Local bloggers hope to introduce permaculture to city

By Kamryn Cusumano

Jan. 27, 2019

A Windsor couple is hoping to inspire a cultural shift in the city with their new blog.

The Border City Hippies blog was launched two weeks ago by Jessica and T.J. Bondy. The self-proclaimed hippies study and implement techniques of sustainable agriculture, known as permaculture. Their hope is to introduce Windsorites to permaculture, learn from others who are implementing similar methods and invite the community to join them on their journey.

“What can we do to make our lives more interconnected with this nature and make it a beneficial relationship?” asked Bondy. “There’s a sustainable movement where we’re going to continue to not kill our environment and not overuse resources. Permaculture now is going one step further than using the word sustainable they’re using the word regenerative. Actually, growing more natural environment.”

The Bondys have been studying and implementing permaculture techniques in their home and yard for the last two years. Permaculturists study the natural world and use designs that mimic those processes. With innovative design, permaculturists aim to meet human needs while contributing positively back to the environment. They said they believe Windsor could benefit from these techniques.

“It circulates around growing food and how we get our food,” said T.J. “That’s the base of it. But it also has to do with how we interact with the natural world around us.”

Bondy was surprised when her Instagram story of her hydroponically grown lettuce gained so much attention.

“I made a video about it and got so much feedback from people being like ‘I didn’t even think about this,’” said Bondy. “How many times have you heard people saying they can’t afford fresh vegetables. Out of this $10 lettuce it lasted us three months and it only died because we stopped watering it.”

The Bondys said a key principle in permaculture is allowing nature to grow while limiting human intervention. In the spring they will refrain from controlling or manipulating the growth of their yard to an extent. The Bondys will observe how nature grows, learn from it and work with it rather than fight it.

Their plans include a forest garden in their backyard with fruit trees and medicinal plants. The front yard will have ornamental looking plants to keep up appearances with neighbours. A point of contention and a possible barrier permaculturists face in the city is how neighbours perceive their yards.

Simon Johnstone and Ellery Hawkes know this contention well. The two practiced permaculture in the west side of Windsor for almost three years before moving to northern Ontario. Both their front and back yards were stocked full of medicinal and edible plants. Their neighbours made two official complaints to the city.

“I guess you could call it a misunderstanding and not just letting things go and growing weeds,” said Johnstone. “We were growing weeds, but what does that mean? They were weeds that we knew what we were doing with. So there’s a lack of understanding. This is out of the norm and people don’t really know what it is.”

Johnstone said the beginning phases of growing a forest garden often look unruly. According to Johnstone, good soil requires biomass which means growing a lot of stuff in a small space which can look wild. Due to complaints, the couple was visited by their ward councilor, the local environmental master planner, a plant expert and a naturalist from Objibway to identify the plants.

“The master plan lady was really digging the whole water catchment mitigation of floods,” said Johnstone. “We were also showing her all these plants that were pollinators.”

The couple sufficiently demonstrated their knowledge of these plants and their use to the city that they were allowed to continue foraging their garden.

The Bondys are beginning to experience similar push back from neighbours.

“We are sort of an anomaly in south Windsor,” said Jessica. “The [neighbour] next door told us we don’t take care of our yard as well as last year because we let the weeds grow. But really, we were observing, to see what grows naturally, what thrives…”

Currently, the couple is unaware of any other permaculture enthusiasts in the city and is hoping this blog will connect them with like-minded people and those interested in learning.

According to Food Tank there are over 1 million people certified in permaculture in over 140 countries with approximately 40,000 projects on the ground. Permaculture can be used anywhere in the world and can even help combat malnutrition in countries like Malawi.

Johnstone and the Bondys said they believe the city could stand to benefit from permaculture design, especially considering the annual flood damage in the city.

“There is massive potential for flood and drought mitigation,” said Johnstone. “One of the main problems we face here is flooding.     Using good permaculture design so much of the flooding problems can be dealt with.”

He said there is massive potential to using permaculture design to save the city money.

“You could spend millions on a new sewer system,” said Johnstone. “[That] only covers a small portion of the city, or millions of dollars of permaculture design and implementation of green spaces. [There is] a ridiculous amount of work you could get done that will have huge benefits.”

T.J. said he hopes their blog will spark interest in this lifestyle. The couple worries about the state of the environment and hopes Windsorites will see how much fun and easy permaculture is as a sustainable solution to combating climate change. Jessica said she is looking forward to developing permaculture in the city in hopes that one day there will be a course offered at St. Clair College about these techniques.

“I think the biggest thing we can have an impact on is cultural shift,” said T.J. “These things matter and we can do things about them and it’s not going to be terrible. It’s going to be cool.”

To learn more visit www.bordercityhippies.com