What is Permaculture?
Permaculture is the practice of designing human systems in ways that reflect the patterns and resilience of natural ecosystems. Emerging in the 1970s through the work of Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, it draws from ecological science, Indigenous land care, and traditional farming methods to create landscapes that provide for human needs while regenerating soil, water, and biodiversity. Rather than relying on external inputs, permaculture designs work with natural cycles to create abundance that grows more stable and enduring over time.
The framework is often described through three guiding ethics and twelve principles:
The Three Ethics:
Care for the Earth: protecting soil, water, forests, and biodiversity.
Care for People: ensuring that human needs are met in healthy and sustainable ways.
Fair Share: redistributing surplus so that resources circulate for the benefit of all.
The Twelve Principles:
Observe and Interact: learn from the patterns of the land.
Catch and Store Energy: harvest sunlight, water, and fertility.
Obtain a Yield: design systems that provide food, medicine, or other resources.
Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback: adjust practices to maintain balance.
Use and Value Renewable Resources: draw from cycles that regenerate naturally.
Produce No Waste: close loops so that nothing is lost.
Design from Patterns to Details: use natural forms as models for design.
Integrate Rather than Segregate: place elements together so they support one another.
Use Small and Slow Solutions: build resilience through gradual, attentive design.
Use and Value Diversity: cultivate variety to strengthen systems.
Use Edges and Value the Marginal: tend to the abundance of transitional spaces.
Creatively Use and Respond to Change: adapt to shifting ecological and cultural conditions.
These ethics and principles have guided the development of gardens, farms, ecovillages, and transition towns around the world. Permaculture moves beyond agriculture into architecture, economics, and community planning, demonstrating how ecological patterns can inform every aspect of human life.
Permaculture continues to grow as both a global movement and a cultural vision. It invites us to design systems rooted in reciprocity, resilience, and abundance.
Resources & Further Reading
Permaculture One — Bill Mollison and David Holmgren
Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual — Bill Mollison
Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability — David Holmgren
Gaia’s Garden — Toby Hemenway
Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute — bmpermaculture.org
Permaculture Research Institute — permaculturenews.org
