Permaculture challenges what we're doing and thinking - and to that extent it's sedition.
I’m going to argue here that the most accurate and least muddled way to think of permaculture is as a design approach, and that we are often misdirected by the fact that it fits into a larger philosophy and movement which it supports. But it is not that philosophy or movement. It is a design approach for realizing a new paradigm.
Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system
The worst thing about permaculture is that it's extremely successful, but it has no center, and no hierarchy.
Permaculture creates a cultivated ecology, which is designed to produce more human and animal food than is generally found in nature.
When the idea of permaculture came to me, it was like a shift in the brain, and suddenly I couldn't write it down fast enough.
You can't live like a Bushman or an Aborigine anymore, so they've got to rethink the whole basis of how they're going to live. Permaculture helps you do that easily.
I'm certain I don't know what permaculture is. That's what I like about it - it's not dogmatic. But you've got to say it's about the only organized system of design that ever was. And that makes it extremely eerie.
What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet.
You don’t have a snail problem, you have a duck deficiency.
Anarchy would suggest you're not cooperating. Permaculture is urging complete cooperation between each other and every other thing, animate and inanimate.
Permaculture is something with a million heads. It's a way of thinking which is already loose, and you can't put a way of thinking back in the box.
I've become really interested in permaculture, simplifying my life and doing everything I can to develop more of a sustainable lifestyle.
National Permaculture Day is a chance to share thoughts, visions and lots of common sense ways that we can all make a positive difference to the world we live in. Its all about combining age old truths and skills with new and innovative thinking and technologies…. people, plants and landscapes growing together, designing and nurturing a healthy community along the way.
