What matters to you?
This is how the latest Growing Radicles event began. It was the first in a series of “Fast track your Food Forest” one-day trainings.
Fellow Archan Permaculture founder, James Andrews opened with an Holistic Decision Making exercise that gave space for deepening the context of each person’s why. Why had they come, and what did they want from the day. From these personal declarations, we found a purpose statement for the day:
“co-created inspirational learning, with full engagement, for there to be more life.”
I feel glad because this allowed everyone to take responsibility for what matters to them, and it deepened the connections. The day then evolved with ease and engagement, where the learning unfolded at a pace which appeared to work.
Day one in the series landed the four key principles of the Syntropic Agroforestry approach to implementation of a Food Forest:
- Succession
- Stratification
- Density
- Management
Was there more life?
The questions that flowed into each phase of the day suggest this was true.
The exchanges over a big pot of pumpkin soup at lunchtime, were full of life.
Life and joy were evident when it came time to apply muscle, and rake up the grass into tree rows.
Will the day feed into food forest installations and ecosystems with more life?
Time will tell, but we are now connected via a Telegram group, for supporting each other’s food forest installations, and there is interest in gathering for the next sessions in this series . . .
1) Foundation principles / Site prep
Sunday Jun 8th, 2025 (9am – 5pm)
A repeat session of this day but at a new Mangawhai location, where you’ll see some established syntropic installation, and witness the power of Tithonia diversifolia (Mexican Sunflower) to ‘creep’ in an open field of Kikuyu, shading out the grass and making way for native plants to take hold.
2) Propagation / Management
Sunday Sep 21st, 2025 (9am – 5pm)
This will be held at an Avocado Orchard with syntropics-inspired Food Forest installations. You will take away plant material, and experience with hands-on learning about management of support species. Perfect lead into a spring planting on your site.
3) Plants / Planting
Sunday Oct 19th, 2025 (9am – 5pm)
This will be held in Mangawhai, where the initial site prep was done on April 18th. We will have ample plant material on hand, so you experience how it looks with the optimum quantities, density and placement of the productive and support species. You will leave with confidence about what you need, to establish or expand your system.
REGISTER NOW
What matters to me?
Two years ago myself and three other men, began meeting every two weeks to research and develop projects around what we named “Archan Permaculture”.
Archan is a reference to Archiarchy, the next culture after Matriarchy and Patriarchy, which have run their course. It’s time for a culture of radically responsible men and women to step forward and take their part in the transformation and creation of a world we know in our hearts is possible.
The connective bond of this team of four, has been a shared impulse to support humans to grow into radical responsibility, and to support regeneration of natural systems that create healthy abundance.
Growing Radicles is the name for my piece of this Archan Permaculture gameworld. It exists to weave community with landscapes, through learning journeys that inspire land stewards to take their place in nature – as nature, so that flourishing ecosystems take root and thrive across the planet, bringing more life.
