How does permaculture work?
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Permaculture. This term encompasses so much. Since we cant all attend design courses to find out just how, lets explore a rough outline of the design principles and methodology
involved over the next ten short pages. Searching youtube for
permaculture videos is also recommended.
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The core of permaculture has always been in supplying a design toolkit for human survival. This toolkit helps the designer to model a final design based on an observation of how ecosystems themselves interact. A simple example of this is how the Sun interacts with a plant by providing it with energy to grow. This plant may then be pollinated by bees or be eaten by deer. The deer may disperse seed to allow other plants to grow into a tall tree and provide shelter for these creatures from the wind. The bees may provide food for birds and the trees provide roosting for the birds. The tree's leaves will fall and rot, providing food for small insects and fungus. There will be a web of intricate connections that allow a diverse population of plant life and animals to survive by giving them food and shelter.
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One of the innovations of permaculture design was to appreciate the efficiency and productivity of natural ecosystems and seek to apply this to the way human needs for food, shelter and production are met. Therefore this allows us to design a landscape or other system that has multiple outputs, thus creating the abundance found in nature.
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