Health, Hope & Happiness
Permaculture has many techniques and strategies to offer.
Permaculture design advocates doing an analysis of each element of a design to understand its inputs and outputs – aka, its needs and its offerings; aka, energy in vs. energy out.
This will enable you to place each element in the right place within the design, connecting elements in a permaculture design. These are the first pieces of the puzzle. Continue reading “Connecting elements in a permaculture design”
Each element in a permaculture garden serves a purpose – at least one purpose – and as permaculture gardeners it is up to us to learn to recognize that purpose and put it to its best use. Continue reading “Design a permaculture garden: a look at all the elements”
In the world we live in now, space can be at a premium. Cities around the world are more and more crowded. Apartment dwellers want to ‘do’ permaculture, but feel their hands are tied. Continue reading “Permaculture: Doing what you can, where you are, with what you have”
Change can be fun and exciting! A new city, a new school, a new job – the possibilities for fun and adventure are endless. In permaculture, we learn that change is inevitable, and if we learn to go with the flow not fight against it, our permaculture designs will be much more fluid and resilient.
Change can be hard. And when things go differently than we expected them to, it can throw us for a loop. But we can learn to treasure these changes as learning experiences – and we might be amazed by what we learn, and how adaptable we can be. Continue reading “Permaculture Principle #12: Creatively use and respond to change in your permaculture designs”
Here’s another permaculture principle that some have a hard time getting the idea of. Edges. What’s so special about an edge, and what can it do for my permaculture garden designs? Continue reading “Permaculture Principle #11: Use edges and value the marginal – permaculture garden designs”
“Diversity isn’t involved so much with the number of elements in a system as it is with the number of functional connections between these elements. Diversity is not the number of things, but the number of ways in which things work.”
~ Bill Mollison
Diversity is the party planner of a permaculture system. She makes sure that no matter what happens, that party is going to be a hit. “The more the merrier!” is her motto. Continue reading “Permaculture Principle #10: Use and value diversity; the more the merrier”
“Jump in with both feet!”
That’s a sentence that has applied to me more times than I care to calculate. I have had a tendency to do a considerable amount of leaping before looking in the past. But I’ve matured since then. Continue reading “Permaculture Principle #9: Use small and slow solutions, for good permaculture design”
Integration is a so important aspect of permaculture design. Nothing is more productive than two systems working together – unless it’s three or four or five systems working together. The more support a component of a permaculture design has, the greater the success it will have.
Having systems that support each other is one of the mainframes of permaculture design. Continue reading “Permaculture Principle #8: Integrate rather than segregate, for permaculture design function”
This concept can sometimes be difficult to grasp. What is a pattern, and how can we use it in our designs? We think of patterns as symmetrical, repeating designs that we can print on cloth, wall paper or sheets. But that is just one kind of pattern. Continue reading “Permaculture Principle #7: Design from patterns to details, for functional permaculture design plans”
To some, this principle might sound impossible. I mean, there’s always going to be some waste, right? Well, yes. Zero waste has more to do with your choices, rather than some magical way of making waste disappear into thin air.
Continue reading “Permaculture Principle #6: Produce no waste”
