The Origins of Permaculture

By the mid 1980s, many students of permaculture had become successful practitioners and had begun teaching the permaculture techniques that they had learned.

In the mid 1970s, Dr. Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, Australian ecologists, began developing ideas
about how to create stable agricultural systems. They were concerned about the growing use of
agricultural methods that they felt were destructive, poisoning the water and land, reducing biodiversity,
and removing billions of tons of soil from previously fertile areas. They called their design approach
“permaculture” and in 1978 published Permaculture One.

Mollison and Holmgren went on to further refine their ideas by designing hundreds of permaculture sites and writing more detailed books. Mollison lectured on permaculture in over 80 countries and taught a two-week design course to hundreds of students. By the early 1980s, permaculture had expanded to encompass a holistic design process for building sustainable human habitats as well as agricultural systems.

By the mid 1980s, many students of permaculture had become successful practitioners and had begun
teaching the permaculture techniques that they had learned. Soon permaculture groups, associations,
projects, and institutes were established in over 100 countries.

Permaculture has evolved since its origins. Patrick Whitefield, an English permaculture teacher and author of The Earth Care Manual and Permaculture in a Nutshell, describes two strands of permaculture: the original permaculture and design permaculture. The original permaculture tries to replicate nature by developing edible ecosystems that closely resemble their wild counterparts. Design permaculture uses the connections already at work in an ecosystem as a starting point. The results might not look as natural but they are still based on ecological principles.

Today permaculture comprises an international movement that seeks to address environmental and social problems through the application of intelligent design.

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