Permaculture: A toolbox worth opening

Close up of a bee on a bright pink and red Echinacea purpurea flower. — A bee visiting Echinacea purpurea. PHOTO: SHANA HOSTETTER

By Julie McLeod
This article was updated April 2023. It was originally published in May 2020.

Monarch butterfly on a tall stem of Liatrus spicata, Dense Blazing star (a plant with bright purplish-pink pom-pom like flowers) — WABANAKI SOVEREIGNTY

Any discussion of Permaculture would be incomplete without an acknowledgement that the land we all live and work on, the land now known as Maine, was originally inhabited and stewarded by the Wabanaki people (today, the Wabanaki Confederacy consists of four tribes). If we are to adhere to the ethics of permaculture, as a first step, we must work towards honoring the Wabanaki people by joining them in their ongoing efforts for sovereignty. Current calls for action can be found on at wabanakialliance.com.
*Photo: Monarch gathering nectar on* Liatrus spicata, Dense Blazing star. Photo by Seana Cullinan.

THESE PAST FEW YEARS have seen a surge of interest in gardening and homesteading, from baby chicks and garden supplies to rain barrels and community supported agriculture (CSA) memberships. It is no surprise that we are also seeing an increasing interest in the Permaculture landscape design approach.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the fragility of industrial food systems and supply chains as well as the existing racial inequalities in our health, economic, education and criminal justice systems. We are more keenly aware of the effects of a changing climate when it comes to our food supply, from droughts and flooding to extreme temperature fluctuations. Played out before us on a larger scale than ever before, we are seeing how ecological, economic and social-cultural systems are all connected and interrelated. But interest in climate advocacy and resilient food systems are signs of hope amidst the challenges facing humanity. And permaculture is one of the tools that can move us from an extractive to a regenerative system, starting right outside our doorsteps.

What is permaculture?

Permaculture is a landscape design approach born out of observations of natural systems and the role that humans play in those systems. A concept and term developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s, permaculture draws from indigenous and traditional cultures and encompasses land use, food, water, energy, shelter and socioeconomic systems.

What began as “permanent agriculture” evolved to “permanent culture” and eventually “permaculture.” The primary goal of this approach is to create resilient human habitats and healthy ecosystems. Modeled on natural patterns and ecological principles, permaculture uses a design approach that looks at whole systems, giving thoughtful attention to the placement and purpose of each element in the system—person, plant, animal or structure—with the understanding that everything is interrelated.

Why now?

Previous waves of interest in permaculture methods and techniques have largely been in response to environmental crises, population growth, fear of resource shortages, and the organic and DIY movements. Permaculture gives us a lens through which to view these crises and a toolbox packed with solutions. These tools include land use approaches, such as edible landscaping with primarily perennial foods, rainwater catchment and storage, soil health preservation using local biological resources, native pollinator gardens, no-till agriculture and the creation of food forests by mimicking natural ecosystems. Permaculture’s design method and set of ethics and principles can be used to not only design landscapes of urban lots, homesteads, and farms at any scale but also organizations, a business or a community project.

Permaculture involves being design-oriented (with an ecological bent) as you create or recreate any system. As architect Christopher Alexander wrote in A Pattern Language:

“This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it.”

— christopher alexander, a pattern language

Mixed bed of pollinator plants in a Portland garden, including Monarda Fistulosa, Echinacea purpurea, Pycnanthemum spp., and Eupatorium Dubium.

Wildlife pond in Yarmouth, Maine designed by Leeward Fine Gardening

A frog resting on a flat rock in the Portland wildlife pond.

The critical importance of native plants

The planet is in a time of profound challenge and change, not only as a result of the pandemic but from decades of environmental damage. Bird and insect populations have declined drastically, which, in turn, has affected the entire food web. So it is more important than ever to create wildlife-friendly habitats by incorporating swaths of native plants in our landscapes any chance we get—and, more specifically, to include as many keystone species as possible.

Keystone species are plants that have far larger effects than others on the abundance and diversity of other species in an ecosystem. The White Oak, for example, is a keystone species hosting more lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) than any other species we have countrywide. Not everyone has the space to plant an oak tree, of course, but we can all work to protect the oaks that exist and choose to support the larval stage of lepidoptera by replacing lawns with native groundcovers underneath oak trees (and other host trees), as well as maintaining leaf litter to house our overwintering wildlife friends. We must support and consider wildlife in every patch of land we have an opportunity to help heal.

Doug Tallamy, an entomologist, ecologist and author of Nature’s Best Hope, among many others, promotes the idea that if everyone restores native habitat on a portion of the land where we live and work, we can create a biologically rich and diverse connected land mass amounting to the largest park system in the country. He calls this initiative Homegrown National Park.®

Design for a privacy food forest hedge for a small suburban lot.

Designing landscapes according to permaculture’s principles

Are you ready to apply permaculture to your home landscape? Depending on interpretation, it has up to 17 design principles and three ethics—earth care, people care and fair share—that are the guiding tools used to link appropriate techniques, strategies, elements or approaches in a design that results in a whole and balanced system serving all who are affected and involved.

One of the principles in permaculture is called stacking functions. When choosing a design element or a plant, we first make sure it has at least three functions, whether those are serving a purpose or solving a problem. For instance, blueberries feed people, but they are also an important source of food for pollinators, and they are a perennial shrub which disrupts the soil food web less than annual crops. By integrating native plants with high wildlife value into our backyard plan, we can help make those ecosystems whole again.

Another principle is relative location, or putting things in the right relationship to one another to save time and energy and reduce waste. For example, if you set up a rain barrel, put it near the garden beds you need to water and by a place where the overflow water can be of benefit, such as a rain garden or a swale planted with fruiting shrubs. In nature, everything cycles in a closed loop, and we can try to mimic that in our own systems. Nature does not know the term “waste.”

When you use the biological and renewable resources principle, like composting for use in your own gardens or growing your own trellis material, your need for outside inputs decreases along with your fossil fuel usage.

The principle of gain a yield has to do with reducing costs and increasing soil health, and it reminds us to plant both crops that will feed us in the short term and perennial crops that will feed us (and the birds and insects) for years to come. Compared to annual crops, perennials are more drought-tolerant, develop deeper roots and grow earlier in the spring, providing food sooner than most annuals can. Perennial vegetable crops that do well in Maine and can provide nourishment from April to November include sea kale, sorrel, lovage, ground nuts, climbing perennial spinach and, of course, rhubarb and asparagus.

The ethic of fair share, or setting limits and distributing the surplus, may be demonstrated by planting a few extra rows of vegetables or allocating your bumper crop of peaches to meet the growing needs of food pantries around the state. In Maine, groups such as The Resilience Hub and members of Portland Maine Permaculture coordinate garden mentoring programs as well as weekly resource-sharing events, connecting growers and gleaners to places where they can donate their extra harvest to community members in need.

Another solution to surpluses could be coordinating a growing plan with your community. If your neighbor loves to grow cucumbers and you have a better microclimate for greens, why not arrange to swap? Surplus planning is an important part of a permaculture design, now more than ever. We can all apply these ethics and principles in our everyday lives to projects of any scale, from the home to the neighborhood to the community and beyond.

In a time when many people feel isolated, there are so many opportunities for connections if we look closely, observe nature and design accordingly. All over the world, we are seeing examples of human resilience that we can share, celebrate and build upon with creativity and innovation. What tools will you pull out of your toolbox and use to design a more just and resilient future?