What is permaculture anyway?

I won't lie—It's been a long slog, trying to grow readership for my writings on gardening and ecologically sound farming techniques. I can lay the blame on sloppy writing (I'm getting better!) or the crappy platform I used to write at (Substack rocks!). Also there is absolutely fierce competition for readers' attention, since there's lots of money to be made as interest in permaculture and other nature-friendly gardening styles skyrockets. However I think there's another factor that should be recognized. In most cases I can't provide readers with a list of rules or techniques to follow to reach success. The main gist of my school of thought is that there are no clear answers, and you need to figure out a lot on your own. This message is not always popular.

Believing that each site and each gardener has specific characteristics and needs is what attracted me to permaculture. Bill Mollison, one of the founders of this system, was very clear that dogma had no place in it. Permaculture was meant to be a set of principles (12) within an framework of ethics (3). Acting within that framework, practitioners would make decisions based on personal needs and abilities and the specific climate and conditions in which they lived and worked. However, to make it quickly accessible to newcomers, permaculture is often presented as a list of plants and techniques: Grow comfrey to chop and drop for mulch. Use logs and sticks to make hugelkultur beds. Dig swales to facilitate tree growth. While swales, comfrey, and hugelkultur are often used in permaculture, they do not define it. They are merely very useful things that fit within the framework of permaculture, and that many practitioners find beneficial and do-able. Researching the most common elements of permaculture and utilizing them on your site might work for you, or it might not. I write about what has worked for me in the hope of elucidating a process, rather that recommending specific elements.

I have some elements commonly used in permaculture, because they provide something for me. I grow the sterile type of comfrey because it makes a good barrier against weeds and provides wonderful material for mulching and composting. It has pretty flowers that attract pollinators and it is totally care and disease-free. I don't have any hugelkultur beds because the time and effort to scrounge sticks and logs and build beds just doesn't make sense when I have quite literally tons of manure with which to build fertile soil on the farm. Building hugelkultur beds is more work than simply cleaning out the barn and using the product at hand. I also don't have swales, which are basically ditches that cause water to infiltrate slowly and remain available to tree roots for an extended period. Creating swales could potentially provide benefits like faster tree growth, but on the farm there are long term solutions to the problem of inadequate moisture for trees, including not planting them where it's too hard to provide for their needs, and planting natives that are completely adapted to conditions here. It's cheaper and easier for me to use the low input, low labor solutions, and just be patient as my trees grow.

Figuring out what works best has been a process that includes lots of experimentation, observation, and introspection. Every site is different and practitioners have varying needs and desires. I often feel I'm writing the same post, over and over, explaining in different ways how important it is to figure out for yourself what works best, rather than doing what everyone else is doing. I think this concept of figuring things out through practice is the most difficult part for beginners who are struggling to understand permaculture as a system for decision-making. The principles of permaculture are pretty straight-forward and backed by common sense, but it's the how of implementation that trips beginners up. Think of practice in the sense doing something over and over in an effort to improve, like playing musical scales. It takes a long time, but the results are worth it. It might not be the message many reader are looking for, but it you're patient, it will work.