INTRODUCTION TO PERMACULTURE

Introduction to
Permaculture
PermacultureEducation.org

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 INTRODUCTION TO PERMACULTURE

Course Overview 3
THE COURSE MODULES: 4
OBJECTIVES OF THE COURSE: 4
Permaculture Design Principles 6
OBTAIN A YIELD 6
REDUNDANCY 6
CATCH AND STORE ENERGY 9
MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS 11
PRODUCE NO WASTE 13
RETHINK, REDUCE, REPAIR, REUSE, RECYCLE, REPURPOSE 13
PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN STRATEGY 17
OBSERVE AND REPLICATE NATURAL PATTERNS 17
USE AND VALUE RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND SERVICES 19
DESIGN FROM PATTERNS TO DETAILS 20
SECTOR AND ZONE PLANNING 22
RELATIVE LOCATION 23
USE EDGES AND VALUE THE MARGINAL 24
USE AND VALUE DIVERSITY 26
INTEGRATE RATHER THAN SEGREGATE 28
APPLY SELF-REGULATION AND ACCEPT FEEDBACK 30
USE SMALL AND SLOW SOLUTIONS 31
Principles of Technique 34
STACK AND PACK 34
USE APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGIES 35
CONSIDER SUCCESSION 36
CREATIVELY USE AND RESPOND TO CHANGE 37
What is Permaculture? 40
THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND PERMACULTURE: PERMACULTURE IS ALL ABOUT
DESIGN 45
THE PRIME DIRECTIVE OF PERMACULTURE: 46
PRINCIPLE OF COOPERATION: 47

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 INTRODUCTION TO PERMACULTURE

Course Overview
“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on
the way to destroying the world - we've actually been on the way for quite a while. It is
that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new
relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.” ~Joanna Macy

About Our Teaching Philosophy

• The pdf downloads contain all of the course notes and additional resources.
• For students taking Introduction to Permaculture Course, there are no homework
assignments.
• Students taking the Introduction to Permaculture course can view and use the
homework questions (as included in the full 72-hour Permaculture Design
Certi cate Course) as activities to increase their awareness and knowledge.

Bill Mollison – “Father of Permaculture” (1928-2016)

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 INTRODUCTION TO PERMACULTURE

The Course Modules:

The Introduction to Permaculture Course is the rst module (about 1 third) of the Full
Permaculture Design Course, so you should allow about a third of 72 hours = 24 hours
study time. The other modules also average around 24 hours of study time for each.
Module 1: Permaculture Concepts
• Permaculture Ethics
• Recycling
• Natural Systems and Design

Objectives of the course:

This course should supply you with enough information and feedback to:
• Make positive changes to your home environment and site with regard to
sustainability, disposal of wastes, and energy use.
• Learn the basics of Natural Systems Design – a key feature of the Permaculture
Design process.

Ways to Contact Permaculture Education

General email: [email protected]
Website: https://PermacultureEducation.org

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 INTRODUCTION TO PERMACULTURE

Print out and post somewhere in your study area

Below, we have attached a list of the Permaculture Principles. Please print o a copy
and hang it somewhere in your study area. There are not a xed number of Principles
(some people teach 12, some 24), but there are at least 12 that are vitally important in
understanding Permaculture Design.
These principles are the core of Permaculture design and the more you can keep them
in mind as much as possible as you go through the course, the stronger your
understanding of Permaculture will be, and in turn your ability to design well.

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 PERMACULTURE DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Permaculture Design Principles

OBTAIN A YIELD
You can’t work on an empty stomach. [and neither can anyone else]

Indian gooseberry, Papaya and Sesbania yield ©Franziska Weissoertel

DEFINITION: The system yield is the sum total of surplus energy produced by, stored,
conserved, reused or converted by the design.
• Energy is in surplus once the system itself has available all it needs for growth,
reproduction and maintenance.
• As Permaculture designers, we are creating “cultivated ecosystems” – cultivated to
produce a yield of food, shelter, ber, medicine, or other product/service useful to
humans. Therefore, for each element we consider, we must design to obtain a yield.
• We remember that all other creatures in our shared ecosystems need to get a yield,
and so we invoke the “Share the Surplus” ethic, and plant extra. >Design for
surplus.
• A mono-crop may yield an abundance of one product, but the combined yields of a
poly-crop on the same space will be more.

REDUNDANCY
Have a backup plan. Be prepared!
• For every critical need, provide for multiple ways of meeting that need. Critical
needs are water, food, money, heating, toilet, congeniality, social/political power.

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• Have a backup plan. Provide for the unexpected – drought/ ood, economic
depression, etc.
• Have diverse ways of getting your needs met > Diversity

EXAMPLES IN NATURE:
• Plants make thousands of seeds, and some have multiple methods of reproduction.

The seeds of one Papaya fruit ©Franziska Weissoertel

• Most animals are able to eat many di erent foods.

Pigs eat almost any kind of food ©Franziska Weissoertel

USE IN DESIGN:

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• Food: Design to have fresh food all year long, and preserve as much as you can.

Fresh and conserved cherries as an example for summer fruits

©pexels.com

Fresh and conserved cherries as an example for summer fruits ©pexels.com

• Water: Cisterns, public utility, and pond.

• Electricity: Photo-voltaics, and grid, or PV and wind/hydro power.

• Exercise: go to gym, and walk to work, and go outside and run with your kid/dog.

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• Trade: create barter and local currency groups, grow more than you can eat, and
stay in the money economy
• Money: have many income streams [network up & down, as well as laterally]
• Poly-crop to provide plants with many avenues for pollination, pest protection,
nutrients.
• Design or do other creative work with a team – have more than one mind, more
than one person holding the skills and information.
Have more than one friend!

Team discussion ©Franziska Weissoertel

CATCH AND STORE ENERGY

Make hay while the sun shines.
• All energy comes from the Sun. Since energy is lost with every transaction, we need
to get as close to the origin as possible – that is, the sun itself, and plants – to meet
our energy needs.
• Energy cycles thru our system and then it’s gone, whereas minerals can recycle
forever in a well maintained soil.
• We want to catch “exotic” energy – that is, energy coming from o site and moving
past, convert it to energy we can use or store, and cycle it through our system as
we need it.

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• •We want to grow our own renewable energy – that is, plants and animals for our
consumption.

EXAMPLES IN NATURE:
• Trees catch sunlight and store it as sugars in their roots, for the winter when there is
no energy coming in.

Papaya tree in sunlight ©Elsa Wallin

• Rocks catch sunlight & store it as heat, creating microclimates. > more diversity
• Ponds catch the energy of moving water and store it as potential kinetic energy, and
they catch sunlight and store it as heat, creating microclimates.

Small Pond ©Franziska Weissoertel

USE IN DESIGN:
• Creating microclimates

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 PERMACULTURE DESIGN PRINCIPLES

• PV, wind, and water power systems

• Waterwheels
• Winter storage of tubers & other food
• Masonry stoves
• Passive solar design of buildings
• Small livestock – energy available with no storage necessary
• Eco-forestry: creating renewable energy for the future, woodlots.

MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS
Stacking functions. Wearing more than one hat.
• Related to Get a Yield – Get Lots of Yields!
[a function—pest control by chickens, for example —is a yield, also.]
• Every element in the design will have more than one function; ideally, it has at least
three.
[Beauty is not included because a good design is intrinsically beautiful.]
• The same structure, plant, animal, or action doesn’t do just one job – it does 3 or
more.
• Understanding niches – in space and time.

EXAMPLES IN NATURE:
• A forest tree provides oxygen, shelter for wildlife, shade for understory, a space for
vines to climb, and it retains water and holds soil in place. Then, when it dies, it
becomes a nursery, and habitat for other wildlife, etc.

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Examples of ecosystem services of a tree ©Franziska Weissoertel

• By harvesting nuts, squirrels feed themselves and their families, plant new nut trees,
and spread genetic information [pollens, insects, other seeds, microorganisms.

USE IN DESIGN:
• A fence around a garden space serves as a trellis for climbing plants, a place to
hang tools or decorations, a place to hang a nest box, bird perches, and a shady
microclimate – as well as protecting the garden from invaders. Over time, it also
becomes a hedge, if the birds and their droppings have their way.
• Chickens provide eggs, meat, manure, body heat; and bug, insect, and weed
elimination in garden beds [prior to planting] and orchards.

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 PERMACULTURE DESIGN PRINCIPLES

• An apple tree provides apples, shade, bird perches, pollinator attraction, and—
ultimately rewood.

• A playground can be designed for use by young parents, toddlers, and elders in the
mornings, older children’s use in the afternoon and night-time activities for adults.
• Live and work communally – design your life so that work, play, creativity, spiritual
practice, and family life are all happening at the same time – no matter what you’re
doing.

PRODUCE NO WASTE
RETHINK, REDUCE, REPAIR, REUSE, RECYCLE,
REPURPOSE
Waste not, want not.
A stitch in time saves nine.

For every by-product from one element, plan to have a productive use for it in another
activity.
> Needs & Yields

EXAMPLES IN NATURE:
• Waste is a human artifact; it does not exist in Nature. In natural systems, everything
is a giveaway.

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USE IN DESIGN:
• Humanure – human nutrient residue.

Compost Toilet. ©Weissoertel, 2017

• Learn to maintain and repair tools.

Repairing tools. ©Dennis Jarvis

• Industrial “Cradle to Cradle” concepts – designing goods with full environmental

accounting, and a plan for almost endless reuse & recycling.

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Source: Cradle to Cradle e.V.

• The Story of Stu movie

‘The Story of Stu is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact- lled look at the underside of
our production and consumption patterns. It exposes the connections between a
huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create
a more sustainable and just world.’ (storyofstu .org
• Cardboard mulch garden, cardboard for paths.

Using cardbord for mulching ©Jan Smith and Mark

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• Methane digester – methane is captured and burned instead of o -gassing.

Building a household biogas unit ©commons.wikimedia.org

• Grey water system – waste becomes biomass for garden.Principles of Design

Strategy

Schematic of bio wastewater treatment system. ©Tilly at al. 2014

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 PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN STRATEGY

PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN STRATEGY

OBSERVE AND REPLICATE NATURAL PATTERNS

• Natural patterns – nature’s ways of structuring and organizing ecosystems – can be

found at all scales in all ecosystems.
• As Permaculture designers, we need to learn to NOTICE patterns, and how to USE
them.
• These are Regenerative patterns – creating and maintaining the ongoing growth and
health of the system.

Examples in Nature:
• Patterns of time, space, light, sounds, temperature
• Branching, meanders, lobes, spirals, nets.
• Animals and plants preparing themselves for seasonal change.

EXAMPLES OF USE
• Soil-building with mulch bed

Mulching of trees ©Lukas Bo nger

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• Herb spiral

Herb spiral © Janice Mans eld

• Seasonal deciduous shading

Through seasonal deciduous shading, you can intentionally provide shade when
it is most wanted in summer and remove it in winter, when natural sunlight is
reduced.
• Fermenting foods for storage and alcohol

Wine fermentation © Ben Macaskill

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• Creating wind funnels by lolly-popping trees

• Contours as swales
• Forest gardening
• Learning what works in indigenous cultures re: relationship with the land

USE AND VALUE RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND

SERVICES
Let Nature take its course.
• Measurements:
• when replacement time is less than degeneration time
• when the EROEI [Energy Returned on Energy Invested] ratio is above 1
• Embodied energy needs to be considered when determining renewability.
• How long will it take to grow a new computer, i.e., how much materials and
energy will it take to produce a new one?
• Plants & animals are not only renewable, but regenerative – they will replace
themselves.

EXAMPLES OF USE:
• Using wood for buildings - build them so that they won’t rot before their
replacement can be grown.

Ladder made of bamboo ©Franziska Weissoertel

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 PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN STRATEGY

• Use biological resources: fruit & net trees, manures, compost, draft animals, worm
bins.

Compost and draft animals ©Franziska Weissoertel

• Solar, wind, PV systems use renewable resources, but are not themselves
renewable. [Except for wooden windmills?]

Wooden windmill ©Pexels.com

DESIGN FROM PATTERNS TO DETAILS

Can’t see the forest for the trees.
Get the big picture clear before you START deciding on the details.

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 PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN STRATEGY

• Look at scales of time and space. Plan for the 7th generation
• Assess available materials and energies before planning project.
• Know the limitations of your design. Examine the whole picture – especially the
parts you’d prefer not to see.

Google Earth or Google Maps can be used for planning ©Lukas Bo nger

USE IN DESIGN:
• Analysis of the whole landscape shows pockets of
fertility/infertility to be exploited – concentrate the
fertility, and build fertility on the infertile areas.

Soil analyses ©Franziska

Weissoertel

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• Mind-mapping to envision land use area and basic pathways.

Planning process ©Franziska Weissoertel

• Thoroughly analyze the landscape patterns on, and surrounding, a site before
beginning to consider the human imprint upon it.
• Use the pattern of a tropical forest to design food forests, but use patterns of
temperate forests to design “food woodlands” in those areas.
• Use patterns of existing vegetation to determine soil health and planting strategies.
• Don’t get bogged down on ethical quibbling; look at the big picture of what good
can come of using an earth-moving machine to help create long-term sustainability.
• Sector planning.

SECTOR AND ZONE PLANNING

DEFINITION: Sectors are areas on a site where energies are arriving from o -site. We
design to mitigate or eliminate hostile sectors, and to enhance or concentrate
bene cial sectors.

• Winter & Summer Sun

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• Winter & Summer Wind

• Water
• Wildlife [migratory animals, or sensitive habitat]
• Fire potential
• Noise, Pollution
• Social interactions [both positive and negative].

DEFINITION: Zones are areas of decreasing need for human interaction, moving
outward from a center.
Zone 0 – The Heart or the Hearth –
the person(s) inhabiting the space
Zone 1 – The house/building and its
immediate yard
Zone 2 – The garden/yard [visit once
a day], poultry
Zone 3 – “The farm” – long-term
storage and commercial crops,
orchard, small animals
Zone 4 – Grazing/woodlot/forest
garden
Zone 5 – Wild or Healing land -
humans’ only presence is for healing,
and learning from Nature
Zone 6 – The Commercial/Social
Zone outside the site

RELATIVE LOCATION
It’s the connections that matter.
Needs & Yields Analysis: locate elements so that their needs can be ful lled by the
surplus yields [wastes] of their near neighbors.

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EXAMPLES IN NATURE:
• Most animals build nests near water and food.
• Pecan trees grow on the edge of a river, seeking moisture. The trees shade the river
from the sun, bene ting aquatic life.

USE IN DESIGN:
• Plant a mulberry bush just outside the chicken yard, comfrey all around the chicken
yard fence, and Siberian pea shrub all thru their range – to provide for food that you
don’t have to carry to the animals.
• Locate the chickens so they can range under the fruit trees; all your fertilizer,
pesticide, and weed control are taken care of.
• Place rainwater catchment devices on all roofs, so water is where you need it.
• Locate the rain barrel on the side of the building where the most water is needed.

USE EDGES AND VALUE THE MARGINAL

The edge is where the action is.
Don’t think you are on the right track just because it’s a well-beaten path.
• Edge E ect: The edges between 2 systems have more species, more productivity,
than in either of the 2 systems alone. Humans and many familiar species (deer,
rabbits, birds, etc.) are edge species, preferring to live at the margin between
forests and clearing.

The edge between 2 systems has more species ©Franziska

Weissoertel

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• Edges de ne changes in time & space, where nutrients and information

accumulate.

EXAMPLES IN NATURE:
• Edge of forest has the strongest trees, due to wind and accumulation of nutrients.
• Marshes & estuaries are among the most biologically diverse areas of Earth.
• Natural ponds have edges in all directions, including temperature gradients.
• Animals have preferred foods, but will eat many less desirable foods when
necessary.

USE IN DESIGN:
• Blueberries on edge of pond; if pond is round, only 20 blueberries t, but if you
crenellate the edge, you get 30 or more.
• Extending the “edges” of the growing season - early and late season food
production – with mulch, row covers, microclimate, etc.
• Swales create water and nutrient catchments, and concentrate growth. Design
pond bottoms, as well as sides, to have edges - deep for coolness in summer,
shallow for small sh
• Wild foods are marginal foods: not our favorites when we have other choices, but
life-saving when necessary
sochan
air potatoes
lambsquarters
wild blueberries & other fruits
acorns
squirrels
nsects, etc
• Grow non-preferred but proli c and nutritious vegetables – sunchokes, zucchini?
• A test for the health of a society: How big is the societal edge/the marginalized
people and other animals? How many homeless, institutionalized, criminalized,
factory farmed?

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• Where NOT to increase edge: leave large forested tracts for wildlife; leave
neighborhoods intact, without major streets bisecting them.

USE AND VALUE DIVERSITY

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
• The more diverse the elements in a system, the more diverse the yields and the
more diverse the niches that are available to be lled, which creates even more
diverse yields - up to a certain limit.
• More and more diverse elements will not contribute to the health of the system,
unless they can make connections with each other. It’s the diversity of connections
that matter, not just the diversity of elements. >Relative Location
• Needs and yields analysis – use diverse connections to meet the needs of each
element.

EXAMPLES IN NATURE:
• Natural ecosystems rarely resemble mono-crops, but have many diverse plants &
animals.
• A tree in the forest needs a complete guild to thrive.

Monoculture and a natural forest ecosystem ©pexels.com

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USE IN DESIGN:
• Leave the “weeds” in the garden to retain moisture and to provide nutrients and
bene cial soil microorganisms.
• Poly-cropping – guild and companion planting - forest gardens, alley planting.
Using animals as a part of other agricultural operations – chicken tractors, hogs for
gleying.

Introduction to forest gardening © Martin Crawford

• Animal associations – cattle and chickens, pigs and ducks, Muscovies & ducks.
• As a designer, engage and educate the owner/client.

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Discussion between land owner and designer ©Franziska Weissoertel

• The problem is the solution – engage the “problem” in social programs [homeless,
drug users, gangs, etc.], not just the experts, in creating true solutions for real
situations.

INTEGRATE RATHER THAN SEGREGATE

Many hands make light work.
Co-operative and symbiotic relationships will be more adaptive in a future of declining
energy; however, we have a cultural disposition to see and believe in predatory and
competitive relationships, and discount cooperative and symbiotic relationships – in
nature and in culture.

EXAMPLES IN NATURE:
• Immature systems that are growing rapidly, in a situation of surplus energy, tend to
be dominated by competitive relationships. Mature systems have more mutualistic
and symbiotic relationships.

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• Complementary relationship between photosynthesis and respiration.

• Predator/prey as interdependence.
• Fungi, bacteria, earthworm, and others have their niches in soil digestion.

EXAMPLES OF USE:
• Guild plantings: pollinators, pest-confusers, dynamic accumulators, and N- xers.

Melia Dubia is used as an N- xers ©Franziska Weissoertel

• Involving children in adult work – with child-sized tools.

Children helping with watering plants and harvesting ©Franziska Weissoertel

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• Designing over time to integrate short-term and long-term yields: thin timber forest
to plant grass for sheep, get yields from sheep [and bees] while trees grow,
eventually get yield from timber.
• Leave the weeds in the garden to maintain bene cial microbes and insects

APPLY SELF-REGULATION AND ACCEPT FEEDBACK

The sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the seventh generation.
Make lots of small mistakes.

• Related to issues of scale: start small, get the feedback, redesign. By making small
changes, we increase our con dence to tackle more di cult changes.
• Positive & negative feedback loops

Example of a positive feedback loop: if panic causes

one cattle to run, others will start panicking and
running,

another positive example: suckling baby produces more milk with less e ort, birds
eating berries spread their berries, thus producing more berries.
Negative: weak animals get predated > they don’t reproduce > healthier stock

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• Self-regulation is a response to higher-order negative feedback: self-regulate before

the system regulates you. Examples:
Kangaroos slow development of fetus, which lowers population growth; before
starvation, disease, and predators do it.
Traditional societies had constraints on population growth and resource use.
• Tripartite altruism [Howard Odum] – in balanced ecosystems, approximately 1/3 of
captured energy is required for maintenance, 1/3 is fed back to maintain lower-
order providers, and 1/3 is contributed upward to high-order system controllers.

EXAMPLES:
Rabbits feed themselves, fertilize the grass, and provide food for predators. If they start
fertilizing the brambles while escaping from predators, the system collapses; too many
brambles out-compete the grass, and too many rabbits eat what grass there is.
As change agents: 1/3 of our time to taking care of physical needs, 1/3 to self-
development, and 1/3 to wider societal bene t.

USE SMALL AND SLOW SOLUTIONS

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Slow and steady wins the race.

• Systems should be designed to perform functions at the smallest scale that is

practical and energy e cient for that function. This is a direct contradiction to the
prevalent practice of using the biggest, fastest solutions that money can buy.
• Permaculture design uses time as an element: allowing cultivated plants and
animals to slowly integrate with each other and mature into their own place in
natural cycles.

EXAMPLES IN NATURE:
• Cellular design replicates natural response to limits to growth – replicate, don’t
expand beyond limits.
• Snail’s shell starts small, expands as needed.

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• Soil is built up slowly over years, of many layers of detritus.

EXAMPLES OF USE:
• Garden walls grow over years from rocks removed from gardens.

Stones found in the garden used as a wall ©Franziska Weissoertel

• Design for bicycles and walking paths, not roads.

A path for cycling and walking on the farm ©Sagar Dhara

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• Tweaking the system in small, almost imperceptible ways, causes great change; go
out in the rain and dislodge debris from water bars.
• Slow Food movement – celebrates the loving preparation & consumption of food.

Preparing millet balls from home grown millets ©Franziska

Weissoertel

• Small is Beautiful , E. F. Schumacher [Intermediate Technology Development

Group]: promoting small, simple, local, human-powered technologies.
• Incremental design – start with a core or nucleus and build outward as needed.
• Rolling Permaculture – start by planting 5% of your land with perennial plants, then
follow with 5% more each year. As soon as production begins from the rst year’s
planting, increase the percentage; within 10 years, the rollover will have happened.

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Principles of Technique
STACK AND PACK
Put things closer together [pack] and use vertical space [stack] to get more bene t
from less space.

© LittleVeggiePatchCo

EXAMPLES IN NATURE
• Plants cover every inch of soil,
leaving no bare spots.
• Vines grow up trees, rocks, even
almost vertical cli s.

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USE IN DESIGN
• Plant thickly, and grow upward with trellises
• Use vines up walls for insulation.
• Plant thickly so that plants self-mulch, knowing that you will thin.
• Plant “sca olding” for vining plants – corn or sun owers with pole beans.
• Use oor-to-ceiling shelves instead of 6-foot shelves.
• Teach Permaculture for all educational/social levels, and network laterally with other
Permaculture teachers.

USE APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGIES

Appropriate technology is technology that we can appropriate!
Because tools extend our personal and community power, control of tools is essential
to e ective self-governance.
• Permaculture is generally biology-centered, not techno-centered: we want tools and
technologies that use appropriate technologies.
• Appropriate technologies may include solar, wind, wood, biomass and water-driven
equipment for generating power, pumping water, and heating hot water.
• Consider medium-tech: maintaining and riding a bicycle, using a re llable pen,
using a razor with replaceable blades, and substituting other non-disposable items
where disposables were used.
• Other Appropriate Technologies may include equipment to design permaculture
sites (such as computers and software), large earth-moving equipment, cartage
services, and other “large scale” items which would tend to be used once, in the
implementation of the design, but not on a regular or daily basis.
• Be aware of the challenges in providing technology to undeveloped countries. Who
will x it when it breaks? How much access to consumer culture do we want to be
responsible for providing?
• AT’s should be reliable, high quality, well designed, low cost (when possible),
durable, reparable, capable of economic yield, adaptable to many functions. They
should have high EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) and low EMERGY
(embodied energy).

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CONSIDER SUCCESSION
One thing leads to another.
To see into the future, stand on the shoulders of those who have come before you.
• Ecological succession: creating conditions such that a new life form can take root.
• Human land use patterns usually hold back succession at the herbaceous weed
phase – grains & annual vegetables, and the grassland phase – pasture.
• By understanding the stage in succession, we can predict which forces will be
attempting to change a landscape – what is the force of succession trying to do?
• Permaculture designers use time as an element in the design. Natural ecosystems
are not static, but change over time.
• Much succession is pulsed, not continuous.

EXAMPLE IN NATURE:
• Creation of niches after a forest re – lichens [which eat rock to make soil] > little
ferns & mosses > small herbaceous plants > grasslands > woody herbaceous >
shrubby > conifer [it can germinate in sunshine] > oak [it needs shade to germinate].
• Each climate & soil regime has a particular climax ecology, but most will proceed to
forest.
• Some of these stages may be viable ecosystems in themselves, in other regions.

An example of secondary succession of a forest © WikimediaCommons

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USE IN DESIGN:
• We can “push succession” by planting all stages of a succession together, including
the climax species.
• We hold back succession by suppressing growth in gardens and pathways with
mulch, cardboard, wood chips, etc.
• Plant dwarf fruit trees in the eventual shade of standard fruit trees; by the time the
standard tree has grown that large, the dwarf will have nished its lifetime.

CREATIVELY USE AND RESPOND TO CHANGE

Vision is not seeing things as they are, but as they will be.
Attitude matters.

• Design to make use of expected change [entropy and succession, for example],
and prepare to respond to changes that cannot be planned for.
• Responses to entropy: Maintenance of built environment, or building with
renewable materials that will decay and can be rebuilt easily.
• Durability and stability come from exibility & change.

USE IN DESIGN:
• Plant bendable trees where intense winds or ooding may occur.
• Design buildings to change easily for future uses.
• In re-adapted forests, anticipate re and reduce fuel levels > smaller res.
• Build animal shelters with straw bales and put them in di erent locations each year,
instead of trying to control problems related to hygiene in permanent buildings.
• Opportunistic responses to change or anticipated change: In arid land, plant on a
oodplain in hopes of just the right amount of water at just the right time.
• Use pulses of change – re, grazing, cultivation - after long periods of catching and
storing energy.
• [Swidden agriculture resulted from noticing the changes in fertility after a re and
reproducing them].

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• Breeding animals and plants to thrive in low-energy conditions. [Many have been
bred speci cally for high energy availability, so must be bred back]

Dwarf Punganur cows are a native breed of South India and almost extinct. Efforts are made now to
breed back ©Franziska Weissoertel

• Eco-synthesis – ecosystems aren’t static; they change with environmental change.

Question the “exotic invasives” hysteria. [Ex: Sailing ships from Europe probably
changed the waters of the world by seeding with new life forms.

(This principles list was lovingly assembled by Patricia Allison, a Permaculture teacher
who lived and worked out of Earthaven Eco-Village in the mountains of North Carolina
outside of Asheville. We are grateful that she allowed us to use her list compiled over
years of teaching.
For more information about Patricia go to her website at: http://patriciaallison.net/.)

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 WHAT IS PERMACULTURE?

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 WHAT IS PERMACULTURE?

What is Permaculture?
Permaculture Is… A Vision
"'Consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found
in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, ber, and energy for provision of local
needs.' People, their buildings and the ways they organize themselves are central to
permaculture. Thus the vision of permanent (sustainable) agriculture has evolved to one
of permanent (sustainable) culture." Communities, food systems, and living systems
are integrated and mutually supporting as opposed to separated, exploitative, and
destructive.
Permaculture Is… A Design System
"(Permaculture is) the use of systems thinking and design principles that provide the
organizing framework for implementing the above vision. It draws together the diverse
ideas, skills, and ways of living that need to be rediscovered and developed in order to
empower us to move from being dependent consumers to becoming responsible and
productive citizens."
Permaculture Is… A Network
"...A worldwide network and movement of individuals and groups who are working in
both rich and poor countries on all continents to demonstrate and spread permaculture
design solutions."
Quotes from: David Holmgren, 'Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond
Sustainability) 2002.

Permaculture can also be de ned as:

PERMAnent AgriCULTURE and PERMAnent CULTURE.

Permanent Agriculture: Is agriculture and animal management which improves the

quality of land, provides income and produce, and is sustainable now and in the future.

Permanent Culture: Means conserving, supporting and working together with the
local culture, while at the same time moving forward. Working with nature and people,
as well as learning from them, and not working against or in competition with them.

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Permaculture helps us to understand and to create harmonic integrations between

nature and people in the most sustainable way. Permaculture is appropriate for use in
urban or rural locations, as well as for all scales of projects. Permaculture introduces
traditional practices of nature management, integrated with appropriate modern
technology. This is a holistic, kind, and environment friendly way for designing and
building our natural living environment, as well as improving living standards, including
housing, water supply, health, waste management, farming, energy, aquaculture, rivers,
forests, livestock and much more.
The term Permaculture was coined by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 70s, and
now is in practice in over 100 countries by thousands of Permaculture Design
graduates.
At this time there are many problems in the world, such as:
• Damaged natural environments

Deforestation causes lots of damage to natural environments ©

WikimediaCommons

• Depleted and damaged farm land world wide

Droughts have huge negative effects on farm land ©Franziska Weissoertel

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 WHAT IS PERMACULTURE?

• Polluted rivers, lakes, land, air and oceans

A polluted river and polluted land ©Franziska Weissoertel

• People, animals and plants are also becoming polluted, and many species are
becoming extinct
• Most of the world’s population consists of very poor people, only a small
percentage are very wealthy

People have created all of these problems, and it is people who must change their
ways for the earth to become healthy again. Action and change must come from all
levels of society, including governments, businesses, workers, farmers, community
groups, families, men, women, children, everyone! Future generations depend on this.

Permaculture o ers techniques and ideas which help in directing us toward a healthier
environment, cultures and people. This is based on certain ethics and principles.
Permaculture ethics and principles provide a guide to being more responsible for our
own lives, environment and future. As well as helping us to prepare a safe future for our
families, culture, and natural environment.

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 WHAT IS PERMACULTURE?

Natural buildings are an important component of permaculture designs © PermacultureAssociation

Permaculture is a system design tool. It is a way of:

• Looking at a whole system or problem
• Seeing connections between key elements (parts)
• Observing how the parts relate,
• Planning to repair sick systems by applying ideas learned from long-term
sustainable working systems.
“Permaculture represents the most sensible ways of sustaining and enriching life
without causing environmental or social degradation.”
(Alan Enzo, 2009)

“In Permaculture, we are learning from the working systems of nature to plan to x the
sick landscapes of human agricultural and city systems. We can apply systems thinking
to the design of a kitchen tool as easily to the re-design of a farm. In Permaculture we
apply it to everything we need in order to build a sustainable future. Commonly,
"Initiatives that are taken tend to evolve from strategies that focus on e ciency (for
example, more accurate and controlled uses of inputs and minimization of waste) to
substitution (for example, from more to less disruptive interventions, such as from
biocides to more speci c biological controls and other more benign alternatives) to

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 WHAT IS PERMACULTURE?

redesign - fundamental changes in the design and management of the operation". (Hill
and MacRae 1995, Hill et al, 1999)
“Today a lot of people are considering substitutions. They are keenly aware of their
impact and want to do something, to start somewhere. Substituting a harmful product
with a less harmful one is their rst step.

Some other people like to focus on e ciency (value for their e ort).Their actions
include choices to support public transport and libraries, hired equipment, and green
government initiatives. Others are now actually considering their whole-of-life and see
the value in redesign for their lifestyle. Permaculture is about helping people make
redesign choices: setting new goals and a shift in thinking that a ects not only their
home but their actions in the workplace, borrowings and investments. Examples
include the design and employment of complex transportation solutions, optimum use
of natural resources such as sunlight, radical design of information-rich, multi-storey
polyculture systems.” (Mollison & Slay, 1991)
“This progression generally involves a shift in the nature of one's dependence -- from
relying primarily on universal, purchased, imported, technology-based interventions to
more speci c locally available knowledge and skill-based ones. This usually eventually
also involves fundamental shifts in world-views, senses of meaning, and associated
lifestyles”. (Hill 1991)

My experience is that although e ciency and substitution initiatives can make

signi cant contributions to sustainability over the short term, much greater longer-term
improvements can only be achieved by redesign strategies; and, furthermore, that steps
need to be taken at the outset to ensure that e ciency and substitution strategies can
serve as stepping stones and not barriers to redesign..." (Hill, 2000)

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 WHAT IS PERMACULTURE?

Permaculture is not a xed system. It is not a gardening association or an architect’s

group or farmer’s federation, it does not tell people what to do. It does not say "what to
plant when and where". Rather, it encourages people to think, to observe and to plan.
It encourages people to live in harmony with nature to imitate and learn from nature.
(Mollison, 1991)

What is Permaculture?
"Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of
agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of
natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing
their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable
way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order”.

“Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic

components in a pattern which functions to bene t life in all its forms”.

“The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against,
nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless
action; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of
them; and allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions." Bill Mollison
These examples show how vast the eld of Permaculture is, and how each person can
have a di erent de nition, depending on their personal experience. This last de nition
is one that I think most accurately describes the essence of permaculture and the
reason why it is so important to practice it as a multidisciplinary approach to human
habitation on this Earth. I like the emphasis on agriculture as implied in the term
Perma(nent) A(gri)culture with the principles embodied in the Permaculture Third Ethic
playing a vital role.

The Philosophy Behind Permaculture: Permaculture is

All About Design
A word from the founder of Permaculture – Bill Mollison:

The sad reality is that we are in danger of perishing from our own stupidity and lack of
personal responsibility to life. If we become extinct because of factors beyond our

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control, then we can at least die with pride in ourselves, but to create a mess in which
we perish by our own inaction makes nonsense of our claims to consciousness and
morality.

There is too much contemporary evidence of ecological disaster which appalls me, and
it should frighten you, too. Our consumptive lifestyle has led us to the very brink of
annihilation. We have expanded our right to live on the earth to an entitlement to
conquer the earth, yet "conquerors" of nature always lose. To accumulate wealth,
power, or land beyond one's needs in a limited world is to be truly immoral, be it as an
individual, an institution, or a nation-state.

What we have done, we can undo. There is no longer time to waste, nor any need to
accumulate more evidence of disasters; the time for action is here. I deeply believe that
people are the only critical resource needed by people. We ourselves, if we organize
our talents, are su cient to each other. What is more, we will either survive together, or
none of us will survive. To ght between ourselves is as stupid and wasteful as it is to
ght during times of natural disasters, when everyone's cooperation is vital.

A person of courage today is a person of peace. The courage we need is to refuse

authority and to accept only personally responsible decisions. Like war, growth at any
cost is an outmoded and discredited concept. It is our lives which are being laid to
waste. What is worse, it is out children's world which is being destroyed. It is therefore
our only possible decision to withhold all support for destructive systems, and to cease
to invest our lives in our own annihilation.

The Prime Directive of Permaculture:

The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that
of our children. Make It now.

Most thinking people would agree that we have arrived at nal and irrevocable
decisions that will abolish or sustain life on this earth. We can either ignore the
madness of uncontrolled industrial growth and defense spending that is in small bites,
or large catastrophes, eroding life forms every day, or take the path to life and survival.

Information and humanity, science and understanding, are in transition. Long ago, we
began by wondering mainly about what is most distant; astronomy and astrology were
our ancient preoccupations, we progressed, millennia by millennia, to enumerating the

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wonders of earth. First by naming things, then by categorizing them, and more recently
by deciding how they function and what work they do within and without themselves.
This analysis has resulted in the development of di erent sciences, disciplines and
technologies; a welter of names and the sundering of parts; a proliferation of
specialists; and a consequent inability to foresee results or to design integrated
systems.

The present great shift in emphasis is on how the parts interact, how they work
together with each other,

Principle of Cooperation:
Cooperation, not competition, is the very basis of existing life systems and of future
survival. There are many opportunities to create systems that work from the elements
and technologies that exist. Perhaps we should do nothing else for the next century
but apply our knowledge. We already know how to build, maintain, and inhabit
sustainable systems. Every essential problem is solved, but in the everyday life of
people this is hardly apparent. The wage-slave, peasant, landlord, and industrialist
alike are deprived of the leisure and the life spirit that is possible in a cooperative
society which applies its knowledge. Both warders and prisoners are equally captive in
the society in which we live.

If we question why we are here and what life is then we lead ourselves into both
science and mysticism which are coming closer together as science itself approaches
its conceptual limits. As for life, it is the most open of open systems, able to take from
the energy resources in time and to re-express itself not only as a lifetime but as a
descent and an evolution.

Lovelock (1979) has perhaps best expressed a philosophy, or insight, which links
science and tribal beliefs: he sees the earth, and the universe, as a thought process, or
as a self-regulating, self-constructed and reactive system, creating and preserving the
conditions that make life possible, and actively adjusting to regulate disturbances.
Humanity however, in its present mindlessness, may be the one disturbance that the
earth cannot tolerate.

“The Gala hypothesis is for those who like to walk or simply stand and stare, to
wonder about the earth and the life it bears, and to speculate about the

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consequences of our own presence here. It is an alternative to that pessimistic view

which sees nature as a primitive force to be subdued and conquered. It is also an
alternative to that equally depressing picture of our planet as a demented
spaceship, forever travelling, driverless and purposeless, around an inner circle of
the sun.” (LE. Lovelock, 1979)

“For every scienti c statement articulated on energy, the Aboriginal tribespeople of

Australia have an equivalent statement on life. Life, they say, is a totality neither created
nor destroyed. It can be imagined as an egg from which all tribes (life forms) issue and
to which all return. The ideal way in which to spend one's time is in the perfection of
the expression of life, to lead the most evolved life possible, and to assist in and
celebrate the existence of life forms other than humans, for all come from the same
egg.

The totality of this outlook leads to a meaningful daily existence, in which one sees
each quantum of life eternally trying to perfect an expression towards a future, and
possibly transcendental, perfection. It is all the more horri c, therefore, that tribal
peoples, whose aim was to develop a conceptual and spiritual existence, have
encountered a crude scienti c and material culture whose life aim is not only unstated,
but which relies on pseudo-economic and technological systems for its existence.

The experience of the natural world and its laws has almost been abandoned for
closed, arti cial, and meaningless lives, perhaps best typi ed by the dreams of those
who would live in space satellites and abandon a dying earth. I believe that unless we
adopt sophisticated aboriginal belief systems and learn respect for all life, then we lose
our own, not only as lifetime but also as any future opportunity to evolve our potential.
Whether we continue, without an ethic or a philosophy, like abandoned and orphaned
children, or whether we create opportunities to achieve maturity, balance, and
harmony, is the only real question that faces the present generation. This is the debate
that must never stop.

A young woman once came to me after a lecture in which I wondered at the various
concepts of afterlife; the plethora of "heavens" o ered by various groups. Her view
was, "This is heaven, right here. This is it. Give it all you've got!"

I couldn't better that advice. The heaven, or hell, we live in is of our own making. An
afterlife, if such exists, can be no di erent for each of us.” (Mollison, 1988)

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END OF MODULE 1-1

Please proceed to module 1-2: Ethics

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