How do you define Permaculture for the curious?

I often find myself getting annoyed and frustrated when people ask me what permaculture is. I think the reason it's so hard (for me anyways) to define is because it's so vague. I will sometimes use the phrases, "being a steward of nature" or "working with nature, not against it" or something generic/cheesy like that. I probably display bothered body language while doing so and unintentionally dissuade others from pursuing the very thing I'm trying to promote. I think about not even mentioning that I engage in permaculture when people ask what I do, just so I don't have to define it for them... However, I WANT to spread the word and perpetuate the idea of it.

So how do you define permaculture to people that know nothing about it? How do you make it sound interesting and have fun while explaining it?

I have no idea how to define permaculture beyond it's definition of permanent agriculture. That's not really what it means to me though and it's uncomfortable to try to explain it to others as you've pointed out. So I don't really use the word if I can help it.

I personally don't really care for the term or box or whatever you want to call it. I would prefer the term permieculture as in it hopefully permeates into culture eventually.

I do like the principals and techniques though so I just try to bring up things like hugelkulture, sunroots, soil improvement, nutrient density, clean water, toxic gick etc. etc. as things come up naturally and seem relevant to whomever I'm speaking with. People will find permaculture the same way I assume most of us have, by being interested in and researching any number of topics.

Good topic! Let me take a different tactic and shoot some spitballs from my perch at the conventional smuggites with their noses in their phones ... here goes:

"You know, this is actually a super conservative method -- I'm using the techniques my great-great-grandparents used.

"How do I know it works?

"Well, you and I are both here, aren't we? So obviously it works. Those "old folks" were our age once, and they had a helluva lot more skills and knowledge than we do.

"Well, I have a smartphone. It's all there.

"How much of the totality of human knowledge is available on your smartphone, through the Internet? Maybe 2% if you're lucky? (*That has big shock value.*)

The Earth keeps on turning. The big system of the biosphere keeps rolling. It doesn't need humans at all.

Our big global distribution systems can crash. The gardens that your great-great-grandparents built were indestructible because they didn't need supply chains, only effort and brains. Many came from war zones and crushing poverty -- and yet thrived. Maybe their methods are worth a look.

(The kicker:  If you notice, the meta-message is to gently subvert the prevailing notion that history is a linear progression of infinite progress. Change and disruption and innovation, certainly. And new technologies. Not all bad -- much has great value. But what defines progress?)

I suppose there is a time to bring up the term Permaculture, but I try to avoid it.  I get negative vibes when I hear buzz words, and I am certain other people may react negatively to some buzz words.  I avoid the term organic as well.   Though it is not frequent that I have conversations with others about gardening, it does happen.  I will show people what I am doing, and explain why.  If it is a conversation away from my place, I may ask for advice from someone else and then steer the conversation. If someone is bringing up using the contents of the Dow and Monsanto catalogs on their garden, I might make a comment like, “ I got to the point I couldn’t afford all that stuff so I started looking for a cheaper approach. This is what I do now.”

Les Frijo wrote:I personally don't really care for the term or box or whatever you want to call it. I would prefer the term permieculture as in it hopefully permeates into culture eventually.

I like using the term just to normalize the common title but when it comes down to it, permaculture is just returning to the human nature, or nature in general, that we all come from. That's probably another reason why it's so frustrating because the majority of the population has lost touch with this and it's so fundamental to our being.

John F Dean wrote:I suppose there is a time to bring up the term Permaculture, but I try to avoid it.  I get negative vibes when I hear buzz words, and I am certain other people may react negatively to some buzz words.  I avoid the term organic as well.   Though it is not frequent that I have conversations with others about gardening, it does happen.  I will showpeople what I am doing, and 3x plain why.  If it is a conversation away from my place, I may as for advice from someone else and then steer the conversation. If someone is bringing up using the contents of the Dow and Monsanto catalogs on their garden, I might make a comment like, “ I got to the point I couldn’t afford all that stuff so I started looking for a cheaper approach. This is what I do now.”

Agree 100%. Buzzwords close the door. Meeting people where they are plants seeds.

I agree with most of the previous comments. I tell everybody about growing (part of) my own food. I regularly share my abundance: mostly fruit and sometimes jams etc. That can start conversations of all kinds. To those who are interested in growing, I show my garden. Since my garden looks different from what they expect, it starts a new conversation. There is always someting going on, and everybody is intrigued bij something else, so sometimes we talk about the weeds, sometimes about the mulch; the unusual fruit; companion planting, whatever makes it happen.

When people visit my garden, we have a cup of tea, and chat about whatever comes up, next I give them a garden tour. I almost never finish the tour. Somewhere I usually loose their attention. It can be that they are not that interested. Some people are, but get overwhelmed by the information and the new impressions. Sometimes their kids like it more and their attention span is just short. When it stops, we have another drink. Manny return voluntarilly. Than I rinse and repeat. During a second tour, they have more questions. Sometimes they have started something in their own garden, and they share their experience. The second time we don't finish the tour either. Only long term revisitors who are becoming permies themselves (whether they know it or not), can finish the tour, and that takes a long time, though it is a small garden.

I always start where the people are. I have a friend who had no idea that radishes grow underground. Therefore her young daughter did not harvest them and they started developing seedpots. She showed me a picture of what she thought was a bean plant. I tried not to laugh and explained about radishes growing underground. I told here about saving the seeds and try again next year. She could not believe it worked that way. She shared the seeds (from only one plant) with her family and friends. Even her father, who lives in an elderly home, started a few seeds in a pot. Next year, during a party at her house, a lot of people told me about the magic of growing a radish from seed. "...and they grow underground! ... and if you don't harvest the radish, it grows new seeds!" They have truely experienced a miracle that they think worth sharing, and continue to do so until this day.

I always think this is a shocking, but funny anekdote. I regularly share it with all kind of people. A lot of people are missing my point: they had no idea that radishes are growing underground... All those people are far away from being a permie, but some of them have visited my garden (where they looked at a tomato growing on a plant. "... it is green before it becomes red!? And it grows from a flower!?"). Some of them visited my garden more than once. Some started growing something themselves, some just feel happy there. Sometimes I think this is my most succesful gardening achievement: reaching such a large group of completely disconnected people and just reconnect them with nature.

I think permaculture is a great word and I use it often. I take Lawton's angle and describe it as an ecological design science. I think that covers it. Yes, it's an ethic,  yes, it's regenerative ag, yes,  it's a life and a lifestyle and a philosophy. But what really sets it apart? You can put any good thing in it,  because it designs the system. A design science.

I think we have to consider the Wheaton Eco Scale here.

If you don't know that a tomato grows on a plant, I will show you. Early in the season, I will give you a spare seedling, later in the season, I let you taste one. A cutting from a strawberry plant is quickly planted in a recycled pot for a child (or grown-up)  to take home. If it sparkes curiousity, we move to the next level.
- You have no tomatoes at all? Oh, you cut all the flowers off, because you preffered the plant growing tomatoes?....I know what to explain next.
- Your plant died, even though you watered twice a day? OK maybe we can talk about mulch to retain moisture....

When someone is affraid to taste a strawberry because it was on the plant just a second ago and I did not "do anything" to it before offering her, I am not going to tell her there is fungus and bacteria in the soil that it grew in.

I love talking permaculture, and it is a great word indeed! I love to be around people who know what it means, I love to learn from people who are higher on the scale than me and get I inspired by their work. However, being in a city, the majority is not ready to even apprehend what we are talking about here. Even for myself, a farmers grand daughter, who was always interested in growing plants, it took some time to embrace  permaculture and actually love having a messy garden full of weeds. Like me, other people need some time to arrive were I am. When I help them with baby steps, I will ultimately be surrounded by a lot of permies!

I don't use the word permaculture freely unless I'm with someone I think will know what it is. I try to match my language to my "audience" and will ask people if they know what X, Y technique is (hugelkultur, biochar, etc. and usually the answer is yes for the former, no for the latter!) If they don't know I will give a quick explanation of what the technique is and why it helps. (Despite, or perhaps because of my explanations, most people I explain it to still don't understand biochar!)

Nynke Muller wrote:

a lot of people told me about the magic of growing a radish from seed. "...and they grow underground! ... and if you don't harvest the radish, it grows new seeds!"

... and if you harvest those pods before the get woody, they're great to eat in stir-fries! There's a version of radish that is grown specifically for the pods.

I think I start with the "miracle that are plants, domesticated or otherwise" and only move on to "permaculture" if their eyes haven't glazed over. That said, in my area of my very large Island, most people have heard of the term and many know a surprising amount about the theory at least. In particular, I'm amazed how many young people know the concept. This gives me hope for the future.

For explaining permaculture to those that are curious ...

My thoughts are that it ts a system that mimics natural ecosystems to create s sustainable system.

Well, I’m new to permaculture. Basically a few weeks old. LOL. But, this is what attracted me to permaculture…. First, I learned the conventional way to garden. For years I’ve been following influencers telling me how to keep the rules of gardening. It wasn’t until recently that I learned something called permaculture and all of a sudden gardening the conventional way lost all its appeal. So much, I'm learning to unlearn everything I've learned. That “gardening/farming” is what most people know, but permaculture is gardening and farming on steroids. When you show people what it takes to put an egg on their table and the impact that that has on the environment, followed by a picture of someone picking their eggs out of their backyard, that’s impactful. It is powerful. We have a gift to humanity, they’re just not aware of it, yet. I was ignorant. It only took a person to show me there’s a better way.

I watched an interview with Bill Mollison where he was asked how he would explain permaculture to a child.  He said "Probably the simplest thing you could say is an attempt to build a good place to live."



Sometimes I call it advanced organic gardening.    If that sparks some interest, I keep going with skills of making my own stuff, observing nature and designing systems to make self sufficiency easy and delightful.


I love latin.  The word explains itself.   I don't usually say that permaculture is permanent culture though, until I have some level of buy-in from the person.   Saying permanent culture brings up the reality that our current culture may not be permanent.    


I really try to listen to what the person's interests are and define permaculture for them as it relates to something they care about.  

Samantha Lewis wrote:I watched an interview with Bill Mollison where he was asked how he would explain permaculture to a child.  

It does depend on the age. After what I've been working on today, I think I'd tell them its about giving your fruit trees friends to play with, because trees like friends just like children do.

(My purple plum tree needed some invasive grass gone, its Iris friends lifted to keep the rhizomes drier, and the Comfrey patch on its north side, mulched. The whole drip line got baby walking onions which may not survive in that spot, but I have so many, they might as well have a chance to grow. )

I like Geoff Lawton's approach and his shortest answer - it is ethical design science.

That focuses on the three most important qualities that put together distinguish permaculture from other realms.

After saying that you can expand on ethics and on design.

I believe that in order to understand what permaculture is in its classic meaning, it is good to memorize a few first pages of the Big Black Book. It clearly says:

Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems.

Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms.


So basically, it is all about ethics and design. It surely expands, on topics far from agriculture. It will expand even further in a future. But where it loses ethics or design, it is no longer permaculture, it is something else.

I'd go with this....


....still working on the lazy bit

Nancy, my friends would truly identify me with this statement and, I think, understand.

where i live 'permaculture' is used only by hippies, nudists and maybe people who eat macrobiotic. it's a term that sets a certain tone and often scares folks away.

anyone who asks what i'm doing is told i'm trying to use less, increase diversity, and leave things better than i found them for everyone around me.