What Is Permaculture?

I invite You to Imagine a Landscape that Takes Care of Itself.

Maybe you're like a lot of my clients: you're interested in this thing from Australia called permaculture, short for permanent agriculture.  Perhaps you're new to the idea, or maybe you've listened to podcasts, read books and articles, and taken courses.  The more you learn about possibly the most effective regenerative design system in the world, the more you love the idea of working with it on your property.  But you feel overwhelmed when you try to think about how to put all the elements to use on your actual project.  You don't know where to begin or how to tie all the elements together.

Permaculture Master Planning has been my most popular service since 2004, where I have professionally combined permaculture design with landscape architecture to give home- and property owners a plan to follow.  The result of this combination of disciplines is ecological recovery in a beautiful wrapper.  If you are interested in creating a self-sustaining landscape that brings down your water, power, and maintenance costs to near-zero while also increasing your property value, I'll provide you with a free strategy.

Permaculture is a super-effective form of regenerative landscape design.  Instead of developing a property using traditional elements like high water-use plantings, inefficient irrigation systems, and toxic and expensive materials that focus on appearance, when I combine permaculture with landscape architecture it's about aesthetics and ecological health. The landscape looks fantastic (I've had clients tell me their neighbors went from strong distaste to heavy praise) and functions like it would if it hadn't been disturbed by human activity in the first place.

In my view, permaculture is an incredibly powerful way to get a landscape, whether a yard or acreage, back on track so it can do its thing. The myth of entropy has it all wrong - when land has been disrupted, that's when it falls into decline; here you see erosion and desertification. Permaculture allows me to restore any property to halt erosion and reverse desertification, plus get it producing food, shelter, and clean water.

You can implement permaculture on any size of property.  Measurable reductions in costs, maintenance, and time/work is a key benefit.  But you'll also see increases in beneficial wildlife like butterflies and songbirds, more flowers, bigger and healthier fruit, a hydrated state, and much healthier soil.

If you are wondering in more detail what permaculture is, I'll show you as we work together.  If you're like most people, your property can be transformed with a permaculture master plan.  You'll have input along the way, and you'll get an in-depth walk-through of your plan once it's finalized, along with supplemental documentation like phasing recommendations, planting guides, little-known low-effort/high-impact techniques, a specific plants list, and email access to me following completion of your project.

With permaculture's ancient take on regenerative design, you can incorporate a variety of features to improve your property in support of the way you want to live, such as a pool, no-mow/no-water lawn, patio, or just about any other feature.  Ecology doesn't have to be messy.

One of my favorite things about being a permaculture designer is transforming site issues into multi-functional elements that serve people's needs beautifully while re-establishing an intact ecology on all kinds of properties. 

Long-term resilience, an impressive increase in plant health and production, and less work and expense on your part are some things to expect from employing permaculture instead of going the traditional route. You can also expect to achieve near-zero waste, enhanced landscape beauty and function, pretty butterflies, hummingbirds, and dragonflies, less watering, weeding, and fertilizing, and more time to enjoy and delight in living.

Permaculture is based on a set of principles that when applied correctly achieve the full range of permaculture's benefits:

Observe and Interact: This principle emphasizes careful study of the land, its natural systems, and how elements interact. It's about understanding your property as it is before you take action to change it.

Catch and Store Energy: Natural resources like water, wind, and sunlight can be harvested and stored for use in powering your systems to reduce reliance on external inputs.

Obtain a Yield: This principle ensures your design produces something beneficial, whether it's food, materials, or habitat for beneficial species. Permaculture yields these and more.

Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback: Permaculture is an ongoing process. This principle encourages monitoring your systems, adapting as needed, and learning from successes and failures.

Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services: The focus is on harnessing natural resources and reducing dependence on non-renewable resources wherever possible.

Produce No Waste: Another core principle is creating closed-loop systems where waste from one element becomes an input for another.

Design from Patterns to Details: Start with a big-picture view of your land and its purpose, then refine your design by focusing on the specific elements and their placement.

Integrate Rather Than Segregate: Permaculture encourages mimicking nature's interconnectedness. Plants, animals, and structures are placed or designed in order to benefit each other.

Use Small and Slow Solutions: This principle emphasizes starting manageable projects and observing their impact before scaling up. It promotes long-term sustainability.

Use and Value Diversity: Diversity fosters resilience, so permaculture designs incorporate a variety of plants, animals, and beneficial organisms to create a more robust system with less chance of one failure negatively affecting other parts of the system.

Use Edges and Value the Marginal: Edges, like borders between different zones, are often the most productive areas in a permaculture design and should be maximized for yield.

Creatively Use and Respond to Change: Permaculture acknowledges that change is inevitable. This principle encourages adaptation and using unexpected events as opportunities for innovation.

In your project, try to incorporate these principles in order to gain the full range of benefits that permaculture promises.

If you are ready to start your permaculture project or want to get to know me before deciding whether to work together, schedule FREE Permaculture Strategy Coaching