....is a useful tool. Those aspiring to live a life more in harmony with nature, a life more sustainable, a life more rooted in their community, will find it invaluable.

Permaculture helps to assess
- where you are and what resources and skills you already possess,
- and how to use them more effectively.

    From there, you can expand into many different interesting and rewarding areas. “Would it be worthwhile to get a couple of chickens to produce my own eggs?” – “Should I plant trees – and which ones?”- “What if I don't have enough land to do what I want to do? - Could my community get together and work on this?”
Permaculture helps evaluate the options and set priorities.

    After all, there is a limit to everything. We know this from daily experiences: There are only so many hours in the day to get things done. Spending money to buy one thing makes it harder to afford the other. Any choice we make inevitably influences the next.

    This also applies on the larger – planet wide – level. On that scale, it is harder to comprehend what is happening, for a variety of reasons. The time frames and distances involved are larger, while the human mind specialises in short-term evaluation and decision making.
    Globalisation makes it seem as though one particular locality will never run out of resources, when in fact it may have run out long ago and is now importing it from elsewhere. Feedback emerges only slowly, and sometimes too late to change track. Permaculture is one answer to the growing awareness that, on a global scale, humanity seems to be on the wrong track.

The concept of Permaculture developed in the late 70's
out of a consciousness that,
with good design,
and a clever integration of old and new best practice,
we can occupy our place in the world gracefully,
knowing that we contribute rather than destroy,
and create abundance rather than run up against the limits of the natural world.

Permaculture has various sets of principles to guide your initial design and to refer to again and again afterwards as the design unfolds and evolves in real life.
The way you lay out a garden, or organize the space surrounding your house, will impact anything that will take place there.
To quote Patrick Whitefield: “Careful thought followed by minimum action, rather than hasty action followed by long-term regrets”
Good design makes activities flow easily and elegantly.  
End products from one process become the starting material for the next: Your hens produce the manure that ends up fuelling abundance in the garden, via the compost heap.

Permaculture is all about good design. Why? Because with good design, you are less liable to waste your resources. You can achieve much with little. Problems are turned into solutions.

Permaculturists always speak from practical experience.  
They do like to experiment. They like to go against the grain.  
All areas of human activity today leave plenty of room for improvement. 
Permaculture takes a look at what works elsewhere, or at other times in history, as well as new ideas and technologies, and finds ways to integrate the best of everything.

At no time in history has there been a shortage of ideas, aspirations and even fully-fledged plans to respond to whatever improvements could be made to human activity on this planet. 
Proponents of social justice, peace, environmentalism and economic management all vie with the politicians of the day to improve our lot.

If you know what makes good design, then you also know what makes bad design. With the tools permaculture gives you to assess options holistically, you will be better able to tell a good idea from a bad idea. This saves you from getting invested in something that initially sounds great, but turns out to be costly.

Decisions, for example, on investing in all forms of alternative energy are complex. Does it make sense to install solar panels --- would a wind turbine be an option ----or should that money be invested in insulating the house instead?

While Permaculture design principles can be applied to everything from building houses to organizing community meetings, it is mostly concerned with sustainable land use practices. It is a treasure chest of ingenious solutions to common problems that crop up in modern agriculture.
Desertification, erosion, deforestation, acidification, invasive species, fossil fuel dependency, species depletion, use of marginal land – you name it, permaculture has developed a strategy to deal with it.

Always site and climate specific, permaculture solutions are tailor made to your unique set of requirements, problems and resources.

Learn more in 2011, at the Institute for Permaculture and Nature Awareness.

This year, we are pleased to offer eight courses in two different formats:

• A series of four introductory evening classes – a great place to start for beginners

• ...and four one-day courses designed to give in depth understanding that will take your growing endeavours to a whole new level