The story of permaculture and its founder, Bill Mollison, is profoundly human and profanely inspiring. After spending 28 years studying natural ecosystems in Australia and becoming full fledged in the institution of academia, Mollison had a revelation. What he was observing in nature and studying in books had little practical application in real, human life. In fact, the systemic interactions that he saw occurring in nature were being destroyed, defied, and ignored by human civilization. Massive amounts of energy were (and are) being used to grow and transport food, to transport humans, and to live in modern cities. At the same time global decision makers were proclaiming that the Green Revolution would feed the world, he saw that this industrial agriculture "solution" was actually destroying the soil and perpetuating hunger. From this perspective, Mollison modeled the practice of permaculture -permanent agriculture- an integral design theory for human activity and prolonged existence, that very simply puts nature to work by combining maximum productivity with minimum expenditures of energy and resources.

Based on the intricate relationships in forest eco-systems, Mollison began creating food forests, of nuts and fruits and other perennial plants. His vision was of food production and human settlements that do not expend energy each season, but rather produce surpluses of it. In a forest system, layer upon layer from the canopy to the understory, to shrubs, flowers, and roots are utilized to create a "guild" or symbiosis of plants, each connected to the other and comprising a complex whole. There is no rotating of crops, fallow land, nor plowing of fields. The relationships in a forest regulate and thrive off of each other. This is nature at work. By intensifying land use, rather than trying to conquer nature, permaculture attempts to understand and design natural relationships that maximize energy and resources in order to minimize work and waste. Permaculture design builds a permanent framework that reaps continued harvests.

With the publication of his first book, Permaculture One ( 1978, co-authored by his student David Holmgren), Mollison unleashed an idea, of logic in design and respect for nature, that has become an unstoppable worldwide movement. Permaculture has expanded from its agricultural roots to express "permanent culture", designing and building culture and community that feeds and fuels itself. In Mollison's words, "permaculture is urging complete cooperation between each other and every other thing, animate and inanimate." From agriculture, aquaculture, and horticulture; to water, energy, and waste; to building, transportation, and community, permaculture is a design philosophy that can be applied to each and every human activity, in any setting.

While it deals with complex systems of interaction, permaculture is governed by a set of simple ethics: Care for the Earth, Care for People, Distribute Surplus, and Reduce Consumption (or reinvestment in the first two ethics). In the words of Scott Horton, editor of Permaculture Activist magazine, "Care for the Earth and Care for People have an implicit balance between them". By reducing consumption and distributing surplus we are caring for ourselves and other people, all of us components of the earth system. This set of ethics is what makes permaculture universal to any human activity, land use, or place and why we see it being taught and perpetuated in parts of the world as diverse as remote villages in Africa and South America, where permanent settlements have replaced foraging and hunting cultures, and dense urban centers, that are typically enveloped in energy consumption and dominance of nature.

In addition to ethics, permaculture is guided by a dozen or so design principles that emphasize the importance of the relative location of each element, in a garden, home, or community, and that strive to maximize their functional connections. If every element in a design has multiple functions, and each is related to every other element, then efficiency and productivity are increased, and resource and energy consumption are decreased. Taking the time to think about each component of a design and its cycle of life, and then utilizing every possible connection in that life flow, is what permaculture is about. Claude Genet, of Green Mountain Permaculture, uses the example of a kitchen to describe the logic of permaculture design. In a kitchen your sink, stove, and refrigerator are all located relatively close together, along with countertops, knives, bowls and other tools for preparing food. It would be inefficient and illogical to have these items in different rooms, but in a garden this is often precisely the case.

To apply permaculture to a garden is to recognize the value of every element, whether plants, ponds, greenhouses, or compost piles, and then place them in relation to each other. A keyhole or spiral formation is often used in planting. These are intensive design patterns that both benefit the gardener's expenditure of energy and foster symbiotic relationships among the plants. For example, the Native American combination of corn, beans, and squash provide a natural synergy; the corn forming a pole for the beans to climb, the beans fixing nitrogen in the soil, and the squash forming a ground mulch layer. There are endless similar beneficial relationships between plants, that thousands of years of human survival have uncovered and science has explained. This is permaculture design: ethically applied science that benefits from the logic of nature. The same concept of recognizing the intrinsic value in every thing can be applied to community or city design. Where homes are oriented in relation to the energy of the sun; where people are located in relation to food, transportation, and work; and how water and waste are cycled, are all questions that can be addressed in urban permaculture. Intentional communities that apply this design logic are operating in the Bay Area and all over the world, in urban and rural settings, and in climates from the Arctic to the Sahara.

Our fair city of San Francisco is currently hosting its first ever permaculture design course at Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park. A guild of seasoned veterans from around the world is teaching the three month series of classes, sowing permaculture concepts and sprouting design ideas in fertile minds. Inevitably, those learning now will in turn propagate what they have learned and teach more teachers. Uncannily, people that learn permaculture are inspired to action and activism. It is in this infectious way the permaculture movement has spread and spanned the globe.

A final important thought on permaculture is that it is a revolution without a center, a paradigm shift from consumption and capitalism to an ethical philosophy void of politics, government, and hierarchy. It is not anarchy either, but rather complete and utter cooperation, between humans and the environment. As Bill Mollison says, "You can't cooperate by knocking something about or bossing it or forcing it to do things. You won't get cooperation out of a hierarchical system." Permaculture is building intentional communities, of plants and people, that sustain themselves over time. It is a dismissal of conventions and a reworking of values. As the idea of permaculture spreads among individuals, to their friends and their friend's friends, a collective conscious is being formed and a subtle revolution is underway, right before our eyes.