Permaculture is a word that’s been around since the 1970s. And it’s actually a combination of the words “permanent” and “agriculture.” The point of permaculture is to use the earth’s resources to their fullest potential.
As odd as it may seem, many of our agricultural practices in society aren’t permanent but are actually unsustainable. Whether you’re taking care of a well-kept lawn or growing huge amounts of potatoes, chances are that you’re importing a lot of resources in order to keep your desired ecosystem going.
Simply defining the word though won’t truly give us a full answer to the question “what is permaculture?”. If you’d like to learn more, then continue reading and we’ll walk you through what permaculture is and how it all works.
What Is Permaculture?
More and more gardeners and farmers are turning to permaculture as a way to achieve sustainable landscaping. The practice of permaculture utilizes a variety of agricultural fields, including:
- economics
- evolution
- appropriate technology
- construction
- social justice
- ecology
- energy systems
- and gardening
The important thing to remember is that permaculture is usually used to make productive and efficient landscapes that sustain themselves into the future by regenerating lost fertility and biodiversity. Permaculture is a great practice for anyone who is looking to add more ecological farming and gardening techniques to their arsenal.
Still, permaculture is more than just a method of gardening. Many people see it as a way of life as they hope to build a more sustainable and greener world.
Practices like Integrated Pest Management (IPM), mulching, and composting imitate what happens in forest systems. Humans aren’t only able to mimic these systems but we can speed them up and scale them as well.
Permaculture Ethics
The idea and name of “permaculture” were invented by an Australian ecologist, Bill Mollison, and one of his students, David Holmgren. While conventional agricultural practices are designed to use large amounts of resources in order to mass-produce a single crop, Bill and David wanted to take a different approach.
While developing their idea, they came up with three basic ethics for their system to follow.
The first ethic was to care for the Earth. The purpose of this was to recognize that every living and non-living component of the Earth is important. This includes animals and plants as well as air and minerals.
The idea also encompasses a basic life ethic which recognizes that every living being brings value to the ecosystem.
The second is to care for people. The two men wanted to stress how important it was for the community to be involved and how every person should have access to the Earth’s resources.
Setting limits on population and consumption is the last ethic. Bill and David wanted to reinvest surplus money, energy, information, and labor into care for the Earth and the human populations that live on it.
While permaculture itself may be a relatively new concept, the ideas behind it have been around for thousands of years. Ancient civilizations used to practice similar strategies by planting a variety of crops, as well as practicing crop rotation, forest farming, and composting. Even though permaculture may not be very revolutionary, it emphasizes a mix of these tried and true agricultural methods with modern knowledge and technology.
The practice of permaculture has spread all over the world in the decades following its conception. Today, home gardeners, as well as large-scale farmers, utilize the power and brilliance that permaculture offers.
Permaculture Design Principles
Permaculture involves more than just organic farming. It also stresses several important design principles that are meant to help modern farmers better integrate with nature. Let’s go over some of those principles below.
Zones
Zoning involves the division of areas on your farm. They’re based on movement and how much human attention is needed for different areas.
Imagine a permaculture farm like a circle. In the center of that circle is a farm. When you divide your permaculture farm into zones, you want to arrange your farm activities into a series of concentric rings that move further and further out from the center of the circle.
The activities that require the most interference from humans should be closer to the center. This is a good way to raise animals and plants in a way that follows nature’s examples.
Sectors
Another way to arrange the location of your farming activities is through sectors. Here, your areas are based on the flow of necessary resources or energies from a given point, such as a farmhouse.
This time, we can liken the farm to a pizza pie. Each triangular slice of the pie is a sector that radiates from the center. A person who practices permaculture will want to arrange their activities so that each sector can easily access the center without disturbing the environment.
Relative Location
The relative location principle has to do with thoughtfully planning your sectors and zones based on where they are in relation to each other. You would want to position these areas in a way that optimizes the use of energy while minimizing waste.
An example of this would be planting crops downhill from a lake. This would allow for easy irrigation without needing to install a whole pumping system.
Single Elements with Multiple Functions
In order to be as efficient as possible, you would want to position your farm elements in such a way as to encourage the performance of multiple functions. For example, a pond can be properly placed so that it supplies irrigation and also fences in livestock. The right choice in a hedge plant could provide wind protection and also produce seeds that could feed chickens.
Single Functions from Multiple Elements
If there’s a certain function that you need, then you should make sure that multiple elements can offer it. Think of this as having a backup plan built into your farm.
This involves using a pond to help irrigate during drought or backing up the feed crops with edible fodder trees.
Energy Efficiency
When practicing permaculture, you’ll want to use as little energy as needed from outside of the farm. Designs that are energy-efficient, like using wind or solar power, will help make this possible by wasting very little.
See Solutions, Not Problems
While not based on design, this principle is still an important part of the permaculture work ethic.
It’s very easy for people to get caught up in problems. Focusing too much on problems themselves could end up leaving you feeling hopeless and depressed. Permaculture, on the other hand, emphasizes the act of looking for solutions.
There aren’t obstacles so much as opportunities in permaculture. The goal is to look for alternatives in order to achieve a more sustainable future. As Bill Mollison liked to say, you don’t have a snail problem, you just have a duck deficiency.
Permaculture in Action
Farmers who want to utilize the practice of permaculture don’t just go out with a set of principles and hope that it all works out. Many permaculture classes and texts encourage farmers to slowly adopt permaculture practices after carefully studying and observing what would work best for each specific piece of land.
Some permaculture farms are able to reach levels of full-time sustainability. Many other farmers, though, prefer to focus on specific areas of their farms.
Although full-scale permaculture farms are mainly found among educators and activists at this moment, many of their strategies have gained widespread usage.
Examples
Today, it’s fairly easy to find examples of permaculture in action. For example, planting a forest garden is a permaculture activity that anyone with lawn space could do. Simply put, a forest garden is a food garden that is made to mimic a natural forest.
Forest gardening cuts out traditional gardening tasks like crop rotation and tillage. To start a forest garden, just pick a selection of soil-enriching plants and food plants that work well with each other in a forest system.
A forest garden is made up of four layers:
- Trees soak up the full light of day via a wide canopy of leafy branches and thus make up the largest part of a forest garden
- Shrubs, such as raspberry and blackberry, thrive in the shade provided by the tree canopy
- Vines grow in the shade but they also climb up trees in order to benefit from full sunlight
- Ground plants, such as lettuce and strawberries, grow in the shade on the floor of the forest and also cover the remaining available ground
Aside from forest gardens, architects and permaculturists have also been exploring the application of urban permaculture. Here, the principles of permaculture design are applied to urban settings. The goal of this is to make urban areas green and have higher degrees of sustainability.
An example of urban permaculture would be a building that supports outside plant life. Balcony and backyard gardens, as well as gray water reclamation systems and other energy-saving green initiatives, are other examples.
How to Start a Permaculture Garden
When it comes to sustainable development, you want to start with good design. You should design your garden before you start so that you’ll be able to choose the best combination of plants and resources. Any garden that attempts to mimic the growth patterns that occur naturally is a permaculture garden.
First off, decide how big you want your garden to be. Then, decide if you want to have a traditional garden with permaculture features or you want a complete permaculture garden.
When starting your permaculture garden, you want to use either mulch or ground cover crops so that the soil can be protected and remains sturdy. You also want to employ no-dig gardening. Digging will disturb the structure of the soil and expose lower layers of your dirt to the sun.
Even just stepping on soil can compact it, which prevents water and air from getting to the roots of the plants. Because of this, you want to disturb it as little as possible.
You can also apply these kinds of methods to community gardens.
Criticisms
The permaculture movement isn’t without its criticisms. Some people argue that potential yields from forest gardening aren’t as great as proponents claim.
Another source of controversy is the advocacy for using exotic plants in permaculture. Many advocates, including Bill Mollison, have encouraged farmers to import exotic plants and use them to make effective systems.
Critics claim that many of these exotic plants could end up becoming big weed pests. This could possibly lead to the decimation of native plant populations.
Also, critics argue that introducing exotic plant species to new areas could significantly damage the natural ecosystems. Because of this, many permaculture advocates stress using native plants whenever possible.
However, other proponents, such as Mollison, insist that the Earth has already been extremely damaged by modern agriculture practices. Because of this, achieving a sustainable future is now more important than preserving current ecosystems.
The Importance of Knowing About Permaculture
Most scientists agree that modern-day agricultural practices are both unsustainable and dangerous. Because of this and other ethical reasons, professional farmers and gardeners, as well as hobbyists, are looking for alternatives. By understanding what is permaculture, and learning how to work with the Earth instead of against it, we can build a world that is more sustainable and more natural.
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