Permaculture is a diverse subject, and because of this, the word has been defined in many different ways, and remains today a word that does still not undeniably mean only one thing. If you do a quick search on the internet for permaculture definition, you will begin to see it is a difficult word to define, and that it means different things to different people.
The word, Permaculture, was coined by David Holmgrenm and Bill Mollison in the late 1970s, and originally was meant as a combination of two existing words: Permanent and Agriculture, but since its beginnings and expansions of application, Permaculture, can be more correctly cited now to exist as a combination of the words: Permanent and Culture.
Here are a few definitions:
The Permaculture Society defines permaculture as:
Bill Mollison, the principle founder of permaculture, defined it as:
What Does Permaculture Involve?
Some of the techniques, practices and methods of permaculture include: agroforestry, aquaculture, biochar, biofertilizers, bio-mimicry, bio-remediation, carbon farming, chicken tractors, cold composting, community gardening, companion planting, compost tea, desert greening, double-digging, ecoagriculture, fertilizer trees, foodscaping, edge creating, energy harvesting, forest gardening, garden sharing, green manure, greywater irrigation, ground cover cropping, herb spirals, holistic management, horticulture, hügelkultur, humanure, hydrozoning, intercropping, keyhole gardens, keyline design, landscape design, mariculture, mycoforestry, natural building, no-till farming, passive solar heating, plant guilding, polyculture, raised beds, rooftop gardens, rotational grazing, seed bombing, seed saving, sheet mulching, silviculture, square foot gardening, succession planting, swales, trap cropping, vertical farming, water harvesting, windbreaks, xeriscaping, zone designing, and zaï.
Some of the issues and ideas that that permaculture is concerned with are: community development, climate change, deforestation, desertification, food security, pollution, sustainability, wildlife conservation, and more.