by Kathy Litchfield
Employing
“Common Sense” Principles for a More Positive, Permanent Future
PHILADELPHIA, PA
-- Melissa Miles shared one word when describing her first job out of college –
“awful!”
An
environmental engineer at an oil refinery, she spent hours after work freeing
geese stuck in oil pits that weren't supposed to be left open and driving them
to a bird rescue in Delaware.
“It
was perhaps the best example of the worst we've done, but a really good experience for me to see that first hand,” said the Philly native who has
dedicated her life’s work to permaculture design, ecological restoration, green
building and environmental activism.
“For
awhile after that job people would shy away from me at cocktail parties, worrying
and saying ‘watch out, she’s the one who’ll talk to you about beached whales
and pollution . . .’ There’s a lot of bad stuff in the world but brow beating
people isn’t going to get them there. Empowering other people as I was
empowered through other people is my philosophy. And it’s fun!”
Miles
has degrees in animal science and biology, green building and sustainable
design and is presently working towards a Ph.D. in ecovillage design through
the San Francisco Institute of Architecture. Her advisor was the architect for
the Biosphere II in the 1980’s.
Miles
loves studying the ways we as humans “construct our built environment and site
our communities and how intentional (or not) that is.”
For
years she worked on conservation easements and public outreach for a land
trust, managed a horse farm and managed an urban micro-farm selling organically
grown produce to farm markets and restaurants.
She
lived in southern Florida before returning to her native Philadelphia, where
she has evolved the engineering consulting company her father founded in 1979 (focused
on the petrochemical industry), into the permaculture design and consulting
firm known as the Permanent Future Institute, that she manages today.
She
also teaches a series of sustainable living courses at the Bucks County
Community College and at Longwood Gardens in Philadelphia. She’s a certified
master composter and volunteer director of the Eastern Pennsylvania
Permaculture Guild, which has grown to include over 1,000 members in the last
five years.
But
ask Miles why she spends her time educating and advocating for ecologically
sustainable alternatives to conventional methodologies and she said the answer
is very simple: “It’s common sense. Aside from the labels we put on everything,
the ethics and principles are aligned with the natural world.”
Miles
is passionate about employing the “common sense principles” of permaculture and
organic land care in every aspect of her life and work, finding parallels in
much of her education and working to bring them together in sustainable ways, something
she experienced up close while visiting her mother and stepfather where they
live in Central America.
“I’d been an organic gardener for
years, with the standard rectangular bed in my backyard where no one would see
it and the dirty secrets of compost were hidden,” she laughed, “but people in
many other countries don’t have the luxuries that we have here to do it this
way. They can’t afford to waste anything, and naturally are integrating the
principles that are labeled as permaculture in this country.”
Instead of rectangular raised beds with
vegetables separated in rows, Miles for instance designs herb spirals in
patterns replicating the natural spiral of a nautilus shell; or mandala shaped
gardens with paths lined with flowers, herbs, vegetables and good pollinators,
she said.
“No one property calls for the same
treatment, so when people call me for a landscape design, I work with them to
not rip things out and redo the whole yard, but to work with what’s already
there and reconfigure things. Often it’s just a matter of managing the water
and soil on a site, and then everything falls into place,” said Miles, who was
delighted to discover in taking the NOFA Accreditation Course in December 2013
that so many of the principles of organic land care parallel those she loves in
permaculture.
“Right plant, right place, site
analysis principles, lawn alternatives, business management, the information
published for homeowners . . . I was in heaven,” she said. “I’m so grateful for
the NOFA program, that the OLC Program exists. It’s a huge stride forward. It’s
very basic on one hand and approachable, but also very in depth and really
gives a great picture of what the organic landscape can be like and why you
should want to have one, for health reasons and environmental reasons and the
bigger picture too. The training was just phenomenal.”
As the director of the Permanent
Future Institute, Miles spends her days designing plans for client’s
properties, teaching and speaking. She said word of mouth has been her best
advertising, and that her public speaking has brought many new clients. She
often finds herself looking for organic land care professionals to implement and
install her designs on clients’ properties, often including applying her home
brewed compost teas.
She gives talks including “Eat Your
Lawn,” “Make Room for Mushrooms,” “Backyard Chicken Keeping,” and “The Dirty
Secrets of Compost.” She keeps four heritage breed chickens in her suburban
backyard and teaches farming segments at her son’s Waldorf school.
When she first returned to Philly,
she said she was thrilled to find people who had even heard of permaculture.
While living in southern Florida, she was part of a diverse cultural community
that brought techniques employed in permaculture from the islands and countries
where they were the norm, and Miles “had a blast” learning and working with
them.
Today she teaches her own
permaculture course to audiences of usually around 24 people, inviting guest
speakers on topics such as beekeeping, native plants and perennial vegetables.
She holds the courses at the Kimberton Waldorf School campus, where the green
committee she serves on there recently restored a riparian buffer in four
phases over several years. All of the native plants have a purpose and the site
proves a great demonstration of the permaculture aspects of restoration work,
she said.
The benefits of teaching transcend
principles of land design and restoration for Miles – what she finds most
rewarding is seeing the changes people make in their lives upon learning about
permaculture.
One
student who came to the course uncertain of herself and worried about doing
things incorrectly, “became a dynamo by the end of the course, building an herb
spiral in her backyard by herself with lemongrasses that were five feet tall,” Miles
said. That woman also sewed a quilt with the permaculture design principles on
it. Another student quit her full-time office job for an internship at Stone
Barns in New York.
“In permaculture we encourage people
to make mistakes. That’s the best way human beings learn. You do your best,
observe, and practice principles. Don’t let fear paralyze you,” she said. “I
lug all of my ‘traveling circus’ to the school on weekends to do this teaching,
but it’s so well worth it when I get emails back from people who are changing
their lives and taking a positivistic approach to all the doom and gloom out
there. I love to see that I’m helping people to make a difference.”
In terms of a more permanent future,
Miles sees intentionally designed green buildings and communities,
multi-disciplinary land use designs and thoughtful resource management as key.
“While I’m fiercely independent, I
think human beings are weak in terms of survival. Most people don’t know their
next door neighbors. I think we need to work together and help each other and
establish trust. These human connections, the older I get, become more
important to me,” said Miles, who has two sons, 13 and 16. Her eldest son is
helping in her business as an editor and mechanical drawer.
In her spare time, Miles hopes to
finish the book she is co-authoring titled “Dragon Husbandry: The Why &
Wherefore of Biogas Systems,” slated for publishing by Chelsea Green.
For more information, contact Miles
at permanentfuture@gmail.com.
