Our Permaculture Roots

In 1977 Michel Fanton, the future co-founder of Seed Savers, established mixed gardens he called “Mimosa” on two acres of steep cow paddocks in northern New South Wales, Australia.
 
Michel had been inspired by the rich home gardens and peasant cultures of his homeland, France, as well as The Caribbean, French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia where he had lived for much of the 1970s. Fukuoka’s “One Straw Revolution” supplied the strategies of succession planting and using nurse trees in the establishment of the orchard the year of the birth of Michel’s second daughter, Aimee. These threads came together with the first plantings of a multitude of leguminous trees and shrubs, one of which was the Acacia “Morishima”, as Fukuoka called a form of A. dealbata subspecies Mollisima.
Michel realized that he was on the way to practising Permaculture principles when he read Permaculture One. He attended a talk by Bill Mollison in Bellingen, New South Wales, Australia in 1979 and invited Bill to visit his experimental gardens. Convinced by the logic of Permaculture and Bill's charismatic ideas, Michel thickened his perennial plantings and became a vocal advocate, distributing hundreds of copies of Permaculture One and Two.
In 1981 Michel teamed with Jude who had eleven years' experience of teaching social sciences, history and literature. They extended the intensive home gardens by another acre, harvested seeds wherever they went, propagated fruit and leguminous trees and shrubs and significantly increased "Mimosa"’s diversity.
 
Michel and Jude started to open up their subtropical Permaculture gardens to a multitude of people and participated in many television programmes.
  
In the early 1990s Bill chose "Mimosa" for filming a section of "The Global Gardener" TV series.
 
   

Bill at “Mimosa”

When Bill Mollison moved from Tasmania  to nearby Tyalgum on the NSW Queensland border, he frequently visited our family at Mimosa, recounting into the night permaculturesque stories from his latest travels. The Fantons learned by doing with Bill, working in the garden together, exchanging cuttings, rare tubers, runners and bulk seeds and stories from indigenous (agri)cultures, and food. Seed Savers was conceived during this time.
  

They ran Permaculture weekend workshops at “Mimosa”. 

   
Spot Bill cogitating in an unusual position for him, right of centre. Ever happy when outdoors and when telling stories to an appreciative audience.
  

Second Permaculture Garden in Byron Bay

Michel and Jude maintained with hand tools "Mimosa" gardens until 1991 when they moved to Byron Bay. They established a second Permaculture garden in Byron Bay, the most easterly point of Australia on one acre of nearly empty rolling lawns in 1998. Within six years they had planted one thousand species of useful perennial plants and hosted thousands of visitors, such as 2000 one open day.
   
 

For Permaculture Workshops and Seed Saving Courses please enquire wherever you are in the world. We tailor make our courses to your culture and include indigenous and local know-how.

Following in Bill footsteps Michel and Jude Fanton taught eighteen Permaculture Design Courses in nine countries always including a strong biodiversity and seed production component.

 

.      
They started in 1988 with Introduction to Permaculture workshops and taught their first Permaculture Design Certificate Course in Nimbin, in 1989.
  
Jude and Michel went on to teach Design Certificate Courses in several countries. Bill Mollison sent Jude to South Africa in 1992 and to Palau in 1994 after he had taught the first PDCs there.
  • two courses at Camp Hill just north of Capetown, South Africa in 1992

  

Participants of first design course, Jude at left.             Design exercise at Camp Hill South Africa

    

Site of practical exercise, Khayelitsha, where 500,000 black South Africans lived (now over 1m). Putting in a sunken garden so as to conserve moisture. Tins and green waste from white suburbs were buried one metre deep first. The Quakers initiated this style of gardening.

  • Co-teaching a Permaculture Design Certificate course in Palau, Micronesia, in 1994.

  

Jude, right, teaching Permaculture on beach in Palau. A beach hut served well for the participants design exercise in sand.

  

Palau looks idyllic from the air, but has the usual Pacific problems of obesity, deforestation and litter.  Here Jude describes Permaculture to the President of the newly independent country.

 Other courses Michel and Jude taught or co-taught were in Cuba for Agricultura Urbana (Dept of Urban Agriculture), Cambodia for the Dept of Women, East Timor for CARITAS, Afghanistan at the Herat Faculty of Agriculture, the UK, Fiji and Japan in the 1990s and early 2000s.

  
Jude teaching Permaculture at Permaculture Centre. Permaculture teacher, Shitara-san, took this shot outside Permaculture Centre of Japan, 2000
 
   
PDC at Ragman's Lane Farm in Gloucestershire, UK, '96 Jude, left, teaching on Permaculture Design Course in Havana, Cuba, '96
 

Bill encourages Fantons to Establish Seed Savers in 1986

Bill Mollison encouraged the Fantons to establish The Seed Savers’ Network. Fancying they would create a local seed exchange, the Fantons were taken aback when Bill said, “Go national”.
Later as the Fantons considered a legal structure, Bill advised a pair of Trusts and, acting as settlor, he put some banknotes in between two slices of bread in an onion bag, saying “at least you can eat the bread.”
 

Bill Mollison at Seed Savers Annual Conferences

Bill gave the keynote addresses at Seed Savers Annual Conferences whenever possible, always challenging sacred cows and conventional paradigms. He also has the knack of gathering fascinating people around him.  

Notice of Seed Saving Conference in 1995.    Bill Mollison at the Fantons with some of his international Permaculture teachers in 1995.

Promotion of Permaculture in the Media

The Fantons spread the Permaculture seed message to the tune of close to one thousand appearances and articles - at conferences, regular regional radio shows, newspapers and magazines, producing over 600 articles. They wrote a regular page for the Permaculture International Journal from 1995 to 2000. Their gardens in Byron Bay have been photographed and filmed as a thriving example of Permaculture.

  
Magazine article around 1996.     Lunch served from the Seed Gardens to volunteers and Permaculture course participants with seeds drying behind.
  LEFT Orchard with plants originating in South and East Asia on the left and Central Asia on the right. RIGHT The kitchen garden has nine raised beds, planted with both annual and perennial herbs, flowers and vegetables.
Images and drawings of Jude and Michel Seedsavers and late 1970's permaculture gardens featured on the back cover of Introduction to Permaculture and in the Permaculture Designers' Manual.  

      

 Back cover of Introduction to Permaculture   Mimosa gardens, bottom left, in The Designers' Manual