If I mention Permaculture to most people they've heard something about it but they're not a hundred percent sure where or exactly what it's about. Mostly they think it's gardening. They'd be right in thinking it has a lot to do with how we garden, but it's bigger than just gardening.

Ifyou think of the entire world as a garden, that's closer to what it's really about. Each of us is responsible for our little bit of 'the bigger picture'. If you thought too hard and too long about it, you'd probably dismiss it as too colossal a job to even get started on.

Instead, it's that idea of think global, but act local. Like becoming a Locavore (eating what grows in your area to stop big lorries thundering through with tonnes of food from Spain or further afield). Do what's possible on your own doorstep. That usually means, starting in your own back yard. Geoff Lawton (Permaculture Research Institute) said 'You can solve all the world's problems in a garden'. He went on to qualify that statement as referring to what's called a forest garden. A forest garden being one with several layers of growth, like a real forest, but with the main idea of this type of garden being a food garden.

It has an overstory canopy of trees, an understory canopy of smaller trees and large shrubs. It has fruit bushes, climbers, perennial herbs, ground-cover plants and perennial root crops. It includes fruits and nuts and leaves for human consumption and seeds, nuts and fruits birds and other animals can also live on. Some things in a forest garden may not be only for eating, but could be for constructing our homes or makingtrellis work or for basket-weaving, for example.

We could grow timber trees, bamboo or willow for fences, and plants for dying our clothes or for healing or cleansing our bodies. Plus plants for making fertiliser or speeding up your compost and keeping down weeds.

Before I'd heard of Permaculture myself, I was always interested in natural history programmes and loved animals. I'd avidly watch and listen to any programme on radio or tv on the subject of nature. So it naturally followed that when I did hear about Permaculture it felt right for me, and that led me to take a certificate in Suburban Permaculture and to enrol on an online Permaculture Design Course combined with a Permaculture Teaching Certificate.

Online courses are becoming increasingly popular for people who can't get away for hands-on courses and who need to find our own local community-based sites and people to involve ourselves with and to share Permaculture thoughts and ideas with.

Permaculture began in the 1970s and people went through the hippy commune phase and then the idea of having so much land and space to live away from everyone else. So now the community and volunteer idea has become popular again in order to sustain these large Permaculture spaces, and people in urban areas want to be part of the rising movement.

It's become necessary for us to encourage people to act wherever they can, no matter how small a scale, because governments seem unable to act through fear for economic stability around the world. But ordinary people, like single people or parents fearful for their childrens' health, are becoming interested in learning what they can achieve, even in a small space back garden with 2 or 3 chickens, or a pond with frogs or fish, or a few well chosen food and medicinal plants on a windowsill in a flat. And that's the scale of Permaculture I'm interested in right now, right where i live and work and garden. Don't worry about how young or old or busy or cash-strapped you are or if you drive a diesel,

Permaculture can still work for you. I'm generally found voluteering in the garden at Gatis Community Space in Wolverhampton on a Wednesday afternoon. I have allotment gardens close by with chickens so tend that daily, year round. I've been showing people at Gatis how to construct worm towers, which is a fairly simplecomposting method. I'm sowing stuff in the greenhouse onsite too. I'd like to spend more time there, and have made myself more available lately, but it's the growing season and self- employment is multi-pronged, even with Permaculture, so you learn to diversify to survive, justlike Permaculture advocates that you do.

I do some paid small-scale garden work and/or can come and demonstrate worm towers in the Wolverhampton area. I can be contacted via my facebook page: Nicky Smith BSc Hons Open and Suburban Permaculture. (NickyS.UrbanPermie). I try to check in daily and to post up some of the things I'm doing including encouraging Permaculture, no matter how small.