Permaculture DesignPositive Solufions for Healing Earfh

By Jeff Brown

"Permaculture is a

design system for

creating sustainable

human enviranments."Bill Mollison,founder of

Permaculture

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There was a time in my life when I surreunded myself withvelumes ef bad news abeut what was happening on the

planet. During this stage ef my develepment, I was empoweredby finding out all kinds of things that were wrong with the world.

A major shift then began in my life. I grew tired ef fecusing enthe preblems and began searching fer selutiens. An inner veicecalled me ferward te remember the ways my ancesters lived inaccerd with the Earth's natural laws. I realized that my centinualfecus on the negative was really a reflection of what was going oninside of me. I decided to consciously fecus en positive selutiens,beginning the healing ef beth myself and the Earth.

This journey led me to permaculture, which is an effort to in-tegrate a variety of disciplines to help us create sustainable meth-eds for living on the planet. The werd "permaculture" is acombination ef the werds "permanent" and "agriculture" or"permanent" and "culture." It was developed by Australian BillMollisen as a constructive respense te the ecelogical and energycrises that became globally apparent in the early 1970s.

Because permaculture is net as widely practiced in NerthAmerica, many peeple believe it's a variation of organic garden-ing. In reality, it's much broader. Permaculture is the art of mak-ing connections between humans and the land, the plants, andthe animals. It's also a way of seeing how humans can play a har-monious role in ecosystems. It draws from biology, ecology, andagriculture, combining them with architectural design and engi-neering metheds te help us design a sustainable future. Perma-culture is a cenversatien about developing a practical, hands-enappreach te redesigning human settlements and lifestyles thatwill allew eur species to survive.

Elements of PermacultureA typical permaculture design process addresses common

barriers to a sustainable system and might include seme ef thefollowing elements:

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"We're only truly secure when we can iook cut cur kitchen windcw andsee cur feed grcwing and cur friends wcrking nearby." Bill Mciiiscn

Relative location and placement- Ecology teaches usthat everything exists in relationship to everything elseand that these relationships are what give theindividual elements meaning and value. Therefore, it'simportant for us to consider the relative location ofthe elements in our living design. For instance, locatingour home on the mid-point of a slope decreases boththe likelihood of flooding (which could happen at thebottom of the slope) and of fire damage (which is mostpotent at the top). Also, locating the garden near thehouse increases the time we can spend tending to it.Permaculture designers can also set up workingrelationships between plants, animals, people, land,and physical structures so that the needs of onecomponent are met by the yields of anothercomponent.

Important functions should be supported by manyelements - Whenever a natural disaster causes an

outage of electricity in our country, stories aboundabout the "crisis" or "state of emergency" because ourculture is dependent on electricity for many needs.One goal of permaculture design is not only to reducedependency on any one source of energy, but tocreate redundancy in design. For instance, rather thandepending solely on an electrical water heater, wecould have several methods for heating water,including a rooftop passive solar heater, a wood stove,and a geothermal heating unit.Encourage diversity and polyculture - This is Nature'sway. A typical suburban lawn with one type of grass ispoorly designed - it takes large amounts of bothhuman and chemical resources to defy naturalpatterns of diversity. As designers, we can acceleratethe process of ecological succession in areas thathumans have already degraded. For instance, we canstudy a deforested landscape and strategically

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re-introduce plants and animals into the system thatthe forest needs to regenerate itself. In addition, wecan identify and utilize "edge" areas, which occurwhen two different mini-ecosystems merge, such aswhere a pond's shoreline meets the land, or where aforested area borders a meadow. These biologicallyrich edge areas support a diversity of plants and ani-mals that are greater than the sum of each part. A pri-mary goal of permaculture, then, is to design oursettlements to be consistent with natural processes,allowing us to support ourselves from the land withminimal disruption.

Appropriate use of technology - Unlike someback-to-the-land ideologies, permaculture does not

Permaculture Design PrinciplesAt A Glance• Everything is a resource.

• When in doubt, do nothing.

• Everything works both ways.

• Pollution is an unused resource.

• Work with Nature, not against it.

• Observe carefully before designing.

• The problem is often the solution.

• Make the ieast change for the greatest effect.

• The whole is worth more than the sum of its parts.

• Every element in a natural system performs manyfunctions.

• The yields of naturally balanced systems aretheoretically unlimited.

condemn technological developments outright. Amyriad of technologies for subsistence living havebeen developed or reclaimed in the iast quartercentury, and it's our responsibility to select ones thatcontribute to sustainable iifestyies. For example, wecan iearn how to identify "convivial" tools - ones thatenhance our standard of iiving without reducing ourquality of life. By this definition, many modern-daymachines are not convivial at all - they force us toadjust our lives to suit them, rather than the other wayaround. Permaculture is about combining the best ofthe old ways with the most appropriate of the newways in an ethical manner.

Sustainable food production - Small-scale organicagriculture is a crucial part of designing a sustainable

living system. Emphasis is placed on making healthy,fertile soil where it's been lost (and even where ithasn't). One helpful technique is to create guilds,which are beneficial assemblies of plants and animalsthat contribute to each other's growth. A traditionalguild is the "Three Sisters," developed by NativeAmericans, that involves planting corn, beans, andsquash in the same area. The beans serve as nitrogenfixers, the squash fill the niche close to the ground andthe corn grows high, providing climbing habitat for thebeans. Planting ail three together encouragespolyculture and keeps additional iand out ofcultivation.

The most important thing to remember when practic-ing permaculture is that attitude matters, if we choose,we can see "disadvantages" as available resources thatcan help us turn our "problems" into solutions.

Urban PermacultureWhen asked to visualize a sustainabie iiving environ-

ment, many of us envision a rurai farm-like setting withlots of land and plenty of natural resources around thatcan support our needs. The reality, though, is that themajority of us live in cities and for various reasons theproportion of city dweliers is continuing to rise. So we'refaced with the difficult question, "How can permacultureaddress life in a city?"

When applying permaculture to an urban environ-ment, it's especially important to understand the princi-ple: "the problem is the solution." It's very easy toidentify problems in most cities - air and water pollution,overcrowding, and lack of green space-butthis can workto our advantage if we are intent on creating solutionsrather than merely drawing attention to the problems.

First, we might think of a city's characteristics in termsof an ecosystem such as a forest. A mature forest has aforest canopy, which in a city is the top of tall buildings.Mid-sized buildings can be analogous to the forestunderstory. Small buildings and other human and naturalstructures are parallel to a forest's shrubs and groundcover. Finally, the city equivalent to a forest's soil couldbe streets, sidewalks, and yards. Once we look at thecity's elements as opportunities to create beauty throughdesign, we begin to find solutions, including:

• Building greenhouses and planting herb gardens onrooftops;

• Turning our grass lawns into gardens that producefood and are aesthetically beautiful;

• Creating community by combining backyards with our

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neighbors, such as tearing down fences to create big-ger parcels of usable land;

• Using the presence of buildings to cultivate plants thatneed partial shade or vertical climbing space;

• Designing a water catchment system on the roofs ofour houses that can provide all the water needs for thegarden;

• Building bridges between biological, cultural, social,and economic sustainability.Remember, it is a conscious choice for us to see "im-

pediments" to rebuilding sustainabie cities as resourcesand opportunities. Urban areas have lots of energeticpeople who, when putting their minds and hearts to-gether, can create beautiful, healthy living environmentsin the midst of supposed chaos.

Permaculture as an Art Form"\Ne can't take on the powerful system head on in a

strength versus strength battle... but we can dance rightpast the bastards." ~ Chuck Marsh, permaculture instruc-tor and practitioner.

A piece of the above quote is challenging for me be-cause it implies a duality between us good guys and thebad guys out there that must be defeated. For me, it bor-ders on contradicting the essence of permaculture - fo-cusing on positive solutions rather than on problems. Atthe same time, however, it instructs us that permaculturedesign is inherently creative and proactive.

When people are constantly bombarded with doomand gloom news about how the world is falling to pieces,most quickly tune out. Permaculture, on the other hand,inspires us to accentuate beauty - something most peo-ple respond favorably to.

As designers, we can translate our values and feelingsinto systems, forms, and structures in our living environ-ment and in society as a whole. And we don't have to beprofessionals. We're all designers. If you've ever rear-ranged the furniture in your living room, you're a de-

signer. We can apply those same talents to create lovingand sustainable ways to live on the planet. Creativity inpermaculture grows directly from our ethical beliefsabout how the world should be and how we should live inthe world.

Permaculture Is ArtPermaculture combines our physical, mental, emo-

tional, and spiritual selves into the process of designingour lifestyles. If we omit any one of these elements, weare not allowing ourselves to be fully human. In fact, theboxes we often find ourselves living inside of (literally andfiguratively) inhibit our development as human beings.Permaculture allows us to address the monumental taskof healing ourselves and the Earth at the same time, andhelps us realize that by doing one we are actually doingboth.

Jeff Brown is Executive Director of Compassionate Com-munication of Central Ohio and a Certified Trainer withthe Center for Nonviolent Communication. For more in-formation visit: www.nvcohio.org. This article was alsopublished in The Mindful Word e-zine, which can be foundat themindfulword.org. - NL-

Learn MoreIntroduction to Permacuiture by Bill Mollison (Ten Speed Press, 1997)

Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway (Chelsea Green, 2009)

Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren (self-published, 2002)

Permaculture Activist Magazine -www.permacultureactivist.net

The Permaculture Garden by Grégoire Lamoureux in Natural Life Magazine, May/June 1995www.naturallifemagazine.com/9506/perma.htm

The Forest Garden by Grégoire Lamoureux in Natural Life Magazine, July/August, 1994www.naturallifemagazine.com/9408/perma.htm

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