Archives

Last year, we did a series of videos looking at the swale systems on our property and demonstration site. Part one looks at how we’ve combined the featuress of a Hügelkultur system, a [...]

Verge Grad Profile: Brent Smith & Nadine Brooks  Founders, Paper Street Permaculture Graduated from Verge in 2014 Brent & Nadine’s Expertise: Ecological analysis, drylands permaculture, [...]

Verge Grad Profile: Shannon Dyck Co-founder, Radiance Cohousing Environmental Coordinator, City of Saskatoon Designer, Prairie Habitat Garden Restoration Project, University of Saskatchewan [...]

Verge Grad Profile Adrian Buckley, Co-Founder, reGenerate Design, Ltd. Adrian’s Expertise: Design consulting, construction, and teaching services. Specializing in food forest design, schoolyard [...]

Recently Hilliard MacBeth, director of wealth management at Richardson GMP in Edmonton, put his reputation on the line by stating that Canada is a a housing bubble set to burst in the next few [...]

For part 1 of the Building Enduring Assets series, click HERE. One of the keys to building enduring assets is smart debt management. Debt can be a tool, but beyond a certain point it can turn [...]

Check out the other posts in the Building Enduring Assets Series: Building Enduring Assets: An Introduction Building Enduring Assets: Debt Management An enduring asset is one that maintains or [...]

Check out the other posts in the Building Enduring Assets Series: Building Enduring Assets: Part I An Introduction Building Enduring Assets: Part II Debt Management Building Enduring Assets: Part [...]

Members of The Agrihood Project, Verge grads Anaya Lea, Andrea Rocchio, and Rob McWilliam are part of a group of Calgarians seeking a more connected and rewarding rural life. Their dream: To [...]

Verge Grad Profile Rene Michalak, 2009 PDC Grad Principal, Phoenix Fire Consulting Project Lead, ReThink Red Deer Education Chair, American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association Expertise: [...]

Verge Grad Profile Sven Stave, Farmer, Field to Fork Premium Pastured Poultry Graduated from Calgary PDC in 2014 Expertise: Holistic livestock management, pastured poultry production Sven’s Story [...]

Hi everyone, Rob here with a quick update. Through our activities with Verge & our consulting company, Adaptive Habitat,  we are continually immersed in exciting projects & opportunities [...]

In one of my past blog posts, Investing Like An Ecosystem, I wrote about strategies that promote resilience and anti-fragility. One of the key areas of investment involved asking yourself one [...]

Verge Grad Profile Rebecca (b) Smith, Canadian delegate for Terra Madre Giovani (We Feed the Planet) Graduated Spring 2015 B’s Story Coming from a university background in ethnobotany (the [...]

It’s a few months late in coming, but we’re delighted to announce that Verge Permaculture was selected for the 24th Annual Emerald Foundation Award for demonstrating “a significant ongoing [...]

Verge Grad Profile: Ted Bahr, Founder, Prairie Sage Permaculture Graduated from Calgary PDC in 2011 Ted’s Expertise:  Permaculture drafting and design, tour management and facilitation, wild [...]

Verge Grad Profile Carmen Lamoureux, Founder, URBANFARM Permaculture Project. (Now Urban Farm School) Graduated from PDC in Calgary 2013. Carmen’s Expertise: Soils, Silviculture, Forestry, [...]

Verge Grad Profile:  Jeremy Zoller, Owner, Sunshine Earth Works Graduated from 2013 PDC in Calgary Jeremy’s Expertise: Permaculture Design, Landscape Construction, Earth Repair Jeremy’s Story:  [...]

Verge Grad: Tim Wickstrom, Calgary PDC graduate, 2013. Tim’s Expertise: Founder of Edible Earthscapes. Specializes in permaculture design, vermicompost, food production, water harvesting, and [...]

Verge Grad Profile: Jodi McKee & Eric Fontenot, Nelson 2012 Verge PDC Jodi & Eric’s Expertise: Co-Owners of Urban Homesteading Store, based in Stoney Plain, AB Jodi & Eric’s Story:  [...]

Verge Grad Profile: Karla Cox Graduated from the Verge PDC in 2011 (Nelson, BC) Lives in Cochrane, AB Karla’s Expertise: Water management Educational workshops Composting Vermiculture Vertical [...]

After posting a bit about what permaculture is, I want to dispel some common misconceptions and tell you what it’s not: 1. Permaculture’s Not Just Gardening   One thing I hear often is [...]

Verge Grad Profile: Mike Dorion Graduated from the Verge PDC in 2011 (Nelson, BC) Mike’s Expertise: Compost Teas/Extracts, Soil Building/Soil Biology, Composting/Vermicomposting [...]

What is permaculture? For those of you who’ve only heard of the term in passing, and ever for you seasoned “permies” who struggle to explain this exciting (and sometimes [...]

Last week, I gave you my top 7 tips for designing a passive solar greenhouse. But once you’ve got the greenhouse in place, how do you manage it to get the most out of it? After 5 years of [...]

 I’m sitting at my computer this morning with my cup of coffee, watching a video called “Soil Carbon Cowboys” and getting inspired. Here, take a look: Like many technophiles, I often get swept [...]

I want to take the time today to address a question many ask: How do we eat beyond organic for less than the costs of eating conventional? First off, let’s define what “beyond organic” means. [...]

After looking at lists of bad building design choices, I’ve gathered together top 11 promising appropriate technologies I’ve seen in use for residential and commercial buildings. For those [...]

Over the past 10 years I’ve seen a lot of mistakes in home design in both urban and rural properties. Over the next few blog posts, I want to look at some of those blunders and point to [...]

What is a Rocket Mass Heater, you ask? A while back, the team from Green Energy Futures (which includes our past PDC grad Duncan Kinney) came down to Calgary to film a workshop we co-hosted and [...]

Growing Good Business Video Series Part 3: So Many Opportunities, Where Do You Start? In 2007 we first watched – and were completely awestruck by – Geoff Lawton’s “Greening the [...]

Growing Good Business Video Series Part 2: Hindsight is 20/20 – What The Permaculture Experts Learned the Hard Way In 2007 we first watched – and were completely awestruck by – [...]

We travelled to the Permaculture Voices conference in Temecula, CA this past March to interview successful permaculture designers, teachers, farmers and business owners and get their top tips! [...]

Recently Michelle, Rowan, Naomi and I embarked on a cross-country train trip to attend a family reunion in the eastern townships of Quebec. With a little extra time left over after the [...]

 Check out the past articles in the Permaculture Business series:  Part 1: Tips from the Pros Part 2: On Opportunities Part 3: Barriers and Challenges “What would you have done [...]

(Find Part 1, Tips from the Pros here and Part 2, Opportunities and Niches here)  A Personal Take on Barriers to Success As with any career or business, there are barriers to achieving success. [...]

(Find Part 1, Tips from the Pros here)  Opportunity is about seeing things differently What is amazing about permaculture are the number of solutions that are contained within the design system. [...]

I’ve been running Verge Permaculture for five years now, and before that worked as an engineer in the oil and gas industry. Starting a business was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I didn’t [...]

I have always been interested in wood gasifiers and after doing a little research this morning was amazed to see that a they are popping up all over the place. Biomass gasification is a process [...]

Coppicing has always been interesting to me as a wood production system (fuel, timber) because it uses trees that can be cut perpetually. In other words, the tree is cut and grows back. This is [...]

In this video Rob showcases one of the major water harvesting feature – an underground rainwater cistern – on Rob and Michelle’s urban home property. This rain tank is unique because [...]

A step-by-step account of installing an underground rain tank in our backyard for additional rainwater harvesting storage.

Over the last few years, I have been formulating my opinion on how to approach investing and what do to with extra cash. And I can’t believe how many people have told me in the last few [...]

For the last four years, I have been dreaming of retrofitting a small town with a group of like-minded individuals with a diverse set of skills. I talk a lot about this in my courses, and it [...]

Recently I had the privilege of interviewing Ron Berezan, aka The Urban Farmer, who was one of the first people in Alberta to get permaculture kick started.  Ron has been teaching and running [...]

For the past 5 years I have been consulting in permaculture, which is the design and integration of: renewable energy systems low energy buildings food system design – both annual and [...]

Ecological destruction and environmental degradation are merely symptoms of a more profound structural economic problem endemic to industrialization and consumerism. As can readily be observed, [...]

For the last couple of years, I have recognized that transitioning our culture from one that looks at the planet as an endless mine and ecological destruction as a just another externality to one [...]

Identifying the Formative System The consultancy that I performed was in Central Alberta on the Red Deer River, which delineates the badlands from the grasslands. You can see in the photo that [...]

This past weekend I did a consultancy of a property that illustrates the power of understanding how water moves through a property and the consequences of getting it wrong. What is interesting is [...]

Recently, I was in Invermere again and I visited a friend’s house with a unique take on solar air heating. He has coined his invention the Solar Coffin. This device heats air up to well [...]

I had a few years of gardening/farming experience before I wandered off to South America in 2011. Serendipity found me volunteering at a sustainability project in Ecuador later that year, I had [...]

Hi Rob, I have been studying permaculture for several years now, but once we get past the basics of gardening we seem to run into the same wall again and again. That wall for us is a balance of [...]

This spring, Verge converged with Big Sky Permaculture and 7 apprentices (most of them past students) at the Invermere Community Greenhouse site, to do a design blitz. We had three days to [...]

Our How we designed our Solar Greenhouse blog is one of the most read blogs on our website, so I thought it was time for an update! This post will cover the benefits of our greenhouse, the [...]

I had heard a little about permaculture through my gardening volunteer work but didn't really get to understand the principles until taking Rob’s intro course in 2009 and reading Toby Hemenway’s [...]

Below I have put together a video about a tool that every designer should be familiar with. It is called a solar pathfinder. I use this tool in almost every consultancy that I do and it not only [...]

Evonne Smulders brings a youthful, inspired, and change-making spirit to her home town of Black Diamond, AB, and beyond… all the while embodying and sharing her truly “Sage” [...]

I recently had the opportunity to interview my friend Tad Hargrave from Marketing for Hippies in Edmonton, Alberta.  Verge has not only been hosting Tad’s workshops in Calgary, Edmonton and [...]

Today I had the privilege of interviewing Rene Michalak who has started an innovative project called The MEGGA WATT project which is an acronym for The Micro-Energy Generating Garage Assembly [...]

Luke Kimmel is a young social entepreneur and permaculture designer who shows that both the entrepreneurial spirit and the desire to heal the planet can be satisfied through permaculture and [...]

Jordan Saunders is a young farmer whose projects have already made a significant impact on the yards and hearts of many people across Western Canada; he shows by example that farming and [...]

Ashley Lubyk and Heather Noakes show that creating beautiful and sustainable human habitat is possible through the passionate work of their natural building education and consulting company, Dirt [...]

Part 7: Sara Haney and Chrissy Begus   Sara Haney and Chrissy Begus are piecing together the puzzle of sustainability through their education company Puzzle Permaculture, which currently [...]

We have had the solar thermal system installed now for almost six months and it has performed flawlessly. Moreover our gas bills have never been so low, in fact most months we are paying more in [...]

Verge’s Grads in Action Series: Part 4 – Juli & Jeff Gillies Juli and Jeff Gillies are demonstrating a wide array of permaculture homesteading techniques on their 5 acre parcel [...]

Verge’s Grads in Action Series: Part 3 – Chrystel Vultier Chrystel Vultier is a true local food purveyor for her home town of Canmore, AB. Over the past several years she has been [...]

Nestled deep in the forested mountains of the Slocan Valley, ex-urbanite Shawna Teare and her family have applied skills from their former lives in business and carpentry, along with gifted and [...]

Ever Wondered, “What Can I Do With a Permaculture Certificate?” Meet Our Grads and Get Inspired By Their Stories of Earth Repair and Personal Transformation! Verge’s Grad [...]

Since it worked so well last year, we have decided to unplug again this year! The office will be closed from December 21st to January 2nd, we hope you all take the time to relax and enjoy the [...]

Stay tuned for details on his live-stream webinar, banquet and public talk! Can’t make it to Joel’s 3 days of workshops? Don’t fret – we’ve got options for you! Read [...]

Over the past few years, our goal has been to slowly retrofit our 25 year old house into a little urban permaculture homestead. Most recently, we brought in Simple Solar to install a solar hot [...]

With the help and expertise of our Edmonton PDC students and Big Sky Permaculture, we recently installed a series of wicking beds at Jasper [...]

Permaculturists everywhere are crazy about their compost teas and extracts. They have turned building compost tea brewers into a science and concocting the perfect tea recipe into an art. We [...]

Join Verge and the Calgary Horticultural Society for an evening with International Soil Expert & Foodweb Advisor, Doug Weatherbee, a.k.a ‘The Soil Doctor’. This is a unique [...]

Spring has sprung and there is much to be done at the Verge Headquarters - planting and transplanting, installing a drip irrigation system, amending the soil for a new growing year and plenty [...]

A few weeks ago we had our amazing interns prepare a soil sample to be sent off to the Soil Food Web Lab in Vulcan. (See the blog,

In March we hosted a workshop on SPIN farming with Curtis Stone, a successful SPIN farmer of

During the second week of the Verge Internship, interns participated in a bunch of different activities. Several of us worked on preparing small soil blocks for starting seedlings, and  [...]

Michelle, Rowan and I were driving home from a vacation in the mountains when we passed by a swale on a farmer’s field in the middle of Alberta cattle country. Naturally, it piqued my [...]

This year at Verge headquarters (i.e. our home & backyard), our goal is to continue to improve the topsoil and grow nutrient dense food. Since we know that the secret to healthy plants is [...]

Luke is our outgoing intern and the 2011 Contest Winner for the Sunnyside Garden Centre Writing Competition: "How is gardening a form of artwork, and how does gardening build [...]