Category: Permaculture Design

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”

If you’re anything like me, you have done a considerable amount of leaping without looking, and jumping in with both feet. It’s how I roll. But, as I have learned from experience, that is quite often not so brilliant. By applying self-regulation, we just might save ourselves from making painful mistakes when setting up our permaculture system. Continue reading “Permaculture Principle #4: Apply self-regulation and accept feedback from our permaculture systems”

This is the most exciting part of the whole permaculture design process for me: obtaining that yield. Whether it’s harvesting vegetables from your permaculture garden, picking apples from your food forest, or storing the energy from solar panels, obtaining a yield is pure excitement. Continue reading “Permaculture Principle #3: Obtain a yield, with good permaculture design”