A Quick n' Dirty Guide to Permaculture
A concise(-ish) overview of the core concepts of Permaculture, with the intention to provide you with a sparkle of inspiration for deeper learning.
** While I tried my darndest to keep this concise - if you really want the ultra quick n’ dirty version… skip ahead to the headings Roots of Permaculture, Ethics & Principles, and Practical Next Steps.
Weaving the Permaculture Web
Last night, we sat around a dinner table with a group of people we’d never met.
My heart was so incredibly full to be sharing a potluck dinner with people with shared values but such different backgrounds.
A lovely community-building mother and son and his partner, a permaculture designer/teacher, an ecological/native plants restoration practitioner, a woman from Denmark, someone from an intentional community household in Toronto, and us. I wanted to hear all their stories and what led them to where they are today, I wanted to know about all the paths they have each walked and what lights them up.
But a couple hours over a shared dinner was enough to fire me up and remind me of the magical power of community.
We had all come into this space over a shared interest and curiosity in Permaculture. After a hands-on pruning workshop where we got to practice our skills on various fruit trees in the Community Permaculture Lab food forest, we came inside to warm up and share a meal.
Our conversations were so invigorating for me, and reminded me of one of the (many) reasons I love Permaculture - it draws in such different types of people who can approach it from so many unique backgrounds.
The way I explain Permaculture will certainly be unique to me and my lived experiences, and I truly welcome you to share your thoughts or anything that’s important to you about the world of permaculture.
Permaculture Terminology
In a nutshell, Permaculture is a lens which highlights whole systems thinking and allows us to design ecologically sound, regenerative systems for a life-affirming future.
Phew! Bear with me - let’s flesh out these concepts some more.
Systems thinking is a school of thought that integrates components of a system and is more focused on the relationships between things than the things themselves. Let’s explore this mode of thinking by examining a tree. A reductionist scientist (the opposite worldview to systems thinking) would seek to understand the tree by breaking it down into its constituent parts - roots, trunk, branches, leaves, which can be further broken down into cells made of cellulose and lignins, which can be further broken down into carbon, hydrogen, and into even smaller molecular and atomic particles. The majority of our scientific inquiry in the modern world is based on this way of thinking - categorizing, separating, and tucking into neat little boxes (inside of boxes inside of boxes…ad infinitum). Systems thinking focuses on how the organism in question relates to its surroundings. How does that tree fit into his surrounding ecosystem? What habitat is created, what food sources are offered, what other beings are impacted in various ways by his decision to germinate and grow where he did? Where does the water that his roots uptake come from, and where does the water transpired from his leaves go? In what ways have the components of the system that make up this organism we call a “tree” created emergent properties (which is another way to say that they have come together to create something more magnificent together than they were apart)? Living systems are fractals, meaning that there are systems within systems that are often reflected on larger scales, each one “nested” and integrated in another.
Ecologically sound systems align with principles of ecology, including “closing the loop”, or diverting waste to be used as another resource, learning from patterns of nature (wave forms, spirals, dendritic or branching patterns, and many more…), and that ultimately support the ongoing wellbeing of Mother Earth.
Regenerative systems, put simply, go a step beyond “sustainability” - sustainability implies sustaining or maintaining what we are currently doing, whereas regenerative practices seek to heal the damage we’ve collectively done and leave the earth better than we found it within our lifetimes. Regeneration brings life back. It restores biodiversity, cultural diversity, and linguistic diversity. The specific practices will look different in every context, but often involve bringing more plants and animals into a space and healing the system from “upstream” - meaning in ways that can have compounding impacts “downstream”.
Life-affirming is a term I attribute to Joanna Macy, the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects - and to me, it means living in a way that affirms our capacity to continue surviving and thriving as human beings on this gorgeous planet, while supporting the survival and thriving of all other species at the same time.
Roots of Permaculture
The word “Permaculture” itself was coined by two Australians in the late 1970s - Bill Mollison and his student David Holmgren. They saw that there weren’t effective connections between the fields of agriculture, ecology, and design, and sought to remedy that through the creation of a discipline that merged the three. The original concept merged “permanent” and “agriculture”, but it has since come to be simplified to “permanent” + “culture”. “Permanent” is used here to signify creating systems that are life-affirming, that allow humans and all life forms to continue living and evolving in perpetuity, as in, not causing our own extinction.
However, even more important to acknowledge here - as what I just shared is the standard, most basic explanation of the origins of Permaculture - is that Permaculture is essentially a white man’s sexy moniker for what amounts to Indigenous knowledge. Mollison and Holmgren learned much of what they came to know about reading patterns of nature and the concepts of reciprocity over extraction from the Australian Aboriginals in Tasmania. (I highly recommend reading this piece about the topic.) Indigenous peoples around the world who have managed to - against all odds - maintain their relationships with the land, don’t have a name for this way of thinking. It’s so central to their way of being in the world, it’s like asking a fish to name water. Permaculture has been critiqued as being appropriative, which I believe is an accurate observation when its ancient roots are not given due credit.
That’s not (at all) to say that the white man can’t practice Permaculture because this way of thinking is Indigenous and doing so would be appropriative. We are all Indigenous to some place and time. That’s why so many of us who learn about Permaculture feel a sense of familiarity, like it just makes sense. Somewhere deep in our bones, we know that it makes sense to live in right relationship with the Earth and that we as humans have the awesome responsibility to steward it. One of my students who was learning about Permaculture for the first time declared, “I think Permaculture has been my religion, I just didn’t know the word for it!” This was so beautiful and touching to hear.
Ethics & Principles
The core tenants of mainstream “Permaculture” as taught by Mollison and Holmgren can be taught through the three (or four) core ethics: Earth Care, People Care, and Future Care
Earth Care - as in, our actions are aligned with the health and wellbeing of our Great Mother Gaia, without causing harm or destruction. People Care - we look out for ourselves, each other, for all people everywhere, and our actions align with their healing and thriving on Earth. I like to think about this not only as caring for people living in the present, but also caring for our ancestors and our descendants to come. Future Care - sometimes referred to as “Fair Share” or “Share the Surplus”, this ethic reminds us that nature doesn’t hoard, but takes her fair share, and passes along any surplus yield to those with fewer resources. We can all get by with enough and, when possible, can share the abundance with those around us. We thrive as a collective when all of our needs are met and exceeded through community care. There is also a fourth ethic that I learned was proposed by Permaculture Africa, though I can’t find a citation for that acknowledgement. This ethic is known as “Transition”, and it lets us know that we must acknowledge that will not go from where we are now to a truly regenerative society overnight. Lasting change requires time and effort, and for people to be able to join in from where they’re at, without being forced or coerced. There is a real sense of urgency in some communities around the need to make significant changes NOW, or fifty years ago, however, we must accept that “we can never compromise our ethics but we can make ethical compromises” (Scott Gallant) on this journey towards the More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible.
There are a few different versions of the Permaculture principles, and in the spirit of doing my very best to keep this to a “quick n dirty guide”, I’m only going to cover the modified version of the principles that Holmgren provided that I find most effective for conveying the gist of the concepts to keep in mind:
Observe and interact
Catch and store energy
Obtain a yield
Apply self-regulation & accept feedback
Use & value renewable resources & services
Produce no waste
Design from patterns to details
Integrate rather than segregate
Use small and slow solutions
Use and value diversity
Use edges & value the marginal
Creatively use and respond to change
I’ll dive deeper into the meanings of these principles at a later date, because there is a lot of wisdom in these concepts that can bring so much enrichment to our lives as a whole.
Applications of Permaculture
Permaculture is often misunderstood to be only about gardening and farming, but in reality, the ethics and principles can actually be applied to all aspects of our lives. When you can truly tap into living from the worldview that all life is inherently connected and that diversity = resilience, this lens can be profoundly illuminating. This can also be its own entire piece, but I’ll summarize it to say that our social relationships, our businesses, our life routines, our personal health, even our home organization can go through a “permaculture design process” to be more effective and efficient. It starts with knowing “why do anything at all”? What are your intentions with making a change, and what patterns can you observe in the existing system? Without judgement or criticism, what do these patterns tell you about the overall health of the system? In what ways can we add redundancies to the system to ensure its resilience?
“Permaculture brings a sense of hope and responsibility. If we all took responsibility for our actions, then the world would be a very different place. When hope and responsibility are combined, they enable people to take a look inside their life, what they want to do, and how to move forward to make things different. Everything we do has a ripple effect, and if we respond with a sense of hope and responsibility then those ripples can be enormous and positive.”
– Looby Macnamara
Practical Next Steps
In my mind, Permaculture is a positive solution to the many interconnected problems we face today. Environmentalism is often about screaming NO to pipelines, NO to single-use plastic, NO to deforestation, etc… we certainly need people to participate in those actions that immediately stop destruction, but we also need communities to gather and dream and plant the seeds for what we want to say a whole-hearted, embodied YES to.
Interested in learning more about how you can apply the Permaculture lens to your life, and cultivate these seeds we’re collectively planting? I recommend following the principle “use small and slow solutions” - start really small! Here are a couple quick ideas:
Grow one type of food in a container in your yard or on your balcony, and notice what inputs and outputs you give to it/get from it.
Experiment with fermenting something like organic cabbage into sauerkraut, and consider how energy is exchanged through that process.
Start a phenology journal - take note of what is happening around you at what time of year - when do certain plants start to emerge or bloom? When do certain insects or animals pass through your site? Simply observing will deepen your connection and provide exciting new insights into the natural world around you.
Permaculture can be applied at any and all scales, and as the fourth ethic reminds us - we can have compassion for ourselves and others while we take imperfect action towards a healthier, more resilient future. I’ve provided a list below of some resources to get you started on deeper research, if you’re feeling called to it, and if you want to go even deeper, I recommend looking into taking a 72-hour + Permaculture Design Course (PDC) in your region (they’re also offered online, but getting regional knowledge is helpful for having applicable growing information for your growing zone/climate type). And if you want to go even deeper, you can look into more comprehensive programs such as the diploma program I took at Pacific Rim College, Permaculture Design & Resilient Ecosystems. This program has evolved a lot since I went through it in 2019 and I believe it’s gotten to be even more extensive and life-changing thanks to the vision and passion of the amazing Kym Chi of Interconnected Living.
Additional Resources
Toby Hemenway’s books Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture and The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience
An example of small scale backyard permaculture
Large scale regenerative agriculture: The Story of Al Baydha: A Regenerative Agriculture in the Saudi Desert
Andrew Millison’s YouTube channel
Verge Permaculture’s courses and resources
Starhawk’s Earth Activist Trainings
Looby Macnamara - Cultural Emergence
Morag Gamble - Our Permaculture Life
Delvin Solkinson’s Permaculture Design Notes
“Permaculture is a new buzz word for an old way of being - following our ancestors' examples of closing the loops by living connected to the land and being inter-dependent in their community.”
- Jude Hobbs