Permaculture

I notice I've been using the terms "permaculture", "forest gardening" and "Transition" a lot on this blog, so here's an explanation of what all this stuff means.

First of all, the modern take on the age-old practice of "forest gardening" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_gardening) and the Transition movement (http://www.transitiontowns.org/) both stem from PERMACULTURE, so to start with let me explain what PERMACULTURE actually is.

Permaculture (from PERMANENT and (AGRI)CULTURE) was first dreamed up in the 70s by two Australian ecologists, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Since then it has spread from Australia to New Zealnd, Europe and the US, as well as other parts of the world; there are projects in Asia, Africa, South America...Permaculture is still not as well known as some other environmental ideas (see the post below, Pondering Eco-ness) but in my opinion it deserves to be much more widely practiced, and could help us out of this whole load of trouble we've got ourselves in.

Permaculture started out as a model for sustainable food production - gardening and farming - although as it is a set of principles rather than hard and fast rules, you can apply it to any situation, in any climate!

Perhaps the basis of Permaculture could be summed up as working in harmony with nature, instead of against it. There are lots of green theories that claim to "work in harmony with nature" - such as organic farming, for example (although of course, this is actually working against nature, as even in organic farming you're trying to prevent nature from doing what she wants to do, by turning the land into field systems rather than allowing it to revert to natural woodland etc. but more on this later) - but Permaculture goes beyond these. It encompasses ideas from all sorts of fields - organics, conservation, low-impact living - and puts them all together.

What really distinguishes Permaculture is that not only does it work in harmony with nature, it seeks to actively imitate nature, the theory being that we can bend the rules of nature to meet our own needs. Permaculture works on the same bases of natural ecosystems: each element performs many functions, each important function is supported by many elements, etc. ( from Permaculture Association Britain's website - see useful websites below).

This is where systems such as "Forest Gardening" come in. Forest gardening is essentially producing food by imitating the natural forest, i.e. you grow apple trees, currant bushes and perenial vegetables in the same way as trees, shrubs and undergrowth grow in natural woodland. We can make our food production systems (in fact, any system) operate in the same way as nature does, and this means that everyone wins: we get to eat, and nature's happy because we're playing by her rules! (Needless to say, this takes a lot of designing, so much so that there are accredited courses you can do to help you get your head round it all!).

NB: When I refer to "natural woodland", I mean the landscape's natural climax. In Britain that means woodland, but even if you live in a desert you can still live by permaculture principles by bending the laws of the desert towards food production, etc.

However, the principles of permaculture don't just apply to food and other physical products (homes, medicine, beauty products, transport, etc). They can also apply to the way we act as communities and run our societies. The three core ethics of Permaculture are EARTH CARE, PEOPLE CARE and FAIR SHARES.

This is where movements like the TRANSITION MOVEMENT come in. The Transition movement was started by Rob Hopkins, a permaculture teacher, as a response to climate change and peak oil (the running-out of world oil supplies). It is a grass-roots movement that encourages people to work together as communities to begin the transition from the way we live now to a way of life that has less impact on the environment and that relies less on globalisation and fossil fuels.

So, as a quick recap:

• Permaculture is a set of principles that allow us to create a PERMANENT CULTURE (food, communties, etc).
• It can be applied to any situation, in any climate
• It works by close observation and imitation of natural systems
• It encompasses many different ideas - organics, societal models, all sorts of stuff

Three ways that I could implement permaculture principles starting right now are:

• Allow the chickens to go broody - it's natural for them, just go with the flow
• Allow my bees to swarm and supersede naturally (though I'd want to capture the swarm of course)
• Incorporate variety into my life - learn a variety of skills, grow a variety of plants, be versatile and be more resilient!

So there you have my brief introduction to Permaculture. To find out more you could try these websites (there is a LOAD of stuff out there and lots on YouTube too):

http://www.permaculture.org.uk/ - Permaculture Association Britain
http://www.konsk.co.uk/webmap.htm - Tir Penrhos Isaf - a permaculture smallholding in Snowdonia
http://www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk/ - Permaculture Magazine (really good)
http://lafermedesourrou.blogspot.com/ - La Ferme de Sourrou - permaculture smallholding in France (brilliant blog, I read it all the time).
http://www.pfaf.org/index.php - Plants for a Future (great for forest gardening)
http://www.agroforestry.co.uk/ - the Agroforestry Research Trust (great for forest gardening)
http://www.lowimpact.org/index.htm - the Low Impact Living Initiative
http://www.cat.org.uk/index.tmpl?refer=index&init=1 - the Centre for Alternative Technology
http://transitionculture.org/ - Rob Hopkins' site