The idea behind Formidable Vegetable has been largely inspired by the permaculture movement – and their debut album [ https://formidablevegetable.fanlink.to/permaculture ] was based on David Holmgren’s book: 

Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability. 

People have managed to live pretty sustainably on the planet for a hundreds of thousands of years. So what happened? Permaculture is a way for us to reconnect with regenerative, abundant and sustainable solutions for ourselves, others and the surrounding environment by getting closer to our food, families, friends, front yards, farms and forests in a way that benefits all of them (and is heaps more fun for us too!)

In many ways, permaculture is not a new idea, but rather draws on the knowledge and thinking systems of many traditional and indigenous cultures all over the world that managed to sustain themselves for thousands of years without destroying their environment. Permaculture aims to help us all get us back to being in balance with the world around us.

Permaculture is based around the ethics of Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share – taking care of the land, water & living soil, looking after ourselves and other people and being aware of our limited resources and using only what we really need whilst distributing the rest fairly amongst those around us (not just people, but all other living & non-living beings) in order to keep a healthy ecological system functioning.

From the ethics of permaculture come a set of principles which are helpful guidelines to follow, not only while gardening, but in pretty much any situation!

Speaking of which, a common misconception is that permaculture is just about gardening, however it is really a much broader, “whole-systems” framework for sustainable – or rather, regenerative design that can be applied in just about any context.

At this critical point in time, where our climate, biosphere and financial systems around the world are reaching a point of collapse, permaculture guides us to positive ideas and actions that we can use towards maintaining our planet’s life support systems and ensuring the survival (and thriving) of our own species and many others.

More information on the permaculture ethics and principles can be found at: permacultureprinciples.com

To get involved, do a search for active permaculture groups near you. You’re bound to get some exciting results!

Along with illustrator, Brenna Quinlan [ www.brennaquinlan.com ], Formidable Vegetable has also created the permaculture education collective Grow Do It [ http://growdoit.com.au ] creating teaching tools to inspire young minds toward regenerative, whole-systems thinking.