Over the coming months, we’ll introduce some of the key concepts in Permaculture. There’s an increasing interest from people about what permaculture is. Often, people think it’s about gardening, or composting, or no-dig gardens. Permaculture includes these things, but encompasses a lot more than that.
One way of understanding what permaculture is to think of it as a closet with a set of hangers in it. The hangers are a set of principles and directives that help to inform how to do “things”. Those things include designing systems for humans to live in that are sustainable. Permaculture is not the clothes on the hangers, or the hangers. The closet itself is Permaculture; it is the framework that incorporates a set of principles (laws, rules) that give way to a set of directives that then gives you techniques (how), strategies (how and when) and design (patterns).
Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems.
It’s the harmonious integration of landscape and people, providing food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way.