Lawton claims this permaculture method can work anywhere in the world, including the desert.

CNN: Making barren lands bountiful

Anyone out there have a smaller-scale community permaculture program up and running in your neck of the woods?

FORBES: Written by Matt Hickman

Grow Heathrow also claims to share practical skills such as permaculture design, bicycle maintenance and wood and metal work with the community.

BBC: Grow Heathrow: Green-fingered squatters' eviction fight

Guests can sleep in mud houses and learn about permaculture, sustainable building and geodesic domes on a four-week to four-month English-language "Green Apprenticeship".

BBC: Kick back on a kibbutz

Permaculture also takes all the things we need -- our housing, energy sources, food and water supplies -- and tailors them to fit into the natural rhythms of the ecosystem.

CNN: Making barren lands bountiful

On a DVD created by the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia, Lawton shows us what happened when he took this method to places like Morocco and Jordan -- just 80 kilometers from the Dead Sea.

CNN: Making barren lands bountiful

Over the past few days, permaculture practitioners and urban food policy followers not just in the Emerald City but around the globe have been positively abuzz with news that a hilly and undeveloped 7-acre parcel of land owned by Seattle Public Utilities will be transformed into a lush, forager-friendly wonderland called the Beacon Food Forest.

FORBES: Written by Matt Hickman