What is permaculture?

Hello, friends! Another busy week has come and gone. Three months have now passed since I got home from my first year of university, I can’t believe that summer is almost over for me now. Time just flies. That’s why you have to live in the moment, right? We are going to talk about one of my most enlightening working experiences to date to answer the question: what is permaculture? 

This post is inspired by the completion of my internship this past month. In April I was fortunate enough to be hired by Robert Cordy, an enthusiastic, passionate permaculturalist who has done work all around the world to better the lives of others. When I started this internship, I didn’t know much about permaculture, let alone what it really was. Prior experience or knowledge of permaculture was not required for the role, mainly because we would be learning so much about it during the job (and I definitely learned a lot!) Even from reading definitions and explanations of it online, permaculture is really hard to define with words; it is one of those things you can only fully understand by getting your hands dirty and doing it. Nonetheless, I am going to use my own experience to give you a first-person perspective of permaculture, and how important it is to know about.

What is permaculture?

With permaculture being such a complex thing that can only truly be understood through practical application, it is not known about by society in general. Like I said, I didn’t even know what permaculture was until I found the position during my job search. However, I think it is so important for everyone to know about permaculture. Why? Because it may be a solution to the food distribution issue we face around the world. If you haven’t read my food insecurity blog post, I strongly suggest you do so now to familiarize yourself with the issue.

For an extremely quick explanation that doesn’t even cover one-tenth of the issue, food insecurity is essentially the concern an individual or household has that they won’t have enough food to support themselves. Food insecurity includes not only the concern over your ability to afford food in the future but also includes physically skipping meals for days or even weeks. This can occur because an individual may not have funds or access to safe, sufficient amounts of food. Access can be limited by location, extreme environmental conditions or conflict (like war over resources) between regions. In essence, food insecurity is a major problem that an estimated 815 million people in the world currently face.

If you’ve visited the blog before, you probably recall me discussing how I want to travel the world to work with marginalized communities and help them develop strong, sustainable food systems. As I now know, permaculture is a way to achieve my dream.

Permaculture cannot be defined in one way, because it is made of so many systems relying on each other, working together to make one functional unit. To get a better understanding of it, I want you to think of these words when you hear the word permaculture: natural, organic, sustainable, self-sufficient, design, culture, social, relationships. In other words, permaculture is a design practice that uses nature as its model to build holistic, regenerative systems. For greater clarity, I’ll discuss the big permaculture project I worked on during my internship.

The internship team was given the task of redesigning the entire front garden outside of St. Gabriel’s Parish in North York, Toronto. We could have designed a nice, colourful garden full of pretty flowers, which would have died at the end of the season. If they were non-native flowers, they could potentially pollinate other areas with their non-native seeds. This could impact the native wildlife if they end up competing for resources against the stronger non-native species. Needless to say, our team did our research and did not plant any non-native plants just for aesthetics. Instead, we decided to make a native food forest, using permaculture design practices to do so.

The Hugelkultur Lasagna

To be more specific, we used a design technique called hugelkultur. This funny word describes a way of making garden beds out of natural, decomposing materials, which allows the garden to be a highly efficient, self-sufficient system. Think of a lasagna: you have the layers of thick pasta noodles, which act as the base to support the lasagna. In hugelkultur, fallen logs and tree trunks act as the pasta noodles, some logs cut into small rounds like called “tree cookies” and others left their full length. These logs are placed at the base of the bed, setting the shape for the bed. For the filling of the lasagna, you have various organic materials: old decaying leaves from autumn, old grass from when the lawn was mowed, and trimmed tree branches. For the lasagna’s sauce, we used things like peat, compost made on-site the year prior, and soil from the garden. Some people like their lasagna fancy and put some garnishing on it. For our garnishing, we have trees, bushes and any other plants that would be grown on the bed. I know it’s a silly reference, but for the visual learners out there this will hopefully make some sense!

A food forest is a permaculture design that involves growing all sorts of different food plants together. This includes fruits, veggies, herbs and more. Despite the complexity of these food forests, the cool thing about them is that they require minimal care after the initial planting and the first year or two of growth. Of course, the plants need time to adjust to their new home, get their roots settled in the ground, and adapt to the various other conditions created by the neighbouring plants. Once they are adapted, the forest can grow pretty much on its own, just like a normal forest. This is because the plants rely on one another for nutrients, energy and support!

Plant symbiosis

Let’s say an apple tree drops its fruits on the ground. The fallen apples will release their amazing nutrients into the soil as they decompose. Those nutrients are then absorbed by the soil, enriching it to become a nutrient-dense, high-quality fertilizer which can then feed the neighbouring plants with their required nutrients. The highly nutritious soil is an excellent place for mycorrhizae (fungi that grow and latch onto plant roots), which provide the plants they are attached to with an even greater ability to take up nutrients like phosphorus, further enhancing the plant’s growth. When a plant finally dies, its decomposing stem, leaves and roots become another nutrient source for the soil.

As the plants grow and live together, they build this awesome symbiotic relationship with each other, finding an optimal soil pH, moisture and light level for all of the plants to grow in together. One plant may grow taller than another, accessing more sunlight because it needs it; another shorter plant is shaded by the taller one, providing it with its own optimal level of light every day. At the same time, the shorter plant may drop nutrient-dense fruits, which the roots of the taller plant absorb as the fruit breaks down so that it can grow even taller. See what I mean? This is also called complementary planting, where one plant’s growth cycle directly interacts with and benefits from the growth cycle of another plant. Cool, right?

This systematic pattern is what permaculture is all about. Understanding the environment you’re working in and the plants you can grow there is key. Figuring out how to build a system that can support itself while being highly productive is also essential. A permaculturalist is similar to an engineer that is building a new software system for a client, or a child building an intricate palace on Minecraft (yes, I had to use that reference. This is what happens when I’m around kids at camp for too long). Instead of wires, glass, and screens like the engineers and children are using, permaculturalists are using soil, plants, water and sunlight.

Building the beds

For our project, we created our food forest by first removing all of the existing plants that were growing in the area. The plants were all dead anyway because of the constant freeze-thaw cycles we had over the winter, and because they were not tended to very well over the years. We kept all of the cut-up plant parts in biodegradable brown garden bags you can get from Canadian Tire. After the area was stripped bare, the real work started. For some parts of the garden, we dug trenches several feet deep. After that, into the trenches, we threw these beautifully pigmented dogwood branches to cover the base.

We then added soil, decaying plant debris that we got from cleaning up the site, added more soil, sprinkled bright red peat all across the area, then repeated all of the steps again. A big lasagna! By the time we were done and had put a final layer of soil over the top of the bed, we had a mountain-like structure sticking out of the ground. If you were just passing by the church and saw us working, you’d probably scratch your head in confusion and think we were just making a big pile of dirt! It’s like the saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover. Or, it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Regardless, what I’m trying to say is that these piles of dirt were much more than just piles of dirt. These “piles of dirt” that we made are what we call hugelkultur beds.

In one of the beds we planted blueberries. Not just any blueberries, though. We conducted extensive research about the different kinds of blueberries (yes, there are actually many kinds of blueberries). We had to identify which types would do well in our soil zone, what plant height would be ideal, how the church’s microclimate would affect their growth if the soil quality in the beds was good enough to provide enough nutrients, and other essential factors that influence how plants grow. We had to consider the amount of light the plants would receive each day before the shadow made by the church would cover the bed; how easily the bed would have access to rain; how exposed the bed was to wind; and how frequently it would face human disturbances and curious critters (squirrels, raccoons) and more.

As you can see, a lot of work goes into the planning process. There was a lot of effort put into the execution process too, meaning we had to plan a design for actually laying out the blueberry bushes so they would each have enough space to grow while maximizing the number we could plant. This process occurred when planning our other hugelkultur beds, too. In those, we planted things like cherry trees, goji berries, cranberries and more. We’re also looking to plant a squash and pumpkin bed, but that’s still in the planning process.

For our food forest, we ensured that we were sourcing as many of our materials as locally as possible. The logs were from nearby trees that had fallen during a big wind storm; we started building the hugelkultur structure right around the time of the big storm in June, so we couldn’t have asked for better timing. What would have been a bunch of rotting tree trunks in a landfill are now a part of a beautiful permaculture design that benefits the environment and local community!

The soil and compost used came from the church’s yard, which Robert helped make the year prior. The plants were purchased from a local nursery. Even though the plants are still all in young forms and haven’t blossomed yet, the site looks so much more beautiful compared to what it looked like at the beginning of the season. Beauty and function, all in one place!

Not only is the garden beautiful and functional, but the food forest also acts as a community connection. While working in the yard, countless churchgoers, as well as citizens just walking by or students heading to the school across the street, asked us about the project. We eagerly spoke to them about it, telling them our plan and our progress. It was amazing just to see these people’s eyes light up with wonder as they learned about our interesting, unique idea. We taught them about the greatness of permaculture while familiarizing ourselves with the people who would be directly benefiting from our design. That’s the thing about permaculture: you want to know your customer, or who you’re designing for so that you can create the best design specifically for them. By getting engaged with community members, we were doing exactly that.

The 12 principles of permaculture

Aside from the great community connection that permaculture allows you to form, there is foundational knowledge that you need to gather in order to create a successful project. During my internship, I attended a workshop by a famous local permaculturalist known as Garden Jane. In her workshop, she discussed what sort of foundational knowledge you need. Essentially, there are twelve design principles of permaculture which must be used to create a sustainable system. These principles are as follows:

1. Observe and interact — identify what your system will be, what it will impact, and how it will engage with the local environment.
2. Catch and save energy — creating abundant systems and obtaining energy or resources from them will ensure a plentiful supply when energy is not as accessible.
3. Obtain a yield — make sure that the created system allows you to reap some benefits in some way.
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback — go back and assess how the project is performing thus far. If it can be fixed or improved in any way, go back to the first step and do so. Discourage inappropriate activity that isn’t benefiting the project and corrects the behaviours.
5. Use and value renewable resources and their services — to decrease waste and consumption, rely on resources that will naturally replenish and disrupt holistic systems as little as possible.
6. Produce no waste — using every resource available to minimize negative impacts on the surrounding planet and valuing all that is provided.
7. Design from patterns to details — take a step back from the project to notice patterns or other systems and how they interact. This forms the backbone of the system being created, and details can be used to fill in the gaps as the project moves along.
8. Integrate rather than segregate — include everything and everyone; build relationships, involve all those who wish to participate, and value all opinions brought to the table.
9. Use small and slow solutions — slow and steady wins the race, and makes it easier to maintain slowly changing, small systems than larger, sudden changes.
10. Use and value diversity — the more diverse a system, the more its vulnerability to threats is reduced and the more stable it can be.
11. Use edges and value the marginal — examine where systems overlap and interact. These areas provide useful, diverse qualities in the system that are unseen anywhere else.
12. Creatively use and respond to change — systems are always changing, so it is essential to be adaptable for the system to be successful.

Applying the principles

Using these principles, you can create a sustainable system just about anywhere, with any resources that you have on hand. One example that Garden Jane used to demonstrate how she implemented these permaculture principles were at the LUSH Cosmetics factory in Toronto. Working with the employees there, she created a self-sustaining garden in front of the building, then conducted a seminar all about permaculture for the 700 employees at the factory. Likewise, Robert used the permaculture principles during his travels to places like Africa, where he learned about and worked with the local communities to develop sustainable agricultural systems suited to their specific environmental conditions. Permaculture really can take you anywhere, and because of this, I think it is a key to many of the environmental problems that we face today.

I think that permaculture is really beneficial to know about, especially for someone as interested in resolving the food insecurity crisis like myself. If we use these design principles to develop sustainable food systems in some of the most deprived places in the world, we can do just about anything. We could develop a sustainable water system, forestry system, energy system…you get the picture. What permaculture teaches us is that planning is essential to success, while knowing your environment and what you’re dealing with builds a foundation for the solutions you will create. Once you have knowledge of the environment, such as information about the local community using it, the microclimate there, how much water access, sunlight and food there is, you can start developing a solution to any problem.

If you wish to learn more about permaculture, there are many articles, videos and podcasts out there to teach you about it. There are workshops being hosted all over the GTA too, some even by Garden Jane. Her website is also a great resource for learning all about permaculture, how you can get involved in local initiatives or even join a workshop she is hosting.

Permaculture: a holistic systems approach

To summarize, permaculture teaches us to take a slow, methodical, holistic approach to problem solving. We cannot rush the planning or execution. Instead, we must carefully observe and interact with our environment, see how it behaves and changes over time, and understand how our actions will impact it. Only then can we plan and execute. If our execution fails the first time around, we must go back to the planning process again. And again. And again, until it does work. It’s repetitive and a bit tedious, but this repetition teaches us patience, perseverance and determination. We are building a system in which the environment manipulates our actions, not the other way around. Permaculture allows us to mimic the earth’s natural processes to create a new system; how the sun rises and sets, how water drains through soil, how plants decompose to release minerals into the soil for other plants to thrive. The earth is a complex system, yet so simple when you step back and see the big picture: everything relies on everything else. One little agitation upsets the entire planet’s homeostasis. Permaculture’s goal is to maintain this connection and allow the world to keep on thriving. Therefore, it can be the key to overcoming so many environmental barriers currently in our way of a sustainable future.

Final thoughts

That’s all for this post! I hope that you enjoyed learning a bit about permaculture. There is so, so much more to learn, so much of which I don’t even know yet. Now you can answer the question “what is permaculture?” like a pro!

This short introduction to the world of permaculture hopefully allows you to see the world and its complex systems in a different light. If we all see the world in this way, knowing how everything impacts everything and everyone else, approaching problem-solving will be all that much easier.

If you enjoyed this post, I encourage you to check out these ones:

• Your lawn is killing the planet
• Organic versus local: which is better?
• How to eat sustainably in the winter
• What’s in season: Spring Edition

Until next time!