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Permaculture: A Designers' Manual

Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order. Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms. The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions rather than asking only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.

Hardcover: 576 pages

Publisher: Tagari Publications (December 1988)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0908228015

ISBN-13: 978-0908228010

Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.6 x 1.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 4 pounds

Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #24,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2 in Books > Science & Math > Agricultural Sciences > Agronomy #20 in Books > Textbooks > Science & Mathematics > Agriculture #24 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Reference

Bill Mollison represents the most successful attempt to mainstream practical home-scale sustainable design principles. I found myself needing to do an enormous amount of supplementary research to actually understand what bill was talking about, but to explain them in depth here would have taken away from the thrust of the book - which is mainly to show you example after example (many on every page) at sustainable principles of design put into practice.The book remains the best book on sustainability written to date. There are some aspects of his system that are lacking that I will briefly draw attention to. Understand that I deeply appreciate his genius, but I want to just mention that these other things need to be integrated into his system to be fully fully sustainable.1) He doesn't pay enough attention to seed saving and plant breeding. A loss of seed diversity and a re-invigoration of seed savers is essential to truly sustainable self-sufficient design.See:Seed to Seed - by Suzanne Ashworth and Kent WhealyBreed your own Vegetable Varieties - by Carol Deppe2) He very rarely mentions the role mushrooms and fungi can play in sustainability.See:Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets3) He doesn't stress the science behind it enough, which is fine, but leaves you asking sometimes... how do we know this is really ecologically sound? How can I NOT imitate mr. mollison but still create an ecologically sound system? Basically, Mollison's proscriptions are incredibly scientifically informed but not always scientifically explicit.

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