06 Jan Permaculture in a Nutshell

Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environments. You might look at it as a fusion of local wisdom with best practices from around the world. This includes best practices gleaned from history, and it includes appropriate technology. The permaculture paradigm gives us a whole new way to look at the world and to design systems that are more robust and more productive. Permaculture isn’t just about mitigating environmental damage or minimizing our footprint; it’s about aligning ourselves with nature and deliberately mimicking nature-based strategies to optimize the design of our living environments and lifestyles.

Some core design principles of permaculture are redundancy, use of natural and on-site resources, maximizing the number of beneficial relationships, and placing elements in optimum relative location.

You may have come across the term “permaculture” via gardening, but permaculture goes way beyond gardens. Permaculture is a set of design principles, inspired by nature, that can be applied to literally every aspect of the human environment, including (for example) buildings, cities, transportation networks, businesses, codes, and organizations.

The Austin Permaculture Guild is an informal network of people in central Texas who are dedicated to applying permaculture design principles to their everyday lives, and teaching these design principles to others. Our next permaculture design course starts at the end of January. We also give talks and other events. For more information, please visit www.permie.us or call 512-619-5363.

Once you start studying permaculture, you’ll never look at the world the same way again. Your Mind + Permaculture Design Principles = A Solution-Generating Machine! Come help us design the sustainable world of tomorrow.