What is Permaculture?
Permaculture is:
“the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems.
Permaculture Design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit 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..."
Bill Mollison, co-founder of Permaculture
By observing and following nature's systems and patterns, we can successfully design and implement functional, harmonious and sustainable systems for human habitat, while respecting and regenerating our natural environment.
Permaculture principles can be applied to all the ways we meet our human needs, how we interact with our local ecology, structure our buildings, form our relationships and build our communities, guided by the fundamental ethics of
people-care, earth-aware & fair-share.
By utilizing up-to-date science, keen observation of naturally regenerative ecological systems and the wisdom of time-honored techniques, we are able to design much more stable and resilient strategies to meet our needs now and far into the future.
Through the application of permaculture principles and ethics as foundational guidelines at home and in our communities, and by acquiring skills which build resilience and collaboration, we are able to gradually transition from being dependent consumers to becoming mindful and responsible producers.
"What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity
that any group is doing on the planet.
We don't know what the details of what a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturists are one of the critical gangs that are doing that."
David Suzuki