Hello my name is Robert Knops and i'm from the Netherlands. I'm having a try on this forum to see if it's usefull for me and if i can bring new ideas in. I'm sorry for my terrible English i'm doing my best. In the Netherlands and aspecially where i'm living in Limburg permaculture is very oncommen and not really excepted. I've created together with my wive an edible forest garden on 0,5 hectare (100mx100m=1hectare). I've got plants like apple, pear, asian pear, Assimia triloba, Schichandra chinensis, cherry's (almost everything what is possible in our climate). I'm a specialist in the wild flora, fauna and fungi off middle Europe and know whats edible, usefull or healthy. Now i'm trying to make the house more sustainable, by making a living roof/rove?, to direct the grey wather in the garden where it is possible... We never followed a permaculture course, because i've studiet forestry and nature and education and knowledge management (nature and communication) whereby i've specialist myself in ecology, biodiversity, biology... Ofcourse because of the stupid economic world there is no work in any of these fields, but having said that in the Netherlands there is in all the sectors less and less work. But it is giving me the time to enjoy my little daughter (1 year) and making the house and garden more and more productive and still staying in harmonie with nature. And the goverment likes to pay people with not commercial knowledge to stay home and not spreading, in their vision, my diseas. Ofcourse i'm doing the opposite. I'm trying to perswase people to follow in my direction (what is really difficult, because i'm what i am and that is a person of nature and í find it very difficult to understand the economic, digital, technological and modern world). The garden is already 30 years old. In the beginning it was a nature garden but now since beginning 2012 it is a permaculture forest garden. I'm starting the garden know because the climate is ever faster going to change, food prices wil rice and because it is the way where i'm leaded into by mother nature (gaia).
Welcome Robert. Don't worry about your English - some of the native English speakers here are terrible typists so no one will notice. What you are doing sounds very exciting - and your daughter will grow up surrounded by beauty and with an appreciation of where food comes from.
Thanks for the welcome. Yes my daughter will know where her food comes from and appreciate nature. You can always ask for advice, but i'm not a specialist in the Australiën climate of what grows there naturally.
