Written by Lisa Gross
I just got home from Toby Hemenway‘s workshop, “Permaculture Solutions for City and Suburb.” It was very inspiring. He spent much of the day focusing on neighborhood level permaculture, and specifically the work of the Portland, OR based organization City Repair.
Last night’s talk, entitled “What Does Permaculture Look Like” was the best talk on permaculture I’ve ever seen. He really distilled down the essence of permaculture in a very clear and compelling way. What really struck me was how permaculture’s principles can be used in so many different contexts and can be applied to such a variety of situations.
Below are some of my notes from the talk and Toby’s version of the main principles of Permaculture.
Notes:
-Permaculture – a decision making tool and approach to developing strategies–when and how we use our tools. It’s a problem solving approach, a design approach, a set of principles for creating sustainable systems.
-What does nature do to create regenerative systems? What can we learn from nature that will help us create systems that are abundant, diverse, and self-sustaining?
ETHICS AND PRINCIPLES OF PERMACULTURE (As Presented by Toby Hemenway)
Ethics:
• Care for the Earth • Care for People • Return the Surplus
Primary Principles for Functional Design:
1. Observe. Use protracted and thoughtful observation rather than prolonged and thoughtless action. Observe the site and its elements in all seasons. Design for specific sites, clients, and cultures.
2. Connect. Use relative location: Place elements in ways that create useful relationships and time-saving connections among all parts. The number of connections among elements creates a healthy, diverse ecosystem, not the number of elements.
3. Catch and store energy and materials. Identify, collect, and hold useful flows. Every cycle is an opportunity for yield, every gradient (in slope, charge, heat, etc.) can produce energy. Re-investing resources builds capacity to capture yet more resources.
4. Each element performs multiple functions. Choose and place each element in a system to perform as many functions as possible. Beneficial connections between diverse components create a stable whole. Stack elements in both space and time.
5. Each function is supported by multiple elements. Use multiple methods to achieve important functions and to create synergies. Redundancy protects when one or more elements fail.
6. Make the least change for the greatest effect. Find the “leverage points” in the system and intervene there, where the least work accomplishes the most change.
7. Use small scale, intensive systems. Start at your doorstep with the smallest systems that will do the job, and build on your successes, with variations. Grow by chunking.
Principles for Living and Energy Systems
8. Optimize edge. The edge—the intersection of two environments—is the most diverse place in a system, and is where energy and materials accumulate or are tranformed. Increase or decrease edge as appropriate.
9. Collaborate with succession. Systems will evolve over time, often toward greater diversity and productivity. Work with this tendency, and use design to jump-start succession when needed.
10. Use biological and renewable resources. Renewable resources (usually living beings and their products) reproduce and build up over time, store energy, assist yield, and interact with other elements.
Attitudes
11. Turn problems into solutions. Constraints can inspire creative design. “We are confronted by insurmountable opportunities.”—Pogo (Walt Kelly)
12. Get a yield. Design for both immediate and long-term returns from your efforts: “You can’t work on an empty stomach.” Set up positive feedback loops to build the system and repay your investment.
13. The biggest limit to abundance is creativity. The designer’s imagination and skill limit productivity and diversity more than any physical limit.
14. Mistakes are tools for learning. Evaluate your trials. Making mistakes is a sign you’re trying to do things better
Tags: permaculture, toby hemenway
I’m sorry to have missed it. I’m glad it went well.