[Scpg] David Holmgren
Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson
lakinroe at silcom.com
Mon May 12 11:45:55 PDT 2003
David Holmgren
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
David Holmgren (b. 1955)
Born in Western Australia, David Holmgren studied at
the College of Advanced
Education in Hobart, Tasmania, where in 1972 he met
Bill Mollison, then a lecturer at
the University of Tasmania. The two found they shared a
strong interest in the
relationship between human and natural systems. Their
wide ranging conversations and
gardening experiences encouraged Holmgren to write the
manuscript that was to be
published in 1978 as Permaculture One. 'I wrote the
manuscript, which was based
partly on our constant discussions and on our practical
working together in the garden
and on our visits to other sites in Tasmania... I used
this manuscript as my primary
reference for my thesis, which I submitted and was
passed in 1976.' (Mulligan and Hill,
2001:203)
The book was a mixture of insights relating to
agriculture, landscape architecture and
ecology. The relationships between these disciplines
were elaborated into a novel
design system termed 'permaculture'. Although the title
clearly owes something to
Russell Smith's Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture
(1977), Holmgren's chief
theoretical inspiration was the energy dynamics of
American ecologist Howard T.
Odum (Environment, Power and Society, 1971). According
to Holmgren, 'The word
permaculture was coined by Bill Mollison and myself in
the mid-1970's to describe an
"integrated, evolving system of perennial or
self-perpetuating plant and animal species
useful to man". A more current definition of
permaculture, which reflects the expansion
of focus implicit in Permaculture One, is "Consciously
designed landscapes which
mimic the paterns and relationships found in nature,
while yielding an abundance of
food, fibre and energy for provision of local needs".
People, their buildings and the
ways they organise themselves are central to
permaculture. Thus the permaculture
vision of permanent (sustainable) agriculture has
evolved into one of permanent
(sustainable) culture.' (Holmgren, 2002a: xix)
Permaculture One was far more successful than
anticipated, as it seemed to meet a
need of the emerging environmentalist counterculture
looking for something positive and
substantial to align with. It was published in five
languages, but is now out of print and
of mainly historical value, having been superceded and
refined in later works.
While Bill Mollison travelled the world teaching and
promoting permaculture, Holmgren
was more circumspect about the potential of
permaculture to live up to the promises
sometimes made about it. He concentrated his efforts on
testing and refining his
brainchild, first on his mother's property in southern
New South Wales (Permaculture
in the Bush, 1985; 1993), then at his own property in
central Victoria, which he
developed with his partner, Su Dennett (Melliodora,
Hepburn Permaculture
Gardens - Ten Years of Sustainable Living, 1996a;
Payne, 2003).
Starting in 1990, Holmgren has taught permaculture
design courses at his Hepburn
home, and has also acted through his company Holmgren
Design Services as consultant
for a large number of projects, examples of which can
be found in the report Trees on
Treeless Plains: Revegetation Manual for the Volcanic
Landscapes of Central
Victoria (1994).
A recent major project has been the Fryers Forest
eco-village, which aims to create a
model of sustainable housing and financially viable
sustainable forest management, on a
site near Castlemaine, Victoria (Holmgren, 1996b).
The publication in late 2002 of a new major work on
permaculture, saw a deeper and
more accessible systematization of the principles of
permaculture refined by Holmgren
over more than 25 years of practice. The book,
Permaculture: Principles and
Pathways beyond Sustainability (2002a), is dedicated to
Howard Odum, who died
two months before its publication, and it owes much to
Odum's vision of a world in
energy transition (Odum and Odum, 2001). It offers
twelve key permaculture design
principles, each explained in separate chapters. This
fills a conceptual gap that has been
evident from permaculture's inception. It is likely to
be seen as a major landmark in the
permaculture literature, especially as the seminal
work, Bill Mollison's Permaculture:
A Designer's Manual (1988) was published fifteen years
previously and has never
been revised.
Holmgren has had a long-standing interest in the use of
non-native 'invasive' plants, for
food and fibre, but more controversially for ecological
restoration and 'ecosynthesis'.
This interest in recombinant ecosystems or 'weedscapes'
is partly inspired by a 1979
visit to New Zealand and interactions with New Zealand
ecologist Haikai Tane (1995).
Holmgren's refusal to toe the majority line on
introduced and invasive species has led to
some ill-informed criticism of permaculture in a debate
which is very much alive in the
Australian environmental movement (Low, 1998; Grayson,
2003). His recent
comments on the value of willow (Salix albaXfragilis)
in a Victorian stream corridor for
beneficial sediment and phosphorous capture can be
construed as 'heretical' in relation
to official policy. Holmgren goes so far as to comment,
'The science of ecology
provided the overwhelming evidence that everything is
connected, so it is a great irony
that conservation biology is now dominated by an
orthodoxy that is blind to
ecosynthesis as nature's way of weaving a new tapestry
of life.' (2002a: 265) Holmgren
has been developing these and other ideas into a new
book, provisionally entitled
'Weeds or Wild Nature?'.
David Holmgren continues to be a controversial figure.
As permaculture spreads
around the globe, offering a multitude of practical
solutions to social and environmental
problems, he may yet prove to be one of Australia's
most significant environmental
spokespeople.
Bibliography
Holmgren, David (1985; 2nd edn 1993) Permaculture in
the Bush. Hepburn,
Victoria: Holmgren Design Services.
(1994) Trees on the Treeless Plains: Revegetation
Manual for Volcanic
Landscapes of Central Victoria. Hepburn, Victoria:
Holmgren Design Services.
(1995) 'The Permaculture Movement and Education' in
Goldfields Permaculture and
Landcarers, 3, 14-16.
(1996a) Melliodora (Hepburn Permaculture Gardens): Ten
Years of Sustainable
Living. Hepburn, Victoria: Holmgren Design Services.
(1996b) 'Fryers Forest Village'. In Green Connections,
2.2, 20-21.
(1997) 'Getting Started'. In Green Connections, 10, 28-31.
(2002a) Permaculture. Principles and Pathways beyond
Sustainability. Hepburn,
Victoria: Holmgren Design Services.
(2002b) David Holmgren: Collected Writings
1978-2000.[CD] Hepburn, Victoria:
Holmgren Design Services.
Mollison, Bill and David Holmgren (1978) Permaculture
One: A Perennial
Agriculture for Human Settlements. Melbourne: Transworld.
References
Grayson, Russ (2003) 'Permaculture an agent of
bio-invasion?'. The Planet. The
journal of Permaculture International Limited, 6
(Autumn), 10-11.
Low, Tim (1998) Feral Future. Melbourne: Viking Australia.
Mollison, Bill (1988) Permaculture: A Designer's
Manual. Tyalgum, NSW: Tagari
Publishing.
Mulligan, Martin and Stuart Hill (2001) Ecological
Pioneers. A Social History of
Australian Thought and Action. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 202-207.
Odum, H.T. (1971) Environment, Power and Society. New
York: John Wiley.
Odum, H.T. and E.C. Odum (2001) A Prosperous Way Down:
Principles and
Policies. New York: John Wiley.
Payne, Steve (2003) 'The Good House Effect'. The
Organic Gardener. Autumn.
Ultimo, NSW: ABC Enterprises, 30-34.
Smith, Russell (1977) Tree Crops: A Permanent
Agriculture. Old Greenwich, MA:
Devlin-Adair.
Tane, Hakai (1995)Ecography. Mapping and Modelling
Landscape Ecosystems.
Canberra: The Murray-Darling Basin Commission.
Further Resources
Holmgren Design Services 16 Fourteenth Street Hepburn,
Victoria 3461 Australia
http://www.holmgren.com.au
Author Details
This article was originated in May 2003 by Richard
Griffiths, Blue Mountains
Permaculture Network info at permanentculture.com
Biographical details adapted from
Mulligan and Hill (2001)
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