Most permaculture books are written for warm places like California or Australia. This guide comes from Sweden, where summers are short, winters are long and dark, and frost can arrive in June.

A plant guild is a small community of plants that support one another around a central tree or shrub. Instead of a lonely fruit tree in the middle of a lawn, you create a living neighborhood where every plant has a job to do: fixing nitrogen, building soil, drawing in pollinators, holding moisture and keeping grass and voles away from the trunk.

Six guilds, ready to plant

• The Apple Guild: the classic guild and the perfect place to start
• The Pear Guild: focused on warmth and early pollination
• The Plum Guild: builds soil and holds moisture
• The Cherry Guild: a compact guild in full sun, built around hardy sour cherry
• The Berry Guild: for small gardens or the harshest zones, fits in just 10 to 20 square feet
• The Haskap Guild: built around one of the hardiest berry shrubs in the world, for the coldest gardens

What’s inside

• The eight roles in a plant guild, with cold climate examples and botanical names for every plant
• A step-by-step guide to building your guild, from the drip line to the bulb ring
• USDA hardiness zones for every guild, plus a comparison with Swedish growing zones
• A guide to invasive species to avoid in Scandinavia, Canada, the northern US and the UK
• Seasonal care for spring, summer, fall and winter
• 4 printable templates: my plant guild, plant list, role check, and the guild in years 1 to 3
• 17 US Letter pages

How it works
This is a digital product, so nothing will be shipped to you. After purchase, you can download the PDF straight away. Print a set of templates for every guild you create.

Perfect for you if you want your fruit trees to thrive with less work, are curious about food forests, or garden somewhere cold and are tired of advice written for warmer places.

The post Nordic Plant guilds first appeared on Eldra Harmony.

In a cold climate, every week counts. This planner helps you bring order to your growing season: what to sow, when to sow it and where everything should grow.

Instead of fixed months that rarely fit, every date is counted from your own last frost date. That way, the sowing calendar works for your garden, wherever it is, whether that’s in Sweden, Canada, the northern US or the UK.

What’s inside

• How to find your last frost date, with sources for the US, Canada, the UK and northern Europe, plus old Nordic signs in nature
• A sowing calendar for 21 common crops, from celery and tomatoes to peas and carrots
• Tips for hardening off, succession sowing, extending the season and fall sowing
• A simple four-year crop rotation, with advice on perennials and companion planting
• 8 printable templates: year at a glance, bed plan, four-year rotation, sowing log, monthly plan, harvest log, seed inventory and season review
• 15 A4 pages/US letters

How it works
This is a digital product, so nothing will be shipped to you. After purchase, you can download the PDF straight away. Print the templates as many times as you need and keep them in a binder with your seed packets.

The planner pairs perfectly with the workbook Design Your Own Place, but works just as well on its own, whether you have a few raised beds or a whole vegetable garden.

The post The Cold Climate Garden Planner first appeared on Eldra Harmony.

A reading rooted in permaculture principles
I lay the cards in a spread I’ve created based on permaculture thinking. Each position sheds light on a different side of your place:

• Observe: what your place wants to show you right now
• Patterns: the larger currents and rhythms shaping the whole
• Resources: what’s already there that you may not be seeing
• Edges: possibilities in the unexpected and overlooked
• What needs rest: what shouldn’t be forced
• Small steps: a slow and sustainable way forward
• Change: what is beginning to emerge

What you’ll receive

• A personal reading with 12 cards in the spread above
• An interpretation of each card in relation to your place and your question
• Concrete reflection questions to take with you out onto your land
• Delivery as a [PDF / audio file / video] within 7 days

How it works

1. You place your order and tell me a little about your place. It might be a farm, a garden, an allotment, a balcony or a home.
2. You’re welcome to share a question or theme, such as a decision, a planting, or a feeling that something has stalled.
3. I lay the cards in peace and quiet and write your reading.
4. Your reading is delivered to you digitally.

The post Tarot reading for your site – permaculture first appeared on Eldra Harmony.

Do you dream of a place that gives you food, life and rest, and that grows richer every year?

This workbook takes you step by step through the same design process a permaculture designer uses, adapted for Nordic conditions.

You don’t need any previous knowledge, just your place, a pencil and your curiosity.

The workbook guides you through nine steps, from your very first dreams to a finished plan you can carry out at your own pace. You’ll learn to observe your place through the seasons, draw a base map, map sun, wind, water and frost, and place everything where it does the most good.

Each step includes exercises and printable templates, so you can work directly out on your land. It’s a tool you’ll come back to year after year.

What’s inside

• An introduction to the three ethics of permaculture
• The nine-step design process: goals and vision, observation, base map, sector analysis, zone planning, water and soil, placement of elements, implementation plan and evaluation
• The sun’s height at midsummer and midwinter for different parts of Sweden
• Examples of plant guilds for Nordic climates
• The 12 principles of permaculture, explained simply and as a checklist
• A fact page on Swedish growing zones, with a link to the official zone map
• 15 printable templates: dream list, needs and wishes, resource inventory, one-sentence goal, weekly observation log, seasonal log, grid paper for your base map, sector analysis with sun path, zone planning, soil test, element analysis, plant guild, 12-principles checklist, phased plan for years 1–5 and annual review
• 30 A4 pages/US letters

How it works
This is a digital product, so nothing will be shipped to you. After purchase, you can download the PDF straight away. Print the templates as many times as you like and fill them in by hand, ideally out on your land.

Perfect for you if you want to start growing sustainably, transform your garden or smallholding, or finally pull all your ideas together into a plan that works.

The post Design your own permaculture site first appeared on Eldra Harmony.

The 22 Major Arcana tell the story of a journey, from the Fool’s first curious steps to the completion of the World. You make the same journey with your place. Each card carries a question for you and your land, a link to the principles of permaculture, and a hands-on exercise to do outdoors.

This guide uses tarot as a tool for reflection and contemplation, and the answers are always found out on the land itself. You don’t need any experience with tarot, and the guide works with any tarot deck.

You can also read it card by card without a deck at all.

What’s included

• An introduction to how tarot and permaculture can meet
• Three spreads: Today’s Card for Your Place, Three Cards for Your Place, and the Elements Spread with earth, water, air and fire
•  22 card pages, one for each card of the Major Arcana, with the card’s message, a question for your place, a permaculture connection, an exercise on the land, and lines for your own notes
• An overview of all 22 cards
• 4 printable templates: a draw log, Three Cards for Your Place, the Elements Spread, and the Journey Through the 22 Cards
• 30 pagesA4 or US letters pages,

This is a digital product, and nothing will be shipped to you. After purchase, you can download the PDF straight away.

The post The 22 Major Arcana as a permaculture guide first appeared on Eldra Harmony.