Permaculture: A Brief Introduction

Cultivate a city garden or farmland without disrupting ecosystems or exerting too much effort. Live in a house that consumes less and even produces a little. Establish exchange networks whose benefits remain within the community. Permaculture allows everyone to design and carry out these projects—and many others—simply by imitating models already present in nature.

In this abundantly illustrated micromanual, Graham Burnett shows that permaculture consists first of all in working with nature and not against it, by minimizing the effort required. The optimal level of intervention, according to the author: "doing nothing"! Because nature is thrifty, not to say lazy. Its principle is to multiply fertile interactions, to use elements that fulfill several functions, to strive for self-sufficiency and to throw nothing away.

Emerging in Australia in the 1970s, permaculture (permanent agriculture) has evolved beyond the search for viable food production strategies to become a true ecological design method with multiple applications.