What is Permaculture?

Permaculture is about intelligent design that works with nature.  The basic premise of permaculture is to increase human sustainability by creating self-sufficient systems that literally become more than the sum of their parts.

That is to say, each aspect of the system (the soil, water, plants, and animals) is integrated in such a way to enhance the positive aspects of each other feature. This is not spiritualism or magic, though it may inspire such. Rather, these are tangible benefits such as shade, pollinators, mulch, weed-eating animals, nitrogen-fixers, and composting that stack throughout the systems to create positive feedback loops. While these designs are borrowing inspiration, patterns and design from nature, we’re doing so in order to provide for human needs such as food, clothing, construction materials, medicines, fuels, etc.

Food-based permaculture designs are typically centered around perennial, food-producing plants such as fruit or nut trees. An important aspect of these systems is layering plants of differing heights to capture the maximum amount of the sun’s energy. Tall trees, short trees, shrubs, herbs and vines do not lay in a two-dimensional grid like a typical vegetable garden, instead they reach up into three dimensions capturing light from above, below and all around. These systems will out-produce traditional systems in terms of energy, diversity, soil quality, and provision of habitat for wildlife.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is in need of creative solutions to take it from an industrial waste site to a livable city. It has come a long way and has strong communities which, given tools like permaculture, can move the United States to a more sustainable future.

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To read a more comprehensive description of permaculture, please visit the Wikipedia article or start searching the web.

For more external links, please visit our More Information section.