Permaculture

Whatever man could desire...



Permaculture is the latest love of my life, and unlike with human love, with it I know exactly, why.


Permaculture creates the basis of
- living in abundance
- having plenty of time for creativity, ourselves or whatever want to do
- connecting deeply to Nature, our environment, to Life itself
- taking responsibility, becoming the Master of ourselves and our surroundings
- reintegrating to our natural place into Creation
- integrating and bringing to practice all we know, understand and learn
- creating communities
- living a free life
- developing and getting deeper continuously
- having a life in peace, harmony, vividness and beauty

The word itself was coined by Bill Mollison, one of the two founders, combining the words permanent and culture or agriculture. Simply put, it is a design system for creating a sustainable ecosystem that – just like a forest – recreates and regulates itself. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people, based on conscious design, which functions to benefit life in all its forms.

Just like forests, permaculture creates diverse, stable and resilient systems, based not only on diversity, but on the connection (cooperation) of its elements. You won’t find any element in a permaculture system that would not help and benefit other elements.

Design is the keyword. As the teaching say you must spend at least a hundred hours with observation before doing a single movement. Look at how things work together in nature, and then try and mimic that design in your garden. The philosophy behind it is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.

This is the only productive system I know, that is based on ethics: earth care, people care and fair share. Based on these ethics there are 12 design principles to keep in mind during design – just as for planning our lives. As all holistic systems which are in harmony with the true nature of our world, it is full of useful analogies.

It allows us to live independently, freely, in harmony and abundance. Where permaculture stands out from the crowd as a design system is in its capacity to integrate the intellect with ethics. It can teach us to ‘think’ with the heart and respond with the head. By combining pragmatism with philosophy, we can create a greater synthesis. It makes us see that we don’t have to wait for any governments or any more favorable situations: we are the main source, we can create harmony and abundance.