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This is a round up and review of all the books that were in print in 2001, which was published in Earthwatch magazine . This was pre-David Holmgren’s ‘Permaculture - principles and pathways beyond sustainability’ which I think is now (for me) the seminal text on permaculture, and Patrick Whitefield’s Earth Care Manual, but even so it takes in most of the essential titles.
“The question which must be addressed…is not how to care for the planet, but how to care for each of the planet’s millions of human and natural neighbourhoods, each of its millions of small pieces and parcels of land, each one of which is in some precious and exciting way different from all the others.� Wendell Berry 1989
Permaculture. It’s one of those words you see all over the place but what does it mean? Is it some odd offshoot of organic gardening? Is it like biodynamics or is it just some collection of Australian gardening techniques which is irrelevant to this climate? Well, in reality it is none of these, although it is often accused of being one or all of these on a regular basis. Permaculture is actually a design system, it is a highly useful tool for putting together all the different bits of a sustainable human settlement in the most effective way possible. It gives an invisible structure to designed systems from the scale of a balcony to an entire watershed which rather than being modelled on man made shapes and forms, draws its inspirations and its forms from natural patterns. It is also primarily about solutions, about putting in place practical solutions to environmental problems, taking responsibility ourselves rather than looking elsewhere for ‘them’ to sort things out (not to say that ‘they’ don’t have a lot to sort out as well!).
Permaculture was conceived in the 1970s by two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Originally they saw it as a ‘permanent agriculture’, that is, a form of agriculture which was modelled on natural ecosystems, using more trees, managing runoff and so on. However, as it evolved in subsequent years and publications it came to be a contraction of ‘permanent culture’, incorporating all the other aspects of a truly sustainable society, finance, power generation, social structures, housing and so on. It is now a global phenomenon, from ‘roof top gardening activists’ in St. Petersburg to complete permaculture makeovers of refugee camps in Macedonia, from urban sub-divisions designed entirely on permaculture principles in California to inner city food growing initiatives in the UK, permaculture is out there doing it, putting solutions in place.
The first two books to be published on Permaculture, Permaculture One by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and Permaculture Two by just Bill Mollison, are these days more like interesting historical documents, worth reading for interest’s sake but they have been superseded by subsequent publications. For many years they were the key texts, but once Permaculture - a Designer’s Manual came out, that all changed.
The Designers’ Manual is, despite being first published in 1988, still an extraordinary piece of work. For any disillusioned greenie or for people who say ‘well what CAN you do about it all?’, this 576 page magnum opus is a detailed practical agenda for designing sustainable human settlements and for preserving and extending natural systems. Its scope is astounding, as is the amount of practical information it includes. It covers the principles of permaculture and explains in detail the whole permaculture approach to design. It looks in detail at forms and patterns in nature and what we can learn from them in terms of design. Other chapters look at climatic factors, trees, water, soils and aquaculture, as well as in depth chapters on the different climatic types in the world. It concludes with a brilliant chapter on ‘The Strategies of an Alternative Global Nation’, which sets out in detail how a sustainable society could work.
The Designers Manual is a book that few people have read cover to cover, but which most of those who have picked it up have been deeply influenced by. The only criticism I could come up with for this ‘bible’ of permaculturists is that it has not been updated much over the last 13 years, and so some of the information in it has since been overtaken by more contemporary publications. This is a minor quibble however - everyone who is concerned about environment should have a copy of this book, it points the way forward in the clearest terms.
Mollison followed the Designers Manual up with Introduction to Permaculture, which, as the title suggests, is less in depth than the Designers Manual, but is a better place to start. It also goes into more detail on things like garden design and is a bit more ‘bite-sized’ than its predecessor.
While Mollison travelled the world teaching permaculture and spreading the word, David Holmgren bought a one hectare site in Hepburn, Victoria in Australia and set about creating a self-reliant lifestyle for his family based on the principles of permaculture. His work developing what later became known as ‘Hepburn Permaculture Gardens’ is documented in the book of the same name which he published in 1995. This is a book which contains 10 years experience and insight, and which is a brilliant example of permaculture design in practice. Unlike Mollison’s abrasive and more confrontational approach, Holmgren is a more humble man, working away, putting systems and models in place and then sharing his findings.
Another Australian permaculturist, Rosemary Morrow, who had been teaching Permaculture around the world for a while, published ‘The Earth Users Guide to Permaculture’, written more as a school textbook than Mollison’s books. However, rather than ‘dumbing down’ permaculture, she has distilled the essence into an easily understood format which makes it much more accessible. She outlines the principles and the components of permaculture design and then goes on to apply them to two situations, a s mall urban back garden and a farm. The book is clear and well-illustrated, and each chapter concludes with activities to help deepen your knowledge on that particular area. The book does have a leaning towards Australian plants and ecologies, but its clear elucidation of the principles and practice of permaculture make it a very accessible and useful place to start your permacultural studies.
As permaculture began to spread, books began to be pubished in other countries. One of the first to emerge from the UK was ‘Permaculture in a Nutshell’, by Patrick Whitefield. This excellent little book serves as a very good introduction to the subject, covering all the basic elements of the subject, as well as illustrating it with examples more relevant to this climate than many of the Australian books. It is an excellent little book to give to people who know nothing about permaculture. It is beautifully illustrated and is the only permaculture book that you can fit in your back pocket (if you have large back pockets).
The next UK publication to emerge was ‘Urban Permaculture’ by David Watkins. This is again a handy kind of a beginners book, with little of the depth that, say, Mollison’s books have, but it does have a lot of practical information for applying permaculture to urban situations. For such a small book it does contain a lot of information, and it is a very good place to start if you are in the city and want to start growing some of your own food, even on a balcony. Like the Designers Manual it does suffer slightly from having been written a while ago, and some of its ideas on, for example, waste water treatment have been much improved upon since. However, as a practical handbook and a call to action for city dwellers it has yet to be improved upon.
This as followed by two books by Graham Bell, the first of which “The Permaculture Way� is now out of print, and was basically a more accessible version of the Designers Manual for this climate. His second book “The Permaculture Garden� is still available and is an excellent book about actually putting it all into practice in your back garden. It contains excellent species lists for useful plants for a wide range of situations. The first chapter is a kind of philosophical treatise on why to garden, and is littered with beautiful quotes from literature about the joy of gardening. This book is crammed with useful ideas and is one of our best selling books.
The last two books I will talk about show how far permaculture has come since Mollison’s first books. Permaculture is now taught around the world, and the need became clear for support materials for permaculture teachers. It can be a lonely old business teaching permaculture because, until very recently, you had to make it up as you went along. The first title to attempt to fill this gap was “Earth Users Guide - Teachers’ Notes� by Rosemary Morrow. This is basically an accompanying volume to go with her previous book (see above). While interesting, I found it not very helpful in my teaching work, as it was largely geared to significantly warmer climates than ours here in Ireland. The next book “The Manual of Teaching Permaculture Creatively� by Skye and Robin Clanfield is wonderful. A huge great thick thing of a book, loose leaf for you to bind yourself (because they keep adding new bits to it) it sets out a completely new way of teaching permaculture, using games, roleplays, songs, visualisation, drawing, modelling, using all the senses. Often when using the ‘chalk and talk’ way of teaching you lose a good few of the people, who find it hard to learn like that. They fall asleep or they just switch off after a short while. This publication sets out lots of different exercises and activities to keep everyone interested and involved and is illustrated with some of the best line drawings I’ve ever seen in a book, really fun. Much of the stuff in here isn’t necessarily specific to permaculture, and would be useful to people teaching anything, looking for a way of teaching that involves everyone. The most recent book is the Permaculture Teachers Guide, a collaborative venture between the World Wildlife Fund, the Permaculture Association (Britain) and Permanent Publications. It is basically a compilation of the experience of the many teachers now working in the UK. Each section contains a lesson plan, setting out learning outcomes, material covered, exercises and further reading. It is invaluable for those teaching material they haven’t taught before to be able to get pointers from people who have already taught it. It also contains excellent advice on convening a course, all the practicalities of organisation and preparation as well as thoughts from some of the most experienced teachers on running permaculture courses. I find this an excellent resource and a perfect companion volume for ‘The Manual of Teaching Permaculture Creatively’.
There are other permaculture books in print, but these are the best ones I think. New titles are coming out all the time. It is an area which is growing very very fast, and probably the best place to keep your finger on the pulse is through the regular journals and magazines. The magazine most relevant to us here is Permaculture Magazine, produced in the UK. An excellent full colour magazine it contains excellent articles pulling together the growing body of knowledge from the permaculture community in the UK and beyond (there are regular bits from here as well). It improves with every issue and is turing into an excellent magazine which should be supported, as much as anything because the magazine funds the publication of their excellent books. My favourite permaculture magazine though is Permaculture Activist from the USA. Perhaps because permaculture has been there longer or has somehow acquired more accumulated wisdom, the Activist is full of real insight and practical stuff which makes every issue a real resource you can return to for reference again and again. Each issue has a theme, Village Design, Food and Medicine and Pattern Knowledge and Understanding and contains a wealth of articles on those topics. For me the issue on Natural Building was particularly exciting, but every new issue is much anticipated at Walnut Books Towers.
Permaculture is a toolkit for practical sustainability offering a clear way out of the mess that we find ourselves in, a way based on ethics of care for the earth and for its peoples. If you want to start somewhere the titles above are as good as any or else come on a course, a number of which are run around the country. I’ll close with a quote from Graham Bell in ‘The Permaculture Garden’. “World population is increasing. Oil is running out. We could take these as a doom-and-gloom scenario, or, if you take my tip, you’ll garden. Growing your own food, making tiny part-acres into vibrant ,mini-forests, is a direct and positive reaction to set things right�.