Permaculture Principles: Gardening With Nature

Earlier this year, Mickey Z. penned a quick introduction to permaculture, explaining that it's a design system which seeks to model itself on nature. Often used in gardening, but also applicable to architecture and—some would argue—almost any human system, permaculture offers a holistic framework for approaching ecological design (for now, I'm going to concentrate on horticultural/agricultural applications). As Mickey stated in his original post, at the center of permaculture is a three-point ethical framework known as earth care, people care, and fare shares.

But beyond the three-point ethic, permaculture also sets out a number of design principles which can be used to inform how we create our gardens, place our dwellings, or even how we plan whole cities. In a coming series of posts, I plan to explore each design principle in more detail—looking at how they can be used in real-life applications. (HowStuffWorks also has a great post on How Permaculture Works, which has been invaluable in compiling this article!)

I should note there is much more to permaculture than a simple set of principles, and for those seriously interested, I would strongly recommend taking a full permaculture design course. But for now, even a simple understanding of the basic principles can help inform our understanding of sustainability and living green. Here's the briefest of summaries below: