Permaculture Teachers Speak about Permaculture

by Marcia Boruta

When Wes Roe asked me to help edit this special issue, I jumped at the chance. My assignment was to summarize responses from 13 permaculture teachers to an email questionnaire developed by Bob Banner, Wes Roe, Margie Bushman and myself.

As a newcomer to Permaculture (I first heard the term in 1999), I was curious to read what seasoned practitioners had to say. I mulled over the 10,000 thoughtful words we received and faced the challenge of choosing only 2,000 for this article. Here's what permaculture teachers say about permaculture what it is, why they do it, and what the future holds.

DEFINING PERMACULTURE

We asked respondents, "Please define permaculture in your own words." Anyone who's struggled to answer this will be reassured by Dan Hemenway's response: "It cannot be defined, which means, literally, to put boundaries on it. It is like defining poetry, only more so."

Despite this constraint, respondents provided a rich collection of ways to define the undefinable (see box on pps. 14-15).

FINDING INSPIRATION

To find out why permaculture teachers are doing what they're doing, we asked two questions: "What brought you to permaculture?" and "What has inspired you the most about permaculture?"

Some of the early adopters came to permaculture through farming and organic gardening:

Robyn Francis: "A natural progression. Early '70s I was organic gardening and observing traditional (non-chemical) farming systems in my travels around the world and dreamed of buying land to develop as a botanic garden of useful plants arranged like natural ecosystems. Got back to Australia in 1977 and a dude by the name of Bill Mollison was talking the same thing but a quantum leap further down the track. So, Permaculture was a natural next step."

Over the years, the search for sustainable living strategies has brought others:

Joanne Tippett: "What brought me to permaculture was a passionate belief in the need to change how we live and a hope for a more fulfilling way to do so."

Scott Pittman: "Permaculture was the perfect discipline for me, it combines my deep commitment to environmental health of the planet with practical solutions that have worked over the ages."

Penny Livingston: "I wanted to create a livelihood that resonated with my values."

What inspires people about permaculture can be summed up in two words "positive" and "practical":

Sindhu Lawton: "Permaculture will enhance life in general for all the people of the world and with beneficial effects to the planet."

Michael Kramer: "Its positive stance in the face of cynicism, and the ways in which its tenets can be applied to all human systems rather than just land-based systems."

Dan Hemenway: "It works. I was making some of it work before the term was coined, but I didn't have a name for it. It is an approach to designing our lives, lifestyles, and immediate environments that has a chance of pulling the fat out of the fire, of maybe saving our species, and millions of others, from extinction. I have children and now grandchildren. The future is important to me."

FAILURE & SUCCESS

We asked two routine interview questions: "What failures have you witnessed and what was the result of the failures?" and "What has been the most successful permaculture design/method/ experiment that you personally participated in?" A number of teachers reminded us of basic permaculture lessons:

Larry Santoyo: "This is an easy answer because in Permaculture Design we really don't describe things as failures. Failure connotes that a project has ended. But like nature, Permaculture Design doesn't end. We evaluate and adjust for productivity. The only failures would be 'failure to adjust'."

Sindhu Lawton: "I believe that soil building has to be our number-one goal and, with good mulching practices, including 'chop and drop' and living mulches, we can have no failures as such. The only failure comes in bad design which causes erosion and soil loss. All other mistakes are only temporary and should be turned into lessons, and the knowledge shared."

The most common "failure" noted by respondents was misinformation:

Michael Kramer: "People sometimes think permaculture is the child of biodynamics or that it is the sum of certain techniques rather than seeing the design process as the cornerstone of the approach. This has resulted in a narrow national understanding of Permaculture and its potential applications. It is largely because of this that Permaculture has yet to take hold in America, which I consider a failure to date."

Larry Santoyo: "Sometimes I hear people say that Permaculture is about gardening or about building with straw or some other technique they learned or heard about. I think that some students and many teachers have failed to 'get' that the hands-on techniques that we teach in Permaculture Design are to reinforce the theory. The theoretical base of Permaculture is the most important thing we have to teach. It's what sets us apart from other design disciplines. You can learn how to do a technique from many places, but the most important thing about Permaculture is learning why and when it is most appropriate to use a technology."

Robyn Francis: "Most failures I have seen with people attempting Permaculture have been due to inappropriate applications of specific techniques and not understanding the principles behind them. Beware of permadogma doing things from the book, by the book without looking at the individual situation and applying the principles to find the most appropriate solution."

Respondents cited success stories:

Christopher Peck: "My own business, Holistic Solutions, is a financial planning and socially responsible investment advisory firm based on Permaculture principles. We are growing and thriving!"

Rick Valley: "Lost Valley Educational Center and Linnea Farm may not appear that spectacular but they are both proceeding at a sustainable rate and aren't dependent on one individual or source of funds. Also, both are teaching a great many people."

Sindhu Lawton: "I have been involved in many success stories, but the one I have been most involved in outside of Australia is our Jordan project. We have been working on a 10-acre project there in conjunction with local and Japanese aid."

Mike Collins: "So far the most successful Perm experiment I have been involved in is at Davis Bynum winery, an organic winery with a yen for experimentation in Permaculture."

Robyn Francis: "The past eight years of creating my Permaculture cornucopia here at Djanbung Gardens is definitely the most successful design and experiment I've personally participated in."

Michael Kramer: "A Permaculture Curriculum by Christopher Peck and myself, which hasn't yet been published, is really the best how-to-teach Permaculture guide I've seen. Also, I've designed and facilitated workshops for schoolteachers on how to integrate Permaculture into academic" programs.

Scott Pittman: "Madre de Selva in Ecuador is the most successful project I've participated in. This is a food plant nursery with over 300 varieties of tropical fruit species, which provides seeds and seedlings to regional farmers and homesteaders."

Holger Hieronimi: "There have been several successes: Granja TAMU in Michoacan/ Mexico transformation of one hectare of sterile alkaline land into a multi-productive forest-garden; Escuela "Ollini" in Tepoztlan, Morelos a small school garden where the kids grew vegetables in biointensive gardens; Proyecto Granja Huehue in Huehuecoyotl ecovillage in Tepoztlan, Morelos community garden and several family gardens as well as general ecovillage designs(rainwater catchment; gray/blackwater treatment/recycling;eco-construction) for an intentional community and ecovillage of around 25 residents."

Penny Livingston: "Our PINC [Permaculture Institute of Northern California] garden has been more successful than I ever dreamed. People come from all over and often have an emotional response to the feeling of connection and the possibility of healing our relationship with our environment."

Larry Santoyo: "My favorite designs don't include plants(directly). I helped open a restaurant with some friends a few years back, and because Permaculture is really a 'connecting' system, this restaurant best illustrates the Permaculture principle of 'stacking functions' and 'harmonics.' It served not only as an outlet for local organic food and a very cool place to 'see and be seen,' but also as an art gallery, a music venue, a gift shop, an office and meeting room. All of those ventures were tried before, as separate businesses, but were never productive until, as in nature, they were all linked together! It has continued to evolve since then and is still in business today."

We also asked the teachers about the permaculture curriculum: "The 72-hour Permaculture Design Course is a teaching tool for introducing people to the Principles of Permaculture Design, the ethics, and their application to living systems. What are your thoughts on the Permaculture Design Course as a teaching tool?" This question generated the most response, but for this article, suffice it to say, there was general praise for the curriculum and many suggestions for adjustments to make it more productive.

THE FUTURE

Finally, we asked the teachers: "What needs to be done in order to get Permaculture ethics/design/methodology/systems to become more potent and influential within the mainstream?"

Christopher Peck: "Everyone should read Holmgren's article about the future of Permaculture from several years ago. It strongly influenced my current course. He makes the point that we don't need 'Permaculture designers' or 'Permaculturists.' He suggests that what we need are people of all professions landscape architects, builders, bankers, bakers, etc., to take on the ethics and principles of Permaculture and apply them from within their professions to slowly transform them into what we want. The mainstream is not walking around thinking, 'I need Permaculture,' or 'I need a comprehensive design methodology that can help me model all human systems on nature's principles.' They are walking around with needs and dreams that Permaculture is uniquely well-suited to satisfy. My strategy is that we build businesses that satisfy people's needs, while simultaneously regenerating the natural world and human communities."

Joanne Tippett: "To bring Permaculture into the mainstream, we need a wide range of classes and courses that introduce people to the concepts through practical work in projects of local interest, projects that add to the local environment, and through which people learn skills and gain a greater awareness of the environment."

Holger Hieronimi: "Sometimes it seems that the mainstream has to get a bit more sensitive to holistic design. Permaculture has always had difficulties getting into the universities, because all those specialists cannot tolerate the design philosophy that integrates forestry, agriculture, horticulture, silviculture, architecture, geography, biology, chemistry, anthropology, etc. Permaculture probably shouldn't be promoted so much as 'a package.' Working in Latin America I found it more successful to just promote some of the 'best practices,' just starting here and now with what they have available."

Dan Hemenway: "We need to walk our talk and be ready to help those who ask for it. Our emphasis needs to be on education, initially, and incorporating Permaculture into our cultures. And, Bill's maxim comes to mind: We have to stop being impressed by people who have money."

Penny Livingston: "We need to cultivate more teachers and practitioners who are not making other people and mainstream culture 'wrong.' This does more to alienate people than anything else I know."

Michael Kramer: "There should be Permaculture degree programs in major universities or community colleges, and more on-the-ground demonstration sites on single-family suburban lots."

Michael Lockman: "We need more books like Toby Hemenway's [Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture]! Translate the jargon into words that anyone can understand."

Larry Santoyo: "I think Permaculture is potent and I think it has become influential. When I first started teaching Permaculture, almost 15 years ago, very few people had even heard of it; today there are literally thousands of projects, courses, and design trainees all over the world. But it is not the term we want to have power, it is the ethics. It doesn't matter if we call it Permaculture. We want people to rethink how they participate in the landscape; to 'care for the earth and care for people,' not know what Permaculture is. This goes back to the ecological principle of natural succession and evolution. We simply need more and more of the same: Permaculture lectures, workshops, design courses, and articles, wherever we can get it. Permaculture has come a long way; it has gotten this far, first of all, because it's a good idea, secondly, because our educational outreach hasn't stopped. It's on a roll, with a life of its own!"

Marcia Boruta is Director of the San Diego Permaculture Center. If you are interested in seeing the entire collection of answers, contact HopeDance editor Bob Banner at (805) 544-9663 or email him at editor@hopedance.org.

WHAT IS PERMACULTURE? IN THEIR OWN WORDS... "Whole-systems design for sustainable living with an emphasis on the human ecology." Mike Collins (California & Baja Mexico) sonoperm@monitor.net "In a nutshell, Permaculture is both a philosophy and an interdisciplinary design system to create sustainable ecosystems which support human needs in a way that treads lightly on the earth and which respects, conserves and regenerates natural ecosystems. The principles of Permaculture are based on ecology and can be applied to all climates and environments from the city to the wilderness, from the backyard to the bioregion. Permaculture is dancing with nature where nature leads the dance." Robyn Francis (Australia) <permed@nor.com.au> www.earthwise.org.au "Permaculture is a wholistic design philosophy with an ethical foundation and a penchant for practicality." Dan Hemenway (Florida) http://barkingfrogspc.tripod.com/frames.html "Permanent Agriculture = Permanent Culture. No society, no culture is sustainable without sustainable agricultural practices. Permaculture is a holistic design philosophy to develop productive agro-eco-systems, which satisfy human needs without destroying the natural environment. Permaculture is a whole range of sustainable, ecological and energy-saving techniques and lifestyles." Holger Hieronimi (Mexico) tierramor@laneta.apc.org "Permaculture is a design science for living and non-living systems that provide for human needs in a way that enhances the environment." Sindhu Lawton (Australia) <pri@permaculture.org.au> www.permaculture.org.au "Permaculture is a design science, based on observation, that integrates all human activities into a whole system based on natural patterning and ecology. In a word, Permaculture = Relationship." Penny Livingston (California) pinc@svn.net / www.permacultureinstitute.com "I always quote Bill, who said it best: 'Permaculture seeks the garden of Eden, and why not?'" Christopher Peck (California) www.Holistic-Solutions.net "Permaculture is a design system based on ecological processes. Those natural processes, which have proven sustainable over thousands of years, are then applied to the human-created environment with the intention of living sustainably." Scott Pittman (New Mexico) pci@permaculture-inst.org "Permaculture is a strategy for land-use planning and design that uses indicators of sustainability found in all natural ecosystems. Permaculture Design is best suited for designing economic development programs and community social services. Permaculture Design provides the practical aspects of the philosophy of 'all things being connected.' Permaculture is a noun, but it is not a place that you can visit. It is almost more of a verb. You use Permaculture Principles to design a place that you can visit. Permaculture is the process, not the place!" Larry Santoyo (California) <santoyo@earthflow.com> www.earthflow.com "Ecological systems design that works with ecological principles to increase productivity, enhance the local environment and biodiversity, work with the character of the landscape and increase the possibilities for a vibrant local economy." Joanne Tippett (California & England) <jo@holocene.net> www.holocene.net "I like Lea Harrison's 'design of sustainable human habitats.' I've never tried to define it." Rick Valley (Oregon) www.teleport.com/~dbrooks/bamboo.html