What is Permaculture?
As you may know if you have spent any time on my website or Instagram, my services are based on the principles of Permaculture. From my experience meeting people and talking about it, there is a big chance that you might not know what Permaculture means! I thought I would take the opportunity and go through the meaning of this beautiful word here in my very first blog post.
So, Permaculture, what is it? What does it mean?
Permaculture originated in the mid 70s here in Australia. It was Bill Mollison and David Holmgren that coined the name, being inspired by traditional farming practices, indigenous land management, and ecological principles. What they started has now grown to become a wide spread practice used all over the world, for many different purposes such as Food gardening, Marine systems, Grazing, Natural building, Urban Permaculture, etc.
I have seen Permaculture being described in a thousand different ways, but this description by David Holmgren is one that I like: “Permaculture is a design system for resilient living and land use based on universal ethics and ecological design principles”. He evaluates further that while the primary focus of Permaculture is the redesign of gardening, farming, animal husbandry, and forestry, it can also be applied design of buildings, tools, and technology.
When I try and describe Permaculture to people who don’t know anything about it, I often try and use general terms like “organic gardening”, or “sustainable practices in and around the home”. Permaculture is of course a lot more than that, but one of the cool things with Permaculture is that it can be applied on almost anything in our daily life in the city. A couple examples of how you apply permaculture thinking in your day to day life:
Make use of the elements in nature (sun and wind) when drying your clothes, instead of using your drier.
Collect the rainwater from your roof to water the garden, instead of using it from the tap.
Grow your own food instead of buying it at the supermarket.
Use preserving techniques like drying or fermenting when you have an abundance of a certain crop.
The list goes on and on…
In next weeks blog I will go a little bit deeper talking about one of the three Permaculture Ethics
Hope to see you then!
Hampus The Organic Gardener
