Cooks call it mise en place: everything in its place, each thing set up to help the next. Permaculture is mise en place for a piece of land.
— Chef Brian

The quick take

• Permaculture means designing gardens, farms and homes that work like natural ecosystems: diverse, self-sustaining and low-waste.
• It was developed in 1970s Australia by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.
• It rests on three ethics: care for the earth, care for people and fair share.
• You can use its ideas anywhere, from a balcony pot to a backyard food forest.

What Is Permaculture?

What Is Permaculture from ACS Distance Education on Vimeo.

Permaculture is both a practice and a philosophy. As a practice, it's a way of designing agriculture and living spaces around a set of principles drawn from nature. As a philosophy, it's about supporting both the earth and humanity.

The word combines "permanent" and "agriculture" (and later, "permanent culture"). Permaculture designs aim to provide food, shelter and energy while supporting healthy communities, using whole-systems thinking and the patterns found in natural ecosystems.

Where permaculture came from

Permaculture was developed in Australia in the 1970s by Bill Mollison, an ecologist and University of Tasmania lecturer, and his student David Holmgren. Together they coined the term and published Permaculture One in 1978.^[1]

Mollison had spent years observing natural systems as a naturalist and wildlife researcher, and he was deeply troubled by the environmental destruction he saw. He noticed that natural systems like forests and wetlands sustain themselves: they meet their own energy needs and recycle their own waste. Every part plays a role. Bees pollinate, birds help control pests, and certain plants pull nitrogen from the air and make it available to others.

In the 1980s Mollison published his design manual and began teaching permaculture design courses around the world. Today there are permaculture projects on every inhabited continent.

The three ethics

1. Care for the earth. Help all living systems continue and thrive. Without a healthy planet, people can't thrive either.
2. Care for people. Make sure people can access the resources they need to live well.
3. Fair share. Take only what you need and return any surplus, including "waste," back into the system so it becomes useful again.

Much of conventional agriculture works against nature. Permaculture tries to work with it.

The 12 permaculture principles

David Holmgren describes 12 design principles for putting permaculture into practice:^[1]

1. Observe and interact. Spend time watching a place before changing it: where the sun falls, where water flows, what already grows there.
2. Catch and store energy. Capture resources when they're abundant: rainwater in barrels, sunlight in plants and solar panels, heat in stone walls.
3. Obtain a yield. Make sure your efforts give something back, whether it's food, water, energy or joy.
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback. Notice the effects of your actions and adjust.
5. Use and value renewable resources and services. Live off nature's "income," like sunlight, rain and compost, rather than its "savings."
6. Produce no waste. Everything has value. Food scraps become compost; fallen leaves become mulch.
7. Design from patterns to details. Work with the larger patterns of sun, wind, rain and land shape before planning the specifics.
8. Integrate rather than segregate. Place things so they help each other, like chickens that eat pests and fertilize the garden.
9. Use small and slow solutions. Small, gradual changes are easier to maintain and adjust.
10. Use and value diversity. Diversity creates resilience. If one plant struggles, others carry on.
11. Use edges and value the marginal. The edges where two environments meet, like a forest and a meadow, are often the most productive places.
12. Creatively use and respond to change. Living systems always change. Plan for it and use it.

Why use permaculture?

A permaculture garden does many jobs at once. Instead of growing just one thing, it can provide food and medicinal herbs, habitat for pollinators and wildlife, materials for crafts, beauty and a peaceful place to rest, all year round. And because it's designed to mimic nature, it tends to need less water, fewer inputs and less work over time.

Start your own permaculture garden

1. Observe first. Spend a few weeks noticing sun, shade, wind and water in your space.
2. Start small near your door. Put the plants you use most, like herbs and salad greens, closest to your kitchen.
3. Build living soil. Add compost, worm castings, biochar and mulch, and avoid tilling.
4. Plant in guilds. Grow plants that help each other, like the "Three Sisters": corn, beans and squash.
5. Catch water. Use a rain barrel, or direct downspouts toward garden beds.
6. Close the loop. Compost your kitchen scraps and garden waste.

Films

Homescale Edible Abundance with Permaculture

Homescale Edible Abundance With Permaculture from Green Abundance By Design on Vimeo.

A presentation from the 2016 Boston Flower Show on using permaculture to grow edible gardens in the underused spaces of cities and suburbs.

Shop Dig In → · Regenerative agriculture →

Sources

1. Holmgren Design. What is Permaculture?

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