Permaculture Principles
Thrive Urban Permaculture Farm
Permaculture Principles
“Permaculture is about designing sustainable human settlements through ecology and design. It is a philosophy and an approach to land use which weaves together micro climates, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, water management and human needs into intricately connected productive communities.” Bill Mollison, Founder of Permaculture
Permaculture is about community living, building healthy environments, producing fresh local food, eliminating use of harmful chemicals, maximizing natural energies, ensuring clean air, water and soil, building on conserving bio-diversity, and meeting our needs with time-tested natural solutions.
Permaculture is a way of thinking as well as a system of organizing intelligent ecological and ethical design. It does not focus on the elements of sustainability in themselves, for example the details of organic living, eco-building, appropriate technology, community building, green finance, or rainwater harvesting, but on the beneficial relationships between these elements. Further focusing on how they are put together to make them as energy efficient and sustaining as possible for people, the planet and our ecosystem.
Permaculture (Permanent Culture) enhances our observation and understanding of natural patterns and universal principles. It teaches us to contemplate nature and natural systems and then to apply these ecological truisms to our own living environments. (Definition partially excerpted from the Permaculture UK magazine editorial by Maddy Harland).
Permaculture is not gardening, is not composting, is not chickens, is not rainwater harvesting, is not solar, is not intentional community, is not recycling… It is all of these, together! It is all these things in beneficial relationships, in the right location. This is permaculture! This is sustainable!
