Perma - culture is a the contraction of the words permanent and agriculture. It was first developed in Australia in the late 1970’s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Mollison and Holmgren sought to design a method through which humans might again live within self-regulating natural systems.
The Drylands Institute, published in The Permaculture Activist (Autumn 1989) defines Permaculture as the use of ecology as the basis for designing integrated systems of food production, housing, appropriate technology, and community development. It is built upon an ethic of caring for the earth and interacting with the environment in mutually beneficial ways.
Today it can be described perhaps as an ethical design system that is applicable to food production and land use, and also community building.
It seeks the creation of both productive and sustainable ways of living through the integration of ecology, organic gardening, architecture, landscape and agroforestry. The focus is not on the elements themselves, but instead on the relationships created among them through the way in which they are placed together; in other words, the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts.
The science considers the careful and contemplative observation of nature and natural systems, and recognizes universal patterns and their underlying principles, and then learning to apply these ‘ecological truisms’ in one's own life.
The science considers the careful and contemplative observation of nature and natural systems, and recognizes universal patterns and their underlying principles, and then learning to apply these ‘ecological truisms’ in one's own life.