The Cultural Emergence Empowerment Deck is the latest creation by permaculture designer and teacher, Looby Macnamara. The deck contains  96 cards, and each one features one of Looby’s beautiful hand drawn illustrations. Although the deck is designed to be used in conjunction with Looby’s ‘Cultural Emergence - A Tool Kit For Transforming Ourselves & The World’ book, published by Permanent Publications in 2020, it's also a great ‘stand alone’ tool.

The deck features cards from the following areas of Looby’s work - The Cultural Emergence ‘phases’ (tools for balancing life), ‘practices’ (tools to embody regenerative habits) and ‘principles’ (tools to support effective decision making), the design framework from People & Permaculture, the Design Web and cards representing the 7 Ways To Think Differently, (growing supportive mindsets from systems of limitations). The last category the card deck includes is about the 8 Shields Model, designed by Jon Young, with the aim of deepening our understanding and practice of nature connection. 

It was really great to be part of a workshop Looby facilitated at the Permaculture Association’s ‘Festival Of Permaculture’, to explore how the cards could be used both personally and in group settings. Some of the ideas shared in the workshop that  fit with Looby’s intentions for the deck as a tool included - creative work, decision making, journaling prompts, problem solving, coaching, designing, and self care practices. 

I use card decks from a wide range of disciplines in both my personal and work life and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the Cultural Emergence Empowerment Deck can be used on a regular basis, especially as part of my permaculture design projects. 

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The Climate Change Garden published just last year, is my first complete read of 2020 and part of the research planned for my new garden design.

As well as being an author of a wide range of books, Sally Morgan is also the editor of the Soil Association's Organic Farming magazine. Kim Stoddart runs climate change gardening courses, is a gardening journalist and the editor of  The Organic Way magazine. The two authors clearly have a great wealth of knowledge and experience in all matters relating to garden design with our rapidly changing climate in mind.

Overall The Climate Change Garden is a comprehensive and engaging overview of some of the main ways that climate change is, and will continue, to influence how we garden in the UK. The book has lots of inspiring photos to back up the very accessible format text. The key topics each have their own chapter; Too much water; Heat and drought; Wind, frost and snow; A healthy soil; Design Ideas; Working with wildlife; The veg patch; In the orchard; Trees for the future; The flower garden - and there is a useful appendix of extra resources. Each chapter contains relevant background and history alongside many ideas for garden design choices and plans. In my opinion, The Climate Change Garden is a great book for folk new to gardening as well as others who would welcome a reminder about some of the key issues relating to climate challenges in the designs and creations of our growing spaces. While the book isn't an in depth "how to garden" book, it firmly plants many specialist seeds of inspiration to be furthered by accessing additional resources. The Climate Change Garden is  a very welcome addition to my land based permaculture tool box and already a central part of the first steps of my new garden design. 

​Having followed the journey of Sarah Spencer’s course, workshops and training about using principles from nature, tress specifically, to navigate and thrive in our lives, I was really excited when I found out that she was also writing a book about the same topic. And I’ve not been disappointed. Think Like a Tree, the book, is a beautiful and incredibly informative tool for us all.
 
The 42 short chapters are brimming with examples of trees  from many parts of Earth, alongside every day case studies and ideas of how the nature principles taught to us by the presence of trees, can positively impact on our lives as individuals and within our communities. Each chapter covering one principle, are divided into 6 Groups – Observation, Purpose, Surroundings, Connection, Resilience, Future. There is a lot of information for each principle, as well as some really thought provoking exercises to undertake.  I really enjoyed reading about 1 principle each evening and I can recommend this approach in order to take time to absorb and reflect on the details presented.
 
Sarah’s work with Think Like a Tree has been very much linked to her life through living as well as possible with Chronic Illness. This theme is evident throughout  the book and means that Think Like a Tree could be particularly useful to others in similar situations.
 
Sarah claims that “Nature holds the secret to your happiness, health and wellbeing  - Think Like a Tree guides you to discover your own personal route to happiness, health, success and fulfilment – whatever your circumstances” – and I agree that this part ecology, part sociology, part history and part self coaching tool lends itself to being a useful and meaningful book for a diverse audience.
 
Think Like a Tree can be bought directly from Sarah at
https://www.thinklikeatree.co.uk/product/think-like-a-tree-book/

The Permaculture Design Companion by Jasmine Dale is a very beautiful new permaculture resource, in many ways. Based on Jasmine’s 20 years of experience of teaching and mentoring  over 1000 permaculture students from her home at Llammas Eco Village in Wales, her book is a brimming treasure chest of diverse permaculture design tools, process and principles.
 
The Permaculture Design Companion itself is designed to be a workbook and literally a companion to guide and mentor us through a personal permaculture project. Although this is one of the main intentions of the book, I can already see how the individual sections as stand alone topics will be incredibly useful for many of us too. Jasmine’s written communication style is chatty and fun, while consistently demonstrating her obvious in-depth diverse knowledge and experience both as a permaculture designer and teacher.

 The physical layout of the Permaculture Design Companion is something that I immediately connected to with it’s A4 size, relaxed font, and its many, many gorgeous diagrams, illustrations and spaces to make notes throughout.
 
The book is very much focused on using permaculture to design land based/physical projects but one of its many pluses is how it consistently weaves the connection of people involved to the physical space of the design. I particularly  like the section about making sure that our wellbeing  as the designer of the project is well supported and valued as being central to a successful design.
 
The Permaculture Design Companion is aimed at both folk who are brand new to permaculture and also to more experienced practitioners, and I whole heartedly agree with this. Having quite a few years of permaculture design experience now myself, I continuously learnt about new ideas and approaches to the many aspects of permaculture design, as I read and engaged with the exercises.
 
The Permaculture Design Companion is yet another fantastic new book from Permanent Publications and like so much of their work, would make a wonderful present and life tool for ourselves and the people we connect with. I’m going to be starting a new garden design within the next few months and really looking forward to testing out this fantastic new permaculture resource throughout the process.

If you decide to buy this book then please consider buying directly from the Permaculture Market,  (where there is also loads of other fantastic permaculture related resources to inspire you!) 

This book review is also published in Permaculture Magazine Autumn 2019 (PM 101)