What is Permaculture?

PERMACULTURE

Permaculture is a broad based and holistic approach that has many applications to all aspects of life. At the heart of all sustainable design and practice however is a fundemental set of ‘core values’ or ethics (Earthcare, Peoplecare and Fairshares) and principles which remain constant whatever our situation, whether we are creating systems for town planning or trade, whether the land we care for is a windowbox or a 2000 hectare forest. As well as providing the tools to create greater sustainability within our lifestyles, home environments, gardens and on our land, permaculture is just as importantly about finding ways of mending community and rebuilding our fragmented society.

Permaculture isn’t about is having to get your head around untold facts, figures, Latin names and complicated techniques, rather it is about recognising universal patterns and principles, and learning to apply these ‘ecological truisms’ to our own gardens and life situations. We can identify the underlying forms that recur throughout the natural world and learn to understand and utilise them in designed ecologies…

’PERMACULTURE’ is a word that was originally coined in the mid seventies by two Australians, David Holmgren and Bill Mollison, to describe the design system pioneered as a response to what they, and many others globally, saw as serious challenges to the survival of all of us. Originally derived from the words ‘PERMAnent agriCULTURE’, permaculture has gone beyond it’s roots in looking at strategies to create sustainable food growing methods to become a worldwide movement encompassing all aspects of how we as human beings can live harmoniously in relation to our Earth and it’s finite resources- A PERManent CULTURE. Permaculture now probably has as many defintions as there are practitioners, but one that is particularly useful might be,

“CREATING SUSTAINABLE HUMAN HABITATS BY FOLLOWING NATURE’S PATTERNS”.

WORK WITH NATURE

Putting massive effort into attempting to ‘tame nature’, such as by damming valleys and flood plains or creating and maintaining bare soil by plough, is not only energy consuming, unsustainable and destructive, it is also unnecessary when we can meet the needs of people and the environment by working in harmony with, or even directly utilise, natural systems. Instead of using massive chemical inputs to control pests, why not encourage predators such as ladybirds and hoverflies to do our work for us? Or why not construct homes that utilise passive solar energy and wind power rather than building nuclear power stations?

It is how we look at things that makes them advantageous or not, or, as Bill Mollison once said, “You havn’t got an excess of slugs, you’ve got a duck deficiency”.

Nothing should be indispensable as it’s loss or failure can then be disastrous. If, on the other hand, every system has a back up, it can continue to function. If we give all of our land over to one crop (a monoculture) and it fails, we starve, but if we grow as wide and diverse a range of edible plants as possible (a polyculture), we still get to eat if some of them don’t make it to harvest. Similarly in our day to day lives it makes sense to learn as wide a range of skills as possible- a person who has had only one well paid but specialised job throughout their working life would be far less able to cope with being made redundant than somebody who has several smaller incomes earned from a variety of sources.

Effectively the other side of the coin… If you have learned the skills to prune apple trees, mend a computer, play the guitar, cook for a crowd, entertain children, operate a printing press, fix a downpipe, draw and paint, drive a tractor, use a word processor, install a wind generator, give a massage, juggle, run a photography workshop and build a compost bin, not only are you better able to earn a living in a variety of circumstances; YOU also become more valuable in terms of what you are able to OFFER to others…

Traditionally, ‘yield’ is thought of as quantity of material output (eg, amounts of potatoes, grain, etc) calculated against resources or effort put in, but there’s no reason why we can’t widen our definition to include information, lessons learned, experience, the health benefits of exercise and being outdoors, or even just plain fun… Within a permaculture design, we will constantly be finding new niches to utilise, new beneficial guilds, learning new techniques, trying out fresh ideas, be gathering knowledge. By comprehending and copying natural systems, we can develop techniques in order to consciously multiply such opportunities…

Unlike many contemporary cultivated gardens, nature does not neatly compartmentalise her landscapes with ornamentals growing in one place, vegetables in another and fruit trees in yet a third location. In woodland several plants such as standard and half standard trees, shrubs, climbers and ground cover occupy the same area of space, each ‘stacked’ to find it’s own requirements within it’s particular ‘level’ in the system. The Forest Garden is an attempt to replicate this ‘layering’, replacing the wild plants of the woodland with fruits, herbs, vegetables and other plants that are useful to peoplekind.