Creating interest in your community

How might one go about helping your community become interested in a community garden/permaculture project?

How do you create/peak someone's interest in permaculture?

I'd love to have people in my area become interested in permaculture/community gardening. I'd love some feedback from folks on how to create some interest. I know there has to be people in my area (Willcox, AZ) as there are several books in the local library on the subject.

Thank you for your input. I am hoping there are many replies and good ideas presented. I know nothing of marketing.

I think the idea will sell itself to a certain crowd, but the idea will be embraced more universally when necessity meets demand (i.e. attrition, poor health, etc). People can be very practical in their day to day lives with little reflection on the consequences. Be mindful that not everybody has the same interests and "we" cannot choose for others what their interests need to be. Its been that way historically for a very long time.

For myself I have slowly evolved into believing you need a larger networking project in order to introduce permaculture principles and other foundational principles of community resilience. I have been working on my own website for a couple of years thought it is still kind of primitive. In that outline I try to make growing food and health the kind of foundational principles though I add a section called local networking which tries to look pretty closely on the aspects of how and why such a focus could work. Part of that is looking at things like alternative currency, but it also deals with the question of internal hierarchies, local regulations and on and on. I have been working with a small group of people here who have the same general interest and one of the things we are coming up against is how to distinguish ourselves and at the same time work wit the master gardeners. There are a lot people we would like to reach within the master gardener program, but there are at least two problems. One is the hierarchy of the MG's and the inability to address the group unless you impress leadership with something. The other part is trying to convince them that there might be a need for a grassroots organization to fill some needs outside of what they are doing in terms of educating and organizing the community in terms of growing food locally. They tend to believe they are already doing everything that can, or should be done

But the real point is that I think it is difficult to introduce permaculture and related ideas until you build the desire for a locally networked community on a little broader foundation, and you inspire some feeling that there is a need for a more connected community in general. Hope that is not patronizing or obvious