what is permaculture?
If people have heard of permaculture, it tends to be in the context of organic gardening. But permaculture is much, much more than this.
Permaculture is a pioneering, practical approach that generates positive solutions to many of the problems we are facing today.
In a nutshell, the aim of permaculture is to design thriving systems. A permaculture designer does this by:
- employing a systems thinking approach;
- following a design process;
- ensuring the design is in line with the permaculture ethics and principles.
In turn, these inform the practical techniques and strategies the designer uses to implement the design.
Permaculture’s focus tends to be on land-based systems, such as gardens, allotments and farms (but there is also a field of permaculture which focusses on and designs solutions for human systems).
So in this context a permaculturalist designs, implements and maintains productive food spaces. She does this by working with nature.
Permaculture’s guiding ethics & principles
As an integral part of the design process the permaculturalist is guided by, and embeds into their designs, the permaculture principles. These are based on the ingredients nature uses to create thriving ecosystems.
The other guiding force in Permaculture design is the permaculture ethics:
- Earth Care
- People Care
- Fairshares
If you are still a little confused about what permaculture is, I’ll make things clearer with an example. Let’s go back to the subject of organic gardening, and the link with permaculture. Organic gardening is a common technique used in permaculture. Why?
Well for starters, let’s look at two of the permaculture principles:
- Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services
- Produce No Waste.
In organic gardening, we use things like compost or cow manure to provide nutrients to the plants. These, unlike fossil fuel-based synthetic fertilisers, are renewable. Worms and other creatures that turn our organic garden waste into compost are renewable too (they reproduce).
This provides a nice segue way to the second principle. For it’s not actually waste if we reuse it. By putting the inedible parts of veg plants into the compost bin, they provide us down the line with beautiful nutritious compost for a new generation of plants. This example also embodies a more general principle of nature, which is philosophically illuminated in The Lion King: No, not hakuna matata (though that’s a philosophical nugget too), but the circle of life! And the circle of life produces no waste.
How about the permaculture ethics?
- Earth Care
Well, in and of itself, growing our own veg is an example of earth care: we are cutting down on the many food miles associated with the labyrinthine supermarket system of global logistics (and thus not adding to the carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere).
Then if we use organic methods to grow our own, we are cutting out the chemical pesticides and fertilisers that can kill or harm wildlife in our gardens.
- People Care
Not only do chemical pesticides and fertilisers harm wildlife; ingesting these toxins can be harmful for humans too. So eating organic fruit and veg is a much healthier choice to make.
Also, the fruit and veg we buy at the supermarket may have been flown halfway around the world. By growing our own produce, we cut down on food miles, which means we also cut down on harmful air pollution too.
Moreover, how long does it take for food to travel from farm to fork in our global food system? A lot longer than going to the back garden and picking some homegrown cobs of corn. Not long after produce is picked from the plant, the nutrients start to degrade. So unlike ultra-fresh homegrown produce, which is still packed with nutrients, supermarket fruit and veg tends to have lost some of its nutritional value.
- Fair Shares
An example of this ethic would be sharing the yields of the garden with our friends.
My permaculture sessions take place in an outdoor education context
A prerequisite for a session is a school garden or patch of land on school grounds that can be turned into a garden
See the box directly below for more information about what takes place in my sessions…
A lot more than a gardening class or environmental education session
The general focus of my sessions is a garden design project. The goal, or destination, of the project is to implement and maintain a productive and sustainable food garden. The journey is the process of designing the garden, and the ‘map’ used to help us to get to the destination we can call a design framework or process.
My role involves guiding the students to get to their destination. On the way, children learn about the underpinning permaculture ethics and principles too.
Skills they practise on the journey include observation skills, map-making skills, data recording, systems thinking, analysis skills and making decisions based on the information they have.
My main goal is to teach fun and engaging sessions that equip students with – what I think are – incredibly useful skills and knowledge to help them be resilient and thrive. The map I use to reach this destination is the Children in Permaculture curriculum, which is outdoor education-based and rooted in experiential learning about nature. Underpinning the curriculum is the Children in Permaculture (CiP) pedagogy.
According to Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share in Education: The Children in Permaculture Manual, the CiP pedagogy is ‘a holistic approach which engages the whole child in caring for the Earth, themselves and other people, and sharing fairly’.
In after-school club sessions, at the time of the year when it is too dark to go outside, we do activities supporting and consolidating the students’ learning, as well as focussing on social permaculture.
My sessions help to consolidate national curriculum learning.
How?
1. Integral parts of the design process we follow in class sessions tie in with aspects of the national curriculum:
eg. mapmaking consolidates the area of measurement in the maths national curriculum, KS1 & 2 and geography, KS1 & 2; and soil analysis consolidates the area of rocks in the science curriculum, KS2
2. Other parts lend themselves naturally to embedding elements of the national curriculum
eg ‘plants’, ‘living things and their habitats’, ‘seasonal changes’ and ‘light’ in the KS1 & 2 science national curriculum; and ‘relationships in an ecosystem’ in the KS3 science national curriculum
3. They are fun and engaging
What makes the sessions fun and engaging?
- an outdoor setting
- experiential learning
- they are child-centred
- a wide variety of activities
- a teacher passionate about the subject!
Differences between permaculture sessions and other outdoor / environmental education
Two important things permaculture offers in addition to other forms of outdoor and environmental education are:
1. A framework and set of problem-solving tools that can be applied to solving many problems, big or small.
These, along with the related skills and knowledge, are, I believe, incredibly useful for generating positive solutions and empowering students to be resilient and thrive despite the challenging times we live in.
2. A holistic approach that provides ‘a complete set of ethics, principles and design tools which can enable people to live in harmony with the Earth, each other and other species, taking only a fair share to meet their needs’. (From Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share in Education: The Children in Permaculture Manual)
my services
(FR) in the box below = free taster session available
Please contact me to discuss your requirements
primary
- Class sessions (FR)
- After-school Club
senior
- After-school club
* All Sessions last one hour
Check Out the Price List here