Permaculture is a design system for creating regenerative and sustainable human environments, conceived by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the mid-1970s. The term blends “permanent agriculture” and “permanent culture,” signifying a shift to a holistic philosophy for living. It involves consciously designing landscapes that mimic the patterns and relationships found in natural ecosystems. The goal is to create systems that are ecologically sound, economically viable, and capable of providing for their own needs without exploiting resources or polluting the environment.
The Three Foundational Ethics
The framework of permaculture is built upon three moral ethics that serve as the philosophical bedrock for all design decisions. These ethics establish the moral foundation before any practical application is considered.
Earth Care emphasizes the responsibility to maintain and enhance the health of the entire living planet. This involves practices that actively conserve natural resources, preserve biodiversity, and regenerate degraded landscapes. Recognizing that human well-being is interconnected with the vitality of the Earth’s systems is fundamental to this ethic.
People Care focuses on meeting the basic needs of individuals and communities in fair and equitable ways. This ethic calls for creating supportive social structures that ensure access to food, shelter, education, and healthy social relationships. Fostering strong, resilient communities builds the human capacity necessary to sustain the ecological systems.
The third ethic, Fair Share, often articulated as “Set Limits to Consumption and Redistribute Surplus,” acknowledges the finite nature of the planet’s resources. Once personal needs are met, this ethic encourages the sharing of any surplus—be it knowledge, produce, or materials—back into the system. This ensures that resources are utilized efficiently and equitably for the benefit of all living things.
Guiding Principles for Design
The foundational ethics are translated into operational rules through a set of design principles. These principles serve as conceptual tools for analyzing a landscape and planning a system, helping designers observe natural systems and apply those lessons to human settlements.
Permaculture design utilizes the following principles:
- Observe and Interact: This demands thoughtful study of a site before making any significant intervention. Designers spend time understanding local conditions, such as microclimates, water flow patterns, and existing plant life, to ensure decisions are tailored to what is already present. This careful observation helps the design work with the environment rather than against it.
- Catch and Store Energy: This focuses on harnessing and retaining resources for later use when they are scarce. Energy is broadly defined to include sunlight, water, and biomass. For instance, creating earthworks like swales slows water runoff and allows it to soak into the landscape, storing hydrological energy in the soil profile.
- Obtain a Yield: Any system must produce something beneficial to motivate continued stewardship. This yield is not limited to food but includes tangible returns like clean water, timber, or aesthetic pleasure. Designing for multiple yields makes a system more robust and provides for various human needs.
- Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services: This encourages prioritizing materials and energies that are naturally replenished, such as solar power or perennial plants. Valuing natural services means letting fallen leaves act as mulch to enrich the soil instead of removing them as waste.
- Use Edges and Value the Marginal: The interface between two environments is often the most diverse and productive area. Designers utilize this concept by creating undulating garden beds or ponds with highly varied shorelines to maximize productive edge space.
Practical Strategies for Implementation
The conceptual design principles are applied through hands-on techniques that create a physical, productive landscape. These strategies focus on maximizing efficiency, mimicking natural structures, and cycling resources to minimize waste.
Zoning
Zoning organizes the space based on the frequency of human visitation and the intensity of management required. Zone 1 is placed immediately around the home for elements needing daily attention, like herb gardens and salad greens. Zone 5, the outermost area, is a wilderness zone left largely undisturbed for observation and natural processes. This spatial arrangement maximizes energy efficiency by reducing the distance and time spent on routine tasks.
Stacking
Stacking, or vertical layering, mimics the structure of a forest ecosystem to maximize the use of three-dimensional space. A food forest is designed with seven layers: canopy, lower tree, shrub, herbaceous, groundcover, root, and vertical vines. This dense polyculture increases overall productivity per square foot and enhances biodiversity.
Guilds
Guilds involve grouping mutually beneficial plants together to create a miniature, self-sustaining ecosystem. A classic example is the “Three Sisters” combination of corn, beans, and squash. The corn provides a trellis for the beans, the beans fix nitrogen in the soil, and the squash provides ground cover to suppress weeds and retain moisture. This integration ensures that each element serves multiple functions and supports the others.
Closed-Loop Systems
Closed-Loop Systems minimize waste by turning the output of one element into the input for another. This can involve collecting rainwater from rooftops in cisterns for irrigation, or using nutrient-rich greywater to water non-edible landscape plants. Techniques like sheet mulching layer organic materials, such as cardboard, straw, and compostable kitchen scraps, to turn waste into rich, healthy soil. This effectively closes the nutrient cycle on site.