Permaculture

Permacluture

Permaculture is a set of design principles centered on whole systems thinking, simulating, or directly utilizing the patterns and resilient features observed in natural ecosystems. It uses these principles in a growing number of fields from regenerative agriculture, rewilding, and community resilience.

It has many branches including ecological design, ecological engineering, regenerative design, environmental design, and construction. Permaculture also includes integrated water resources management that develops sustainable architecture, and regenerative and self-maintained habitat and agricultural systems modelled from natural ecosystems.

Mollison has said: "Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system."

Permaculture (David Holmgren)

Permaculture is a design system for sustainable living and land use first articulated by Bill Mollison and myself in Australia in the mid 1970s. It has spread around the world stimulating creative household and community initiatives to reduce ecological footprint, increase resilience and relocalize economies. While the scope of permaculture applications range from aquaculture to design against disaster, from ecological building to local currencies, many people would understand permaculture as a form of organic gardening.

In 1991 i wrote "Gardening As Agriculture". In that essay i asserted that gardening should be recognized as a serious and important form of agriculture that functions as an incubator for new farmers and farming methods. 

Over the last three decades a small but growing number of pioneers informed by permaculture and related concepts have shown how this si possible. In recent years the grassroots explosion of interest in food gardening and farming is reshaping mainstream approaches to sustainability. This belated recognition is a hopeful sign that an abundant and resilient future is possible by re-design of food production and consumption.