What Is Permaculture?

Permaculture design is one of my greatest passions in life. I've designed many permaculture systems and permanent food forests that still supply food to those communities today and will continue to produce abundance long after I leave this earth.

Permaculture is a set of design principles centered around whole systems thinking to simulate or directly utilizing the patterns and resilient features observed in natural ecosystems. It uses these principles in a growing number of fields from regenerative agriculture, rewilding, community, and organizational design and development.

With its system of applied education, research and citizen-led design permaculture has grown a popular web of global networks and developed into a global social movement source

Basically is designing landscapes that mimic the way nature designs its own sustainability so that it no longer needs inputs and only creates perpetual abundance. The forest doesn't water itself, feed itself, or weeds itself. These kinds of systems can be scaled up to provide food for a family, a community, or even a nation. The soil improves over time instead of depleting the soil like conventional agriculture.

More people need to learn this technique so we can create a sustainable future. The original book on the subject can be bought on Amazon for about $100 and I've read it and put it inot practice so much that I've pretty much memorized it.

This is the original Permaculture - A Designer's Manual you can download for free.

This is a condensed version of it called Permaculture Two

One of the oldest food forests in Morrocco is over 2,000-years-old. Even if you don't plan to build a garden that outlasts you and your families lifetimes, knowing the basic principle of permaculture will help you produce more food even in the smallest garden and do it with more permanance and less work.

Geoff Lawton, who I had the pleasure of meeting and learning from, along with Bill Mollison is one of the co-founders of permaculture. In this video, he gives a basic overview of what permaculture is all about.

Geoff Lawton: Surviving Collapse, Designing your Way to Abundance

Here's a tour of his Zaytuna Farm.

Zaytuna Farm Tour

One of the most impressive examples of how permaculture can transform even the harshest deserts into an oasis of productive food production is the project they did in Jordan. The completely re-greened the desert in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet.