesford Community Food Gardeners (DCFG) and the Hepburn Relocalisation Network (HRN), with...
Read MoreBushfire resilient landscapes and communities (presentation in Blue Mountains)
David Holmgren gives a public talk on creating bushfire resilient communities and landscapes, organised by Pat Rayner of Permaculture Blue Mountains. Thanks to Gary Caganoff for the videos, which are...
Read MoreBushfire resilient landscapes and communities
David Holmgren gives a public talk on creating bushfire resilient communities and landscapes, organised by Pat Rayner of Permaculture Blue Mountains. Thanks to Gary Caganoff for the videos, which are...
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An Energy Descent Action Plan
Teamed with the experienced permaculture teacher and author Ian Lillington, David Holmgren put together an Energy Descent Action Planning document for his local shire of Hepburn. The final report was...
Read MoreRetrofitting the Suburbs for Sustainability (presentation)
David Holmgren gave a Lunchbox/Soapbox talk at the The Wheeler Centre in February 2012, exploring the profound improvements that the application of permaculture principles and strategies could deliver for the...
Read MoreRadio National interview: ‘By Design’
Here, available to listen to in full is David Holmgren's interview for the By Design program on Australia's ABC Radio National.
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Retrofitting the suburbs for Sustainability
Here, you can download and read the full text of David Holmgren's Retrofitting the Suburbs.
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Household economy counts (full text)
Andy Scerri’s critique of Patrick Jones’ articulation of self-reliance, localism, and gift economies (Arena #115) is a familiar argument that has been used over the last thirty years to dismiss...
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A Short Personal and Global History of Retrofitting the Suburbs
My childhood and adolescent years in suburban Bicton (between Fremantle and Perth WA) were set against a backdrop of Swan River estuary beaches, swamps, cliffs and caves. Many summer nights...
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Feeding RetroSuburbia
Food and where it comes from is an ongoing theme in RetroSuburbia. This essay extends on the discussions in Chapter 29, Sustainable and sustaining diet, and the further information given...
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The Melbourne Model
The Age recently published an article entitled, Melbourne’s liveability choice: soar like Manhattan or sprawl like LA The article quoted Infrastructure Australia’s three scenarios for Melbourne in 2046. The LA...
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RetroSuburbia Rollout
Retrosuburbia is more than just a book – it is a wholehearted celebration of empowered do-it-yourself and do-it-ourselves culture. With the book now into its second print run, the retrosuburbia...
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RetroSuburbia Bushfire Resilience Extract
This is an extract from my book RetroSuburbia: the downshifter's guide to a resilient future, a 550 page richly illustrated manual that has become a best seller since its publication...
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The Problem is the Solution: how permaculture-designed household isolation can lead to RetroSuburbia
COVID-19, an invisible agent that barely qualifies as a lifeform, is bringing the most powerful civilisation the world has ever seen to a grinding halt. In three months it may...
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The Class Divide in a Time of Pandemic: a Permaculture Perspective
Holmgren offers a critique of the bloated financial services sector and the top echelons of most sectors, discussing the class divide from the perspective of sustainable permaculture.
Read MoreOther News
2026 Venie Prize winner
MegU September 1 2026
Here is what judge Peter O’Mara had to say about all of the poems entered in this year’s Venie Prize: In such a conjectural, estranged times, this year’s entries arrived, not coincidentally, from a multifarious array of the environmental poetry index — the polemical, the elegiac, the embodied, the observed, the incidental, the expansive, the
2024 Venie Prize winner
MegU August 27 2024
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
MegU August 13 2024
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: