The core of the permaculture design ideology has always been supplying a design methodolgy for human habitation.
This methodology helps the permaculture designer to model a final design based on an observation of how the ecosystems themselves interact with the leements contained within.
An example of this is how the Sun interacts with plants by providing it with the energy to grow. A plant may then be pollinated by some bees or eaten by an animal. These may disperse the seed to allow other plants to grow into say, a tall tree that will provide shelter to these creatures from the wind.
The bees may provide food for the birds and the trees provide the roosting for them. The tree's leaves will eventually fall and rot, which will in turn provide food for small insects and fungi.
There will be a web of amazingly intricate connections that allow for a diverse population of flora and fauna to survive by giving them both food and shelter.
An innovation of the design was the appreciation of the efficiency and productivity of natural ecosystems and to seek to apply this efficiency to the way human needs for food and shelter are met. David Holmgren is perhaps the most noted of these thinkers. He based much of his permaculture design innovation on zone analysis.. |
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