| Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.
Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms.
The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions. |
| Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute: new link — The LA Eco-Village, an intentional community in the heart of Los Angeles, encompasses a two-block area of older apartment buildings (see “Design for Life,” January/February 2003). Recently, Eco-Villager Lois Arkin asked for Natural Home’s input on the eco-rehab of a building that Eco-Village recently purchased. Bimini Terrace is a two-story, eighty-year-old, eight-unit Mediterranean Revival building. It has a wood-frame structure, flat parapet roof, and stucco exterior finish. The building faces east, with a lawn in front and detached garages in back. The south side faces a wide, sunny alley, and the north side is close to an adjacent apartment building. |
| Composting: new link — Drawn together by their mutual questioning of architecture’s conventional party line and their search for holistic living alternatives, architects Ken Haggard and Polly Cooper have been designing passive solar buildings on California’s central coast for decades. In the late 1970s, the couple recycled buildings to create a home and office complex on an old trout farm just north of San Luis Obispo, where they broadened their practice to include sustainability issues such as the life-cycle impact of materials and the use of small buildings, healthy building materials, and permaculture. But when a wildfire plowed through Los Padres National Forest in 1994, burning 40,000 acres and leveling the complex, Ken and Polly were able to take a good hard look at their own lifestyle. |
| Humanure: new link — Teaches and practices permaculture design on the shores of Lake Champlain in northern Vermont. Site also offers a photo galley of projects and articles. |
| Permaculture The Earth: new link — Environmental planning and design for permaculture and ecologically sound village designs. Australia. |
|
