My Introduction to Permaculture
My first introduction to Permaculture happened before I knew such a system existed. As a teenager with a keen interest in horticulture, he would watch neighbors, friends and family remove trees from their property and load them (often) onto various trailers and haul them to the landfill. Then, in a matter of days, watch a truck deliver a load of bark or wood chips to rejuvenate old ones or create new beds in the freshly pruned landscape. Seeing these delivery trucks, my thoughts turned to the loads of biomass that went to the landfill just days before and could have easily been turned into wood chips.
Now, with an understanding of Permaculture and its ethics, I recognized what I was observing as the 3 Ethics (Caring for the Earth, Caring for the People, and Return of Surplus/Fair Share), as well as several principles including – “Do not produce waste”, “Catch and store energy”, “Get a return”, “Use and value renewable resources and services”, “Use creatively and respond to change”.
Sustainability through permanent landscapes and food forests is a design process that copies the interaction and relationships found in nature. A systems approach to sustainability that can be used for all aspects of human survival, from agriculture to green building, from the use of appropriate technology to economics, from education to energy production.
Permaculture removes the focus that we are consumers and puts the emphasis that we are producers. It’s a system that can be applied from a property as small as a balcony garden through average urban quarter-acre sites right up to properties that are literally hundreds of acres.
Despite popular opinion among those who dabble in Permaculture, it is not about Gardening – although gardening forms a large part of a productive system, it is not about Solar Panels and energy – although producing, storing and saving energy is part of the system. It is not about capturing, storing and using water more efficiently, although smart water use, storage and flow are part of the system. Rather it is a whole systems approach to sustainable thinking.
Although my first introduction to permaculture was based on a similar mindset not knowing such a design system existed, I soon began reading about people like Bill Mollison, the Tasmanian who started the design system, David Holmgren, who co-created the system with Bill and other students of these creators – Geoff Lawton, Rosemary Morrow, et al.
It was a light balloon moment to discover how all these people were thinking in the same methods, the same logic of sustainability as me. I wasn’t going crazy after all. My thoughts were already being put into practice by an amazing group of people. Permaculture was not only born, but was quietly practiced all over the world.
