Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Design Principles

Permaculture is a design framework that seeks to create sustainable human environments by working with, rather than against, natural ecosystems, which was co-originated by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s,

The Permaculture Design Principles are a set of universal design principles that can be applied to any location, climate and culture, and they allow us to design the most efficient and sustainable human habitation and and food production systems.

Permaculture is a design system that encompasses a wide variety of disciplines, such as ecology, landscape design, environmental science and energy conservation, and the Permaculture design principles are drawn from these various disciplines.

Each individual design principle itself embodies a complete conceptual framework based on sound scientific principles. When we bring all these separate  principles together, we can create a design system that both looks at whole systems, the parts that these systems consist of, and how those parts interact with each other to create a complex, dynamic, living system.

Each design principle serves as a tool that allows us to integrate all the separate parts of a design, referred to as elements, into a functional, synergistic, whole system, where the elements harmoniously interact and work together in the most efficient way possible.

Now that we  know what the design principles are, and what their purpose is, let us look further into these design principles and what they entail.

The Design Principles of Permaculture

Listed below are all the design principles we employ in Permaculture as devised by Bill Mollison, along with brief descriptions of each where necessary to provide a general overview of what they’re about.

The links below will direct you to the longer detailed articles on each of these design principles.

1. Relative Location – every element is placed in relationship to another so that they assist each other
   
2. Each element performs many functions
   
3. Each important function is supported by many elements
   
4. Efficient energy planning –  for house and settlement (zones and sectors)
   -Zone Planning
   -Sector Planning
   -Slope
   
5. Using Biological Resources – Emphasis on the use of biological resources over fossil fuel resources
   
6. Energy Cycling – energy recycling on site (both fuel and human energy)
   
7. Small Scale Intensive Systems
   -Plant Stacking
   -Time Stacking
   
8. Accelerating Succession and Evolution – Using and accelerating natural plant succession to establish favourable sites and soils
   
9. Diversity – Polyculture and diversity of beneficial species for a productive, interactive system
   -Guilds
   
10. Edge Effect – Use of edge and natural patterns for best effect
    
11. Attitudinal Principles
    -Everything works both ways
    -Permaculture is information and imagination intensive

Reference

• ‘Introduction To Permaculture’ – Bill Mollison & Reny Mia Slay