PERMACULTURE

Introduction

Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist, and one of his students, David Holmgren, coined the word "permaculture" in 1978. It is a contraction of "permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture." They defined it as a design system for creating sustainable human environments. It uses ecology as the basis for designing integrated systems of food production, housing, appropriate technology, and community development.
Permaculture is built upon an ethic of caring for the earth and interacting with the environment in mutually beneficial ways.
A central theme in Permaculture is the design of ecological landscapes that produce food. Emphasis is placed on multi-use plants, cultural practices such as sheet mulching and trellising, and the integration of animals to recycle nutrients and graze weeds.

Characteristics

• It is one of the most holistic, integrated systems analysis and design methodologies found in the world.
• It can be applied to create productive ecosystems from the human- use standpoint or to help degraded ecosystems recover health and wildness.
• It can be applied in any ecosystem, no matter how degraded.
• It values and validates traditional knowledge and experience. incorporates sustainable agriculture practices and land management techniques and strategies from around the world
• It is a bridge between traditional cultures and emergent earth-tuned cultures.
• It promotes organic agriculture, which does not use pesticides to pollute the environment.
• It aims to maximize symbiotic and synergistic relationships between site components.
• It is urban planning as well as rural land design.
• It's design is site specific, client specific, and culture specific