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Permaculture
DESIGN COURSE 2.0

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTION
 Welcome to the
Permaculture Design
Certificate Course
This course will equip you with the knowledge to become a permaculture designer, able to implement a
specific design science to create abundance in anything from a backyard to a small farm to a broad-acre
landscape. You will learn how to use modern tools and technology, as well as traditional methodologies,
to construct a truly sustainable world today.
As a permaculture designer, you will not need to be an expert builder, machine operator, or even garden-
er, but you will understand where all these people and their crafts intertwine on a permaculture property.
Throughout the course, you will pick up general skills in and knowledge about these areas that will help
you reach your primary goal: great design.
The Big, Broad Definition of Permaculture
Permaculture is a multidisciplinary practice
that integrates land, resources, people and the
environment into mutually beneficial, no-waste,
closed-loop systems like we see in nature. Per-
maculture applies holistic solutions, pertinent in
both rural and urban settings, to contemporary
problems. It focuses on a huge variety of topics,
including agriculture, forestry, water harvesting,
renewable energy, eco-building methods, waste
management, animal systems, economics,
technology, and community development.
Permaculture is conscious design in which di-
verse, stable and resilient ecosystems are assim-
ilated to provide food, energy, shelter, and other
needs in a sustainable way. Designs are abusive
CHAPTER 01 / INTRODUCTION
neither to the planet nor to the humans relying
on it. The philosophy is one of working in unison
with nature, not against it, as most current
systems do. Permaculture design takes careful
measure to build regenerative environments
with cumulative functions for the betterment
of all—plants, animals, people, soil, waterways,
and the entirety of an ecosystem—rather than
singular yields for people.
In this way, permaculture has far-reaching
benefits. This course supplies the training and
skills needed to obtain them in potentially all
human endeavors. However, as a measure of
affecting much-needed change quickly, per-
maculture first concentrates on areas already
settled, converting practices destroying the
planet, such as poorly placed large-scale agri-
culture systems, into designs that will repair it.
This transformation happens at home, within
our local communities, and throughout the
now intimately connected world population.
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ETHICAL
DESIGN
Permaculture is an ethical design
science that mimics nature to
supply all our human needs whilst
benefiting the environment
- GEOFF LAWTON
The Two-Paragraph History of Permaculture
The term permaculture was coined in the early
SCIENCE
1970s by Bill Mollison, then a lecturer at Hobart
University, and his student David Holmgren.
After reading the report The Limits to Growth
they came to the fundamental insight that
resources could not be endlessly mined without
return; it introduced the concept that a culture
had to be designed for permanence. Mollison
is quoted as saying, “…no one had any long-term
ideas and it was obvious to me what had to be
done…That was to build an army of permacul-
ture field workers to go out and teach the ideas
of sustainable food production.” In 1978, he and
Holmgren fully described permaculture in the
book Permaculture One: A Perennial Agriculture
for Human Settlement.
The first permaculture course was in 1979 on
Tagari Farm in Northern NSW, Australia. Later, in
1988, Mollison published the first edition of Per-
maculture: A Designers’ Manual, from which the
modern-day PDC (Permaculture Design Certif-
icate) course is derived, and it is now taught to
thousands—individuals, NGOs, government de-
partments, and even university students—all over
world each year. The curriculum for this course,
too, is based on the Designers’ Manual, cover-
ing the book’s fourteen chapters with fourteen
video modules of numerous individual lectures
embodying each subchapter.
GEOFF LAWTON PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE 2.0
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CHAPTER 01 / INTRODUCTION
Environmental Problems on the Grand Scale
Human actions on the planet
have created a multitude of
environmental woes, including
acidification of oceans, deple-
tion of the ozone layer, and
tremendous loss of biodiversity.
Our age is one that has been
geared towards convenience.
Unfortunately, “convenience”
has helped to develop and
increase highly destructive,
industrial-level agricultural
practices across the globe.
GEOFF LAWTON PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE 2.0
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Soil degradation is the biggest
problem nowadays. Present
agricultural methods encour-
age erosion, destroy soil life,
deplete fertility, and disrupt
the ancient ecological systems
the planet depends on. Soil is
exploited to grow crops faster
and bigger without replen-
ishing the nutrients taken
to do so. Over a short time,
this leaves acres upon acres
of barren land and creates a
complete reliance on chem-
ical and/or imported resources.
What Exactly Is
Sustainability?
Sustainability is a million-dollar word these days,
one that gets tossed around a little too freely in
adverts and political campaigns. In actuality, a
sustainable system produces as much energy
as it consumes so that there is enough to retain
and replace that system over the lifetime of its
components. In other words, sustainability is
when enough is created to recreate what has
created it. The system cycles.
For permaculturalists, sustainability is the min-
imum goal. We aim for our designs to provide
for our needs but also create a surplus that will
increase diversity and fertility within our systems.
By collaborating with nature and renewable
resources, like the sun and the rain, we can de-
sign systems that thrive in such a way that they
can feed us, shelter us, and comfort us, all while
not just regenerating but actually improving
upon themselves.
Permaculture is interdisciplinary, whole-systems
thinking. The mindset embraces the complexity
of ecosystemic interactions so that all needs of
all functioning components—plants, animals,
people, atmosphere, waterways, soil—are met
and hopefully healthily exceeded. To achieve
this, designers mimic natural patterns, not just
for designing gardens and food forests but also
energy systems, ecological buildings, “waste”
cycles, community structures, and local econo-
mies. These components are all interlocked.
Permaculture addresses these
problems by fostering new,
and working with existing,
ecosystems through intelligent
design. The methodology con-
tends that it is as important to
continually rebuild the soil as it
is to grow massive amounts of
crops. This is accomplished via
creating regenerative, bio-di-
verse landscapes in which
plants, animals and humans
interact beneficially with one
another for the betterment of
us all.
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THE THREE
ETHICS OF
PERMACULTURE
At the heart of permaculture design, informing all decisions, is an adherence to three simple
ethics, which collectively help to guide our behavior towards cooperative, productive systems
that benefit people and the planet.
CARE OF THE EARTH
Insures that our designs con-
sider all living and non-living
things in the environment.
The aim is to enhance and
preserve rather the deplete or
CHAPTER 01 / INTRODUCTION
degrade.
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CARE OF THE PEOPLE
Promotes self-reliance as well
as community responsibility
to look out for one another,
avoiding structures of exploita-
tion or abandonment.
RETURN OF THE SURPLUS
Results from successful designs
in which abundance is such
that it is shared with fellow hu-
mans or returned to the earth,
such as in composts or animal
feed.
To appropriately apply these
ethics, we must begin to
understand the web of life. Sys-
temic cycles, flows, and interac-
tions occur within natural and,
ultimately, designed systems.
Closed-loop systems sustain
themselves, provide for peo-
ple, and disregard our current
corporate configurations, which
have not been looking out for
people or the planet.
Permaculture in Practice:
Landscape and Society
Permaculture design changes social land-
scapes, defining where local, regional, and
biospheric resources come from. We learn from
the past and traditions that work (or worked)
closely with nature, but we remain focused on
the present integration and future stability of
what we are doing. We assimilate good lessons
and ethically sound solutions into our practice
then make that knowledge accessible to and
applicable for all.
To enable positive local and global growth, we
can turn to the ethics of permaculture for a
solid foundation on how to benefit the environ-
ment while holistically providing for the well-
being of humans on the planet. We have the
capacity and the technology to learn from tradi-
tions and techniques around the world, and we
can apply appropriate, climatically analogous
practices, even plants, into our local systems
for improved production and energy efficiency.
We have the tools, we have access to unlimited
information and ideas, and through them, we
can act locally while connecting globally.
On a macro-level, permaculture design has
been applied to degraded, broad-acre systems
that have broken down catastrophically. For
example, in the Loess Plateau of China, 35,000
square kilometers of land were completely
regenerated, the water cycle rejuvenated, ero-
sion reduced, and production reinstated on 40
percent of the landscape. This also happened
in Jordan with the Greening the Desert Project.
With systems back in productive states, the
benefits—water cycles, food production, wildlife
habitation—steadily multiply.
However, design applications must extend from
rural expanse into dense urban gardens, where
each square meter is much more productive
than in the countryside and much nearer to the
large populations who need it. Urban systems
reduce food miles, energy consumption, and
waste creation. In cities and suburbs, efforts can
be concentrated, and local, urban areas can be-
gin to produce a large percentage of their own
food. This would allow for the huge amounts of
land used in industrial agriculture to once again
become nature so that it can fulfill its critical
roles in global, atmospheric functions.
In this way, permaculture seeks to end what is
now recognized as a very destructive way of life
and follow through with new groundwork for
sustainable, efficient, healthy communities and
environments.
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 Glossary
Biosphere:
The place on the earth’s surface where life is, and the total sum of
those living organisms. Together with the hydrosphere, atmosphere,
and geosphere, the biosphere helps to form the ecosphere, which
includes all the biological and physical components of earth.

Closed-loop System:
A system, in this context, in which both the needs and wastes of the
different elements are accounted for and provided. For a simple
example, gardens grow food, food scraps make compost, and com-
post fertilizes the garden. The people who care for the garden eat, all
waste is used, and the garden’s fertility needs are met.

Earth Care:
The care of earth and all the systems in it. This is one of permacul-
ture’s three ethics, and it is the basis upon how we interact with the
environment, always seeking to improve it rather than deplete it, to
keep its systems healthy as opposed to thinking only of the short-
term bottom line.

People Care:
The care both of ourselves, as well as our families and community.
This is one of permaculture’s three ethics and is a based first, around
taking responsibility for ourselves in order to achieve a healthier,
cleaner lifestyle and second, to work with others to help them reach
a better way of living fruitfully and in tune with the planet.

Return of Surplus:
The using of surpluses from productive systems to aid in the care of
the earth and people. This is considered the third ethic of permac-
ulture, and it focuses both limiting our consumption (and hoarding)
and using surpluses as positive returns for the earth—building soil,
cycling waste, renewable energy—and other people.

Sustainability:
A state in which a system produces more energy than it consumes. A
CHAPTER 01 / INTRODUCTION

sustainable system requires constant improvement without constant

inputs from elsewhere. Sustainable systems are usually closed-loop
arrangements in which the relationships of the various elements
enhance the system on the whole.

GEOFF LAWTON PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE 2.0