I put off watching this one, because I wasn’t sure I would get much out of an intro video. There was not much in the way of things that I hadn’t seen before, but it was also much more entertaining than I thought it would be. If you are brand new to permaculture, this will give you a fantastic overview, and will get you excited about permaculture.
Intro to Permaculture Design
Major Concepts Covered in “Intro to Permaculture Design”
Permaculture Ethics: Earth Care, People Care, Return of Surplus
Stacking Functions: All elements in your design should have multiple functions with positive interactions that enhance other elements in the design. This is the brilliance of permaculture design.
Polyculture: Multiple plants grown together in a planting guild, mimicking nature.
Zone Planning: Geoff has some great graphics to really explain this concept well. He talks a lot about the spatial relationship of your elements, and placing them strategically to eliminate trips.
Patterns: Again, mimicking the patterns on nature into our permaculture designs to take advantage of energy flows.
Edges: They do a nice job in this video demonstrating the “edge effect”.
Aquaculture: They show some nice scenes of aquaculture, but again not near enough detail. I did really enjoy the miniature mock-up of a swale and dam setup with a level spillway.
Trees: They are essential for soil building and condensation.
Soils: One thing Geoff said that really stuck with me was, “We can’t be sustainable unless we are creating soils.”