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Perspectives

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Some thoughts on Permaculture from experts in the field:

Permaculture is a world-wide movement of designers, teachers, and grassroots activists working to restore damaged ecosystems and human communities. Permaculture derives practical techniques and principles from the study of natural systems and applies them to earth repair and care.
 
Permaculture is the use of ecology as the basis for designing integrated systems of food production, housing, appropriate technology, and community development. It offers a practical, creative approach to the problems of diminishing resources and threatened life support systems now facing the world.
Simon Henderson, Cortez IS, BC
 
Permaculture is a holistic approach to landscape design and human culture. It is an attempt to integrate several disciplines, including biology, ecology, geography, agriculture, architecture, appropriate technology, gardening and community building.
Guy Baldwin, Cortez Is, BC      

Permaculture seeks to design sustainable lifestyles based on conditions unique to each place and designed according to the same principles by which nature integrates other species into her ecosystems. While permaculture obtains its design principles through careful study and search for comparable principles in nature, permaculture strategies are based on the realities of the 20th century.
Dan Hemenway

Permaculture is a way of bringing together in a sensible system: ourselves and our communities, with whatever bit of land/space we are tending. It can be as small as a window with sprouts or as large as a farm or a bioregion. It can be in the city, the suburbs or in the country. Permaculture addresses the way we live on this planet in a graceful and healthy way, respecting the plants and animals around us, and leaving the biosphere in a more productive and healthy state than we found it.
Grailville Workshop

Permaculture is the conscious design of ‘cultivated’ ecosystems that have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is a harmonious integration of people into the landscape in such a way that the land grows in richness, productivity and aesthetic beauty.
Washburn TN PDC 


Permaculture is an approach to agriculture & human settlement which seeks a harmonious balance among all forms of life in an ecosystem.
Jamie Jobb, 84 PD

Permaculture only happens where land and people are one.
Nathan Alexandra, 84 PD

Permaculture is the name that has been given to the design & creation of self-sustaining productive landscapes which, once established, will need the minimum of human intervention. A permaculture design incorporates a diversity of species & interrelations between species, & allows for the continuous evolution that occurs in Nature. There is a succession of species each preparing the environment for the next & all moving towards a climax state. Permaculture is logarithmic; the biggest things you see are your nose, home, immediate surroundings and internal conditions. Start inside & work outward.
Anonymous 

Permaculture integrates people into Nature’s design. A permaculture design provides us with shelter, food, water, income, community and aesthetic and spiritual fulfillment within a balanced and healthy biological community. Permaculture is Applied Science and Ecology; Ethical design of human systems for a sustainable future. It offers practical solutions to the global environmental and cultural crises we now face. Permaculture (Permanent Culture) is the conscious design and co-creative evolution of agriculturally productive ecosystems and cooperative and economically just social systems which have the diversity, stability and resilience of ‘natural’ systems. 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. 
Dan Hemenway