Designing With Nature – An Introduction to Permaculture

Have you ever heard of permaculture?  

In this episode, I offer an introduction to Permaculture, a sustainable and holistic approach to gardening.  I break down the fundamental principles of permaculture. I share insights on creating resilient ecosystems, conserving resources, and fostering biodiversity in your garden.  Tune in to discover how permaculture can help enhance your garden and contribute to environmental stewardship in your community.

In this episode, I talk about:

• What is Permaculture and its history
• The guiding ethics of permaculture
• Examples of Permaculture Principles including:
  • Working with nature rather than against it
  • “The Problem is the Solution”
  • Making the least change for the maximum effect
  • Everything Gardens
• Common concepts used in permaculture design
  • Design elements and element analysis
  • Stacking functions
  • Pattern recognition
  • Edge Effect
  • Energy Flow
  • Zone and Sector planning

• FREE On Demand: Intro to Permaculture Open Online Resource from Oregon State University
• FREE BOOK: Intro to Permaculture from Oregon State University
• Andrew Millison OSU Permaculture Instructor’s YouTube channel
• Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition Amazon link
• Temperate Climate Permaculture

 Welcome to the Evergreen Thumb. I’m your host, Erin Landon, a Washington State University Extension Master Gardener since 2015, and a certified permaculture designer and modern homesteader. I’m here to share up-to-date research-based horticulture and environmental stewardship knowledge to help you grow and manage your garden, and to share what the WSU Extension Master Gardener program is all about. 

WSU Extension Master Gardener volunteers are university-trained community educators who have been cultivating plants, people, and communities since 1973. Are you ready to grow? Let’s dig into today’s episode.  

Welcome to episode 11 of the Evergreen Thumb. Today, I am going to talk to you specifically about the basics of permaculture.  We’ll talk about what permaculture is and its history. We’ll also talk about what is considered the prime directive of permaculture, the three primary ethics that drive permaculture and define what it is, as well as Um, the principles of permaculture and some of the concepts within permaculture.  

So, before I jump into a lot of the basics of permaculture, I wanted to take a minute to kind of explain my background and history with permaculture. I first heard about permaculture many years ago, probably close to 15 years ago on a podcast. And. I became real curious about the idea and studied and learned more independently. 

And then I had the opportunity to attend an online course through the, the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia under Geoff Lawton. And I received my permaculture design certificate in 2013.  And since then, I have given a number of talks and workshops on an introduction to permaculture and the basics of permaculture. 

We have been actively working to integrate permaculture principles into our gardens and our homestead. All right. So that kind of gives you a basic idea of where I’m coming from and, um, my experience and knowledge with permaculture. And so now I’ll get more into the, the basic tenets of what Permaculture is.  

History of Permaculture 

Permaculture is a holistic design system developed in the 1970s by Bill Mollison and Dave Holmgren. Bill Mollison was a teacher at Hobart University in Tasmania, and Dave Holmgren was one of his students at the time, and their collaboration led to the publishing of a book called Permaculture One. After it was published, uh, the two men went on to further develop the ideas of permaculture in their own ways. 

Bill Mollison wrote Permaculture, a Designer’s Manual, and developed the 72-hour Permaculture Design Certificate course modeled after the book and created the Permaculture Institute of Australia. He eventually turned over the Permaculture Institute to one of his early students, Geoff Lawton, and Geoff was actually my teacher and who I studied under. 

So, initially Permaculture was the blending of two words, permanent agriculture. As the applications for permaculture outside of agriculture became realized, it has also come to be known as a combination of the words permanent and culture. Permaculture principles and techniques have been applied to buildings, businesses, and entire communities. 

What IS Permaculture 

There are a variety of definitions of permaculture, and for the most part, they’re all right. My favorite definition right now is that permaculture is an ethical design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor. It teaches us how to build natural homes, grow our own food, restore diminished landscapes and ecosystems, catch rainwater, build communities, and much more. 

So, some of the key aspects of permaculture is that it is science-based, it is sustainable in the truest definition, it mimics nature, and it is beneficial to the environment. To kind of expand on that, I want to, I want to define sustainable from a dictionary definition. Sustainable is a system that produces more than it consumes, or alternatively, a system that provides a surplus of resources that can be fed back to the system. 

Now, permaculture is primarily known for its applications in gardens and fruit-growing situations. And since this is a gardening podcast, that’s primarily the angle that I am going to take. I will use some examples, um, that are maybe more from my, more of my homesteading background as far as livestock and food growing systems, but I’ll try to keep it focused on gardening. 

But permaculture principles, which I’ll go over more in-depth, aim to minimize waste, labor, and energy inputs. While traditional agriculture is 10 percent planning and 90 percent work, permaculture is 90 percent planning and 10 percent work. Permaculture works on any scale from an apartment balcony to broad acreage. 

And urban areas are actually more productive than rural areas because they can be more intensely maintained. So, that’s kind of a, an overview of the basics of permaculture. The prime directive of permaculture, as defined by Bill Mollison, states that the only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children. 

Introduction to Permaculture Ethics 

And the concept of permaculture is driven by three primary ethics.  These stress positivism and cooperation, and they are earth care, people care, and return of surplus. So, earth care obviously is care of the earth, and this includes all living and non-living things. People care obviously is care of people. 

This is promoting self-reliance and community responsibility. Return of surplus is passing on anything surplus to our needs. to the other two ethics.  And implicit in this is the life ethic that all living things have intrinsic worth. So basically, those three ethics, earth care, people care, and return of surplus, are what define permaculture. 

If an action in your garden does not fit at least one of those ethics, then it is not considered permaculture. So, this leaves a really broad scope of what permaculture is. And it, some people say, you know, they’re “doing” permaculture, and it’s not exactly something that you do. It is a complex set of elements and functions that work together and mimic nature to, in this case, to create a garden and build habitat and grow food.  

Introduction to Permaculture Principles 

And there are a number of principles of permaculture and I’m just going to cover five of them. And the first one is work with nature rather than against it. When we can assist rather than impede natural elements, forces, and processes, we will receive healthier plants, healthier habitats, and better production. 

We can assist the natural succession of plants, not by slashing out weeds and pioneers, but by using them to provide microclimates, nutrients, and wind protection for the species that we want to establish.

A Japanese author and farmer, uh, Masanobu Fukuoka, who wrote The One Straw Revolution, has a great quote, “if we throw nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.” 

So. The second principle that I want to talk about is the problem is the solution. So, everything can be a positive resource. It is up to us to see how we can make use of it. And one of Bill Malson’s favorite examples was you don’t have a slug problem. You have a duck deficiency. Ducks are great eaters of slugs. 

So, the problem that we have, and we have a lot of slugs, how can we address that problem rather than using, uh, poisons or beer traps, or salts or whatever? Um, you know, the methods that, that we’ve all learned a more natural solution is to get ducks. Now, granted, that’s not always possible for everybody, but that shows the kind of mindset of thinking, um, that is intrinsic in permaculture. 

The third principle is making the least change for the maximum effect.  So, for example, if you want to put in a small pond, uh, you select the area where you get the most water for the least amount of earth moved. Because not only is it saving you time and money in the earthworks of building this pond, but you’re also disturbing less soil. So you’re not compacting soil, and you are being most efficient in where your water flow is into that pond. So, making the least change for the maximum effect.  

The fourth principle is that a permaculture design is only limited by the designer’s imagination.  Theoretically, the yield of a system is unlimited. So, it’s part of permaculture is to change our mindset and change our thinking to, you know, what is the best for the land? 

What is the best for production? Where can I get creative to, you know, to make connections between elements and you know, maximize productivity. 

And then the fifth principle I’m going to talk about today is everything gardens, meaning everything has an effect on its environment. It’s a matter of careful consideration as to where something belongs in a system and if we should control or manage the effect or tolerate it. 

So, for example, animals, animals can extend their own food supply.  by spreading seeds via manure. So, you know, do we try to manage that effect, or do we tolerate it or do we embrace it?  You know, if you’re raising livestock and your livestock are creating their own food supply, then that’s something you want to embrace because they’re, they’re sowing seeds for plants that they can eat. So that’s another example.  

It’s just the, the permaculture principles really encourage you to focus on your mindset and change your way of thinking or your perspective on how an ecosystem works and how you can maximize the ecosystem that you’re building.  

Permaculture Concepts  

So now I want to talk about some concepts, some permaculture concepts.  

What is a Permaculture Element? 

And the first one I want to talk about is our elements.  So, what is an element?  Um, an element can be animals, plants, structures. and people. We need to design ourselves back into the system as a positive element whose needs are provided by the system and whose products are used by the system.  So, one example would be for an element analysis is a chicken.  

So, the goal of permaculture is to create relationships between elements rather than the elements themselves and to create a closed system that needs are provided by the system.  So, when you look at a chicken, when you’re analyzing a chicken, you want to analyze all their inputs and their outputs, and this goes beyond just food and waste.  

So, when you think about a chicken, they have needs, they have products, and behaviors, and they have intrinsic characteristics.  So, a chicken needs shelter, grit, dust for bathing, water, air, food, and other chickens.  They can produce eggs, meat, feathers, manure, methane, CO2, and then their behaviors include scratching, foraging, flighting, flying, and fighting.  

And their intrinsic characteristics include their breed, their color, their egg color, their meat flavor, their climate tolerance, and some breed-specific behaviors on their temperament and things like that.  So, this kind of gives you a general idea.

When you’re doing an element analysis, the chicken example is one that I like to use because it’s really easy, but you can do the same analysis with a building. You know, if you want to put in a greenhouse or, um, you know, a garden shed and consider all of the, the L, all the factors of that element and how,  you know, how it’s going to affect your climate, how it’s going to produce shade. Um, it’ll produce, you know, the microclimates that are produced by a building, you know, those kinds of things. Those are all functions to take into account when adding a new element to your garden.  

Stacking Functions 

Another popular concept is stacking functions. So each element, so each animal, each plant, each structure should have more than one function, and each function should be supported by more than one element. So, one example, good example, is a pergola, or a, an arbor.  

It can hold a vine, like a grapevine, it can provide shade, and it can provide an outdoor seating area. Now shade can also be provided by that arbor or by a tree or by a building or a roof.  So the idea is to have each element provide more than one function and each function to be provided by more than one element. 

And one way to assemble elements in a creative way is based on a set of random selections to create combinations that you never would’ve thought of on your own.  So, if you write or type up a list of design components and a set of connective strategies. You can place the components in one bowl and the connections in another, and randomly assemble the two components with a connection, and then write each combination down so you can say, for example, so your connection would be like where something would be.

So if your, your elements are your house, your compost pot, uh, bins, your arbor, your grape arbor, uh, your greenhouse,  uh, chickens.  And then, so those all go in one bowl. And then the other one would be, um, location. So beside, over, under, or attached to, you know, words like that, that connect, can connect to elements. 

And by pulling these out, you can get completely random combinations. And of course, some of them are going to just seem silly and make you laugh. And some of them, you’re going to go, huh, I wonder if I could make that work. And some of them are just not going to be realistic, say you’ve got an arbor over a pond.  

If it’s a small pond that could be doable. Pond, or the Arbor would provide shade to the pond. Is that something you want? If it’s a shallow pond, you may need that to protect if you have fish in your pond, so that all the water doesn’t evaporate. If it’s a really small pond, you know, think that, so think about how each one element would affect the other and by its products.  

You know, if you had, if you had chickens in your greenhouse, you could divide the greenhouse and the chickens would generate heat in the winter, so you don’t need to heat your greenhouse.  Um, if you use a deep, deep bedding method for the chickens with, uh, six to eight inches of mulch, the chickens will be digging and scratching and eating bugs and everything and that mulch will compost down.  And then by the next spring, you’ll have yards of fresh chicken compost.  To put out in your garden or to use to plant in, in the greenhouse.   

And so those are kind of the random assemblies that you can think about and that will, get you to kind of creatively think how to, to create these, these elements in your garden. 

Pattern Understanding 

So, another key aspect of permaculture is pattern understanding.  We have to understand how patterns are expressed in the landscape, how water flows, how we access things, how we build structures, how heat and cold moves and are captured and released, and where your microclimates are. Understanding these pattern forms gives us their function and behavior, and with that understanding we can design them into our systems.  

So as soon as you push a landscape out of form, you’re pushing against massive energies and forces that’ll win. But if you work with it, then you have the biggest opportunity to work with those universal energies. It is through careful observation that you will recognize the patterns, act on them, and make adjustments as they change. 

So, knowing a pattern of water flows and the patterns in the landscape that indicate their path means we can site ponds effectively.

We can build swales and then act on the pattern that results in increased water further down the landscape. So, for anybody who doesn’t know, swales are, uh, they’re kind of like ditches that are built on they’re, if you’re constructing them, they’re built on contour and usually they’re built on a hillside. Naturally, they’ll usually fall at the bottom of a hill, but when build a swale, you build it level on the contour of the hill. When you dig it out, all the soil goes on the downhill side. 

And that way the, the water that gathers in the soil absorbs into the downhill side. And then you have trees planted in that soil that you’ve dug out.  And then you have another swale down the hill further. And so, as the water absorbs, it moves down the hill. Or if you have a serious rain event, you can create an overflow so it will flow down into the next swale down and fill up that swale with water.  

So, it’s a way of keeping water on your land for as long as possible and absorbing it into the soil rather than having it run off. But that’s where understanding patterns and carefully observing your land can dictate where the best places for swales and being able to see where those swales should be. 

And you can do swales on a really small scale too. You can turn them, you know, garden paths. If you have a, a garden that’s on a  slope, not too steep a slope, but on a slope, you can, you can put in swales and you can, um, create your Your swales can be your garden pass and mulch them deep and then have,  you know, plant your, your garden on the downhill side and just continue that on down the slope. 

Edge Effect  

So, the next concept I wanted to briefly touch on is edge effect. So, it is on the edges of a form, whether that be a garden or a building or whatever, um, that we find the accumulated surplus in nature not found in the broader area. And life around the edges is always more productive.  Where two ecosystems meet is where you’ll find a greater number of species because the two ecosystems are overlapping. 

That’s the edge of those two ecosystems.  So like on my property, we have, our land is native prairie/oak savanna. We have a number of oak trees. There’s a pond on the property behind us that runs along the base of a hillside.  And so, that is the edge. There’s, uh, the savanna, pond, and, uh, prairie. There’s this convergence of the native oak savanna and the understory species that grow with them, and the native grasses. 

You’ve got tons of camas, uh, which is a native prairie, uh, bulb, wildflower, and then you have in the pond, you have Um, all the plants and animals that go with a, a water body and a, a riparian zone. So, seeing where these meet and where these mix is where you’re going to get the most productivity. So where the forest meets the grasslands, there exists a different ecosystems or species from the forest and species from the grasslands mingle.  

And then there are also species that are unique to the particular crossover area.  So, using the idea of edge effect in permaculture, we can design edges that offer this diversity with the potential for the creation of surplus and an extension of the yield.  So, if an edge can be patterned that harvests nutrient and water and creates windbreak and builds organic matter, and increases stability in the environment, then the benefits just start multiplying and piling up. 

And the edges can be patterned as nets to trap and accumulate material or to filter or to stop the flow of energy or animals or plants.  So, for example, bushes and trees can divert and filter wind or reeds can filter and accumulate debris as the edge to a pond.  Um, you can also use reeds to filter water quality. 

And, you know, so you can create a reed bed. If you’ve got a creek or something and, um, or a swale and you want to create a reed bed so you can filter that water to make it accessible to livestock. You know, that’s an, uh, those are the kinds of things that we’re talking about. Keyhole gardens, herb spirals, and swales are all examples of utilizing edge to improve production, and by production, I don’t just mean food. Herb spirals, yes, it’s primarily going to be food, but swales are a tree-growing system. They, you do not have to have all fruit trees or food production trees. They can be ornamental trees and by utilizing edge, improving production can mean your trees are going to be, or your shrubs are stronger because they’re, you know, diverting wind or you’re, you know, you’re not, you’re getting less damage in your house because the wind is being diverted around a different part of your property or it’s just a matter of, there’s so many ways to think about it.  

Sectors and Zones 

So one of the keys of permaculture is an understanding of what they call zones and sectors. So sectors are energies flowing through the site. So energies can be sun, wind, water, Noise, smells, views, and sector planning channels those energies into or away from the system based on what you want. 

You know, if you’ve got a smelly dairy farm down the road, you know, you can selectively Channel that air energy away from the system based on what you plant between you and that dairy farm, or if you’ve got road noise, or, you know, you have a lake view, then, you know, obviously, if you have a lake view, it’s not likely that you’re going to want to plant something that’s going to block that view. 

Put the trees You know, behind the house and leave that view open, keep the plants lower. This is a way of channeling the energies into or away from the system based on that sector, you know, understanding where your son is spring, you know, depending on the time of year and the time of day, because as the year goes on, the sun is going to set more in the west versus more to the southwest in the summer versus the winter and consider it.  

Also, consider things like slope and aspect. So, you know, which way is your property facing? Which way is your house facing? Elevation? You know, elevation is going to have an impact if you’re at sea level or if you’re at 3,000 feet, that’s going to have a big impact on your environment and your sector and understanding that helps to helps you take into account all the different aspects when you’re mapping your zones and your sectors. Um, I’ll have pictures in the show notes of a couple examples of sector maps, but basically, it’s just kind of a, a basic drawing of your piece of property. 

And you’re saying, okay, so here, here’s a pie-shaped thing. And this is where the view I want to protect. And another area over here, this is where the sun and goes the, you know, the sun path in the summer. And this is where our dominant wind comes from and things like that. All things to understand, to know how to best channel or divert those energies to protect what’s important to you. 

Now a zone analysis is the placement of elements. So where you put, this is where you put your greenhouse, your, your vegetable garden, your ornamental garden. And a lot of, if you look up a permaculture zone analysis, a lot of times you’ll see pictures that are in concentric circles go radiating out from the house and that’s not necessarily always the case. It’s going to vary quite a bit based on your property, your, your layout.   

Your zone 0 is your living structure, that’s your home center, and some possible elements in this zone would include, say, herbs in your kitchen window, bird feeders, an attached greenhouse, your companion animals, water catchment from your gutters. Those are all elements that can be in or attached to your home. that can be incorporated into your permaculture design.  

Zone 1 are the elements that require the most care and or the most visits.  This is your preferred location for an herb garden or a kitchen garden that you’re going to be in nearly daily. 

This area typically starts right at your back door. And are the places that you walk by several times a day. Um, a small compost area for kitchen scraps. Quiet animals like rabbits, if you choose to raise rabbits. For pets or for meat, they could be included in this zone. And your zone 1 is the first place to be designed and developed. 

One of my favorite quotes from Bill Mollison that I’ve recited many, many times over the years, Um, he’s often quoted as saying, “if you need fresh herbs for your morning omelet and you can’t pick them without getting your fuzzy slippers wet, then you’re too far away.” And it’s for this reason that I put a small raised herb bed right outside my back door, um, just outside the covered porch. And I have oregano and rosemary and time parsley and chives all in that bed. Um, Oh, and I have sage in that bed too. So that way, You know, I can, I can go out if I wanted to, in my slippers. I usually slip on regular shoes, but you know, I mean, it’s right there, and I can go out and it’s like, okay, well, if I need, you know, rosemary for a chicken dish in the winter it’s not a big deal to go outside there if the weather’s nasty, it’s, it’s so close you hardly know.  So that’s the kind of things that, that are in your zone 1.  

Zone 2 are larger, less intensely managed annual and perennial vegetables, larger shrubs, smaller fruit trees, and some animals. It’s very well maintained and may include your chicken coop or greenhouse. 

If it’s a, you know, a chicken coop or a greenhouse, if you’re starting seedlings in a greenhouse, those you’re probably going to still go to at least once, if not twice a day, your vegetable garden, fruit trees, some of those things are going to be probably not even every day, uh, unless you’re harvesting. 

So, you know, and you want to continue as you go out. Even a zone two, you’re going to have, uh, even in an urban landscape in an apartment building that might be a common area outside or,  

And then you get into zones 3, 4, and 5 are not usually, you won’t normally see these in a more urban landscape, primarily due to lack of space, but uh, zone 3 is what we call the farm zone. This is where you, if you had commercial crops, uh, food forest, larger livestock and forage systems like beef, uh, sheep, goats, uh, large ponds, windbreaks, fire breaks, things like that are going to be in zone 3.  

Zone 4 is semi-wild, but still managed. This is like managed timber for firewood and lumber, the largest ranging animals, so again, cattle. Uh, it’s also for foraging and wildlife management.  

And then zone 5 is unmanaged wilderness used for foraging and hunting, if at all. And this is where we learn about the rules that we try to apply elsewhere in the system. So, when I lived in Anacortes, I had a small, very small lot corner lot and, you know, we obviously we couldn’t have a zone five on a tiny little lot in town, but we had the Anacortes forest lands, which are city main, you know, city-owned land that have hiking trails and lakes and, um, it’s an amazing area and that was, that was our zone. I mean, that is managed wilderness, but. It’s largely unmanaged other than the trails.  

Zone 4, semi-wild, but still managed. We kind of called, we had a city park that was like two blocks from our house. We called that our zone 4. It was a semi-wild area. There was some wildlife management. There were some trees. It wasn’t really managed for like firewood, like I was saying, but you know, there was, it was managed, but there was.  Um, it was more intensely managed than say a zone five.

So that kind of goes over some of the basic principles or concepts of permaculture. I will have some resources in the show notes to share with you. 

Resources

I will kind of give a one plug, Oregon State University has an introduction to permaculture course, and I will put a link to that in the show notes. 

Bill Mollison wrote Permaculture, a Designer’s Manual, and while it is an amazing book, I don’t recommend it for beginners because it is, it is a designer’s manual, it is a manual. It reads like a textbook, and so it can be a very difficult read, uh, for some people.

The book I always recommend for beginners or people who are just starting to learn is Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway. And when he wrote this book, he lived in, I think it was in Portland or in a suburb of Portland. I can’t remember for sure off the top of my head. So a lot of his plant choices and things like that carry over to much of Western Washington, uh, which is one of the reasons that I really like it. But he also puts a lot of the concepts into very clear and common language that’s easy for people to understand, uh, and makes it very, accessible. 

One thing I did mention that I didn’t go into too much depth on is herb spirals, and I would highly recommend doing some research on herb spirals. They are a great way to, uh, incorporate a lot of different kinds of herbs that actually have significantly different environmental requirements and conditions. 

So the general idea is this a spiral-shaped garden that’s about four feet in diameter. A vertical type of almost a vertical garden and like a, you know, it’s a spiral or like almost like a pyramid. And so it creates microclimates for all the different kinds of herbs. Uh, some designs have a little pond at the bottom, and by a little pond, I’m talking, I don’t know, maybe 18 inches in diameter. I mean, it’s like a little wet spot, um, that, uh, the, you know, you can put plants like wasabi.  Or you can have, it can be habitat for like frogs and things like that. And then as you go up and around the spiral, you can put a dry sun-loving herb like rosemary at the very top or lavender, because that’s gonna be the dry soil at the very top and the most sun-exposed. 

And then as you work your way down the sun spiral, the north side, you’ll have more shade and the lower will have more moisture. So something like cilantro that will bolt if it gets too warm, um, but it likes well-drained soil should be on the, like on the east side and basil would be on the south side because it likes full sun and moist soil. So on the south side toward the bottom would be the perfect spot for basil. So things like that.  

And I’ll try to include a picture of an herb spiral in the show notes as well so that you can can see what that looks like. And that’s something that I have always wanted to have, but we don’t really have a good place for it right now. Maybe someday.  

So it’s a very efficient use of space and it gives you a way to have pretty much any herbs that you would want. in one location and accommodates all of the varying requirements of those. So, um, just a little something I wanted to throw out there.  

If you found this interesting and want to learn more, please let me know and either you can Email me at hello@theevergreenthumb.org. But I’m always looking for ideas for more in-depth concepts, uh, for future episodes. And I hope this was informative without being too overwhelming. So thanks for listening.   

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