What is Permaculture?

Permaculture is a buzz word that is heard frequently in gardening and homesteading circles, but what does it mean? In this article I will define permaculture (as I see it) and share resources for learning more.

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What is Permaculture?

Permaculture is becoming an increasingly popular toolbox of ideas for farmers and gardeners.

It is a system for designing agricultural landscapes that work with nature… I like to call it edible restoration, since the tools used in permaculture can help to restore land as well as yield food for humans.” —Amy Stross (me!), The Suburban Micro-Farm: Modern Solutions for Busy People

That all sounds good, doesn’t it? I doubt, however, that you could head out to your backyard and begin practicing permaculture after learning that definition!

One of the reasons why a definition of permaculture is so elusive and varied from source to source is because the approach pulls together a wide range of disciplines such as…

…ecology, appropriate technology, economics, gardening, evolution, construction, energy systems, social justice, and a raft of other seemingly disconnected fields”, says the late Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture.

The important thing to note is that permaculture is most often used for creating efficient and productive landscapes that sustain themselves into the future by regenerating biodiversity and lost fertility.

Our landscapes tell a story, and permaculture can help us read them.

If you’re interested in a well-designed homestead, or in simply adding more ecological gardening techniques to your repertoire, permaculture might be right for you!

A consultation with a certified permaculture designer can catapult your homestead, saving you money and shaving years off of development.

See: How to Develop the Permaculture Homestead in Phases

The Prime Directive

The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.” ― Bill Mollison, Father of Permaculture

The prime directive of permaculture guides us through decision-making. As long as we are doing our best to take responsibility for the needs of our own household, then we are living permaculture.

How does Permaculture Work?

Permaculture uses a set of three ethics and seven principles to connect people to the ecology and potential of a landscape.

The 3 Permaculture Ethics

Permaculture ethics are the foundation of permaculture design, which value natural systems. The permaculture ethics are simply: care for Earth, care for people, and reinvesting the surplus (abundance).

1: Care for Earth

We are only as healthy as our planet. Caring for the forests, the waterways, and the diverse life forms of our magnificent planet benefits us. On your land, actively seek ways to regenerate fertility and biodiversity rather than simply sustaining current levels.

As a permaculture designer, always ask, ‘Does this action help or hurt the earth? Is there a more ecological and efficient way to achieve this goal? How would nature solve this problem?’

• 10 Ways to Be a Good Steward of your Suburban Land

2: Care for People

Caring for people includes caring for ourselves and our own household. When we ‘take responsibility for our own existence’, we inevitably begin producing more and consuming less.

It is this step away from consumerism that helps us avoid products and companies that exploit people.

In modern times, it has become admirable to favor the opposite of taking responsibility for ourselves:

Committing our lives to helping others, which in turn leaves little room to care for ourselves, little time to achieve any level of self-sufficiency, and little energy for reducing our own level of consumption.

This unfortunately can have a net zero effect.

Would you like to learn more about permaculture for improving the biodiversity of your garden, reducing maintenance, and increasing yield?

You’ll find loads of information just like this in my award-winning book, The Suburban Micro-Farm.

3: Reinvesting Abundance

When we care for the Earth, nature responds with abundance—more biodiversity, more plants, more animals, healthier water, healthier air, and so on.

We can reinvest useful flows—such as rainwater or compost—back into the system to create a self-maintaining ecosystem that requires fewer inputs from off-site sources.

This is the pinnacle of land conservation: Honoring and encouraging the abundance of the land, rather than viewing our resources as scarce with a focus on importing materials.

When we care for ourselves and act as responsible consumers, life becomes abundant.

We have access to an abundant supply of healthy, homegrown food. We are financially more resilient. Ultimately, caring for our own existence provides abundance that can be reinvested into our community—through sharing food, skills, or financial assistance. This is abundance.

• Read more about the permaculture ethics.

Photo courtesy of Grow Forage Cook Ferment

7 Guiding Permaculture Principles

A set of principles guides the designing of a property so that all the pieces work together as efficiently as possible and all the resources of the land are used to their full potential. Here is an abbreviated summary of those principles, with credit to Toby Hemenway.

These are not rigid rules, but rather guidelines, which guide us in our effort to model nature in our design.

1: Observe

Observe a landscape through all seasons and all times of day to understand its personality – its essence. How does the sun, wind, and water move across or through it?

Observing a site for at least a year before fully developing it allows you to notice patterns over the course of the seasons. That doesn’t mean you can’t interact with your site or start a garden during that time, but taking note of observations puts you ahead in the long run.

Some observations to make:

• What plant species naturally want to grow there?
• What wildlife species venture onto the land? Do they have a specific route, time of day, or specific season for their activity? What components of the landscape are they attracted to?
• Studying the sun patterns is a basic observation. Where are the sunny and shady areas, and how do those change as the sun moves across the sky and through the seasons?

Observations can save time and effort.

2: Connect

It’s not the number of components in your system, but the number of connections to each component.

That’s a mind bender, isn’t it?

It means that the productivity of your homestead isn’t necessarily dependent on the number of food-producing components (rows of crops, fruit trees, livestock, etc.) you have, but how interconnected they are.

Increasing the beneficial connections between components creates a stable whole. Components with the most connections should be placed near one another for convenience.

Permaculture zones are a strategy that help us create order in the landscape according to how components are connected to one another and how often we use or need to care for something.

Here are some articles about creating zones based on observing the landscape:

• 6 Maps to Draw for the Permaculture Designed Homestead
• Permaculture 101: Zones
• Permaculture Zones on 1/8 of an Acre

3: Catch and Store Energy and Materials

Identify and catch useful flows, which can be reinvested for a higher yield or increased biodiversity.

Water is a useful flow. Catching water in the landscape reduces our need to irrigate while improving the health of the soil. Strategies are site-specific, however.

Here are some permaculture strategies for catching water:

• What is a Swale and Why You Might Need One
• How to Construct a Permaculture Swale

4: Each Component Performs Multiple Functions

Choose and place each component in a system to perform as many functions as possible. When components are properly placed, the ecosystem can begin to maintain itself with less work from us.

Choosing plants that perform many different functions allows you to plant fewer plants (save money) but get more in return.

For example, some plants can fertilize, mulch, attract pollinators, beneficial insects, and more.

Here are some examples of choosing plants that perform multiple functions:

Articles at Tenth Acre Farm:

• 4 Berry Bushes that Fertilize, Too!
• 5 Weeds you Want in your Garden
• Does Your Permaculture Garden Need Daffodils?
• Grow Chives for the Best Strawberries
• The Cherry Tree Guild and Natural Pest Control
• What is Comfrey and How to Grow It

Articles from friends of Tenth Acre Farm:

• 15 Trees for a Wildlife-Friendly, Edible Landscape
• 12 Native Plants for Food and Medicine
• 10 Shrubs for a Wildlife-Friendly, Edible Landscape
• 8 Herbs for the Permaculture Garden

5: Each Function is Supported by Multiple Components

Use multiple methods to achieve important functions. This adds redundancy to the system and protects it in case one or more components fail.

A hedgerow can provide privacy, a windbreak, shelter for beneficial insects and wildlife, pollination, edibles and more, if it is planted with the right combination of plants. Here are 10 reasons to plant a hedgerow and how to plant a hedgerow.

If you want to get rid of poison ivy, for example, a multi-pronged approach will be the most effective.

6: Least Change for the Greatest Effect

Identify the leverage points in the system, where the least amount of work will accomplish the most change. Through observation, leverage points and patterns reveal themselves, which reduces thoughtless labor.

Planting fruit trees in the parking strip, for example, increased fruit production in my yard for very little work.

Sometimes design strategies make use of materials that are found on site for the greatest effect with the least amount of imported materials. Here are some strategies for using trees and fallen wood on the homestead:

• Here’s a Quick Way to Terrace a Hillside
• Hugelkultur: Hugel what???
• A Permaculture Approach to Building

7: Use Small-Scale, intensive systems

Start at your doorstep and build the smallest system to meet your needs. Small systems can be managed with fewer resources, making them more time- and energy- efficient. When a small system is successful, replicate what works in the next small expansion.

This is called “growing by chunking”.

Edible landscaping is a good example of a small-scale system. By simply replacing conventional landscaping with edibles, we can increase our productivity without ripping out the entire lawn to do it.

Future small garden expansions can build on the successes of the edible landscape experiment.

• Swiss Chard and Sweet Alyssum in the Edible Landscape

The circle garden is great for low-maintenance gardening.

Food forests take advantage of vertical space to grow edible and useful tall trees, small trees, shrubs, herbs, groundcovers, and vines all together in an intensive system with a small footprint.

Read more about creating a food forest and building fruit tree guilds.

More Permaculture Resources

Aside from the many resources listed throughout this article, the following resources are helpful starting points for learning more about permaculture.

Permaculture Books

• Edible Forest Gardens: Ecological Vision, Theory, Design, and Practice for Temperate Climate Permaculture; 2 volume set by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier
• Permaculture Design: A Step-by-Step Guide
• Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond (Vol. 2): Water-Harvesting Earthworks

Permaculture Videos

• Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective
• The Permaculture Orchard: Beyond Organic
• Permaculture Skills

How to Start: Become a Permaculture Scientist

Permaculture is a complex design approach that can improve the productivity and efficiency of your home-scale farm or garden.

But because it encompasses so many disciplines, it isn’t something that can be learned overnight. However, like many things in life worth learning, practice makes perfect. Or at least, practice will help you feel more confident.

Start by experimenting with small projects that use permaculture strategies. Then collect data: Did the project meet the desired goals? If so, can it be replicated elsewhere on your property? If it didn’t work, is there another strategy that would work better?

Don’t be afraid to experiment.

After all, the strategies that work in my zone 6 temperate climate may not work in a dry climate at high altitude. Indeed, my mistakes helped me learn. In the end, the ability to learn and adapt strategies to a particular landscape over time is the power of permaculture design.

How are you using, or how will you use, permaculture design on your property?

READ NEXT:

• Benefits of the Edible Forest Garden
• How to Choose the Right Permaculture Design Course