Introduction

A few years ago, a friend mentioned that she used the twelve permaculture principles as a way to think about her life. That idea stuck with me. What would it mean to see my life as an ecosystem—to approach it with the same care, curiosity, and creativity that permaculture brings to gardening? I wrote a blog post about it and a few folks read it.

The ideas behind permaculture keep resurfacing for me, especially in these times of fear, challenge, and change. We’re facing a confluence of crises—climate change, political polarization, the lingering impacts of the pandemic, rising loneliness, mental health challenges, and fraying community connections. I find myself drawn to the wisdom of the natural world when looking at such challenges. What can it teach us about resilience, adaptability, and how to create systems that nurture and sustain us?

This site is my way of exploring those questions and inviting us to think differently about the choices we make. It’s an attempt to consider how we might live in greater alignment with the interconnected systems around us—how we can tend to the ecosystems of our lives: our relationships, work, dreams, and communities. How can we contend with and create systems that to meaningfully support ourselves, creating systems of balance and accountability while doing the hard work of responding to the deep challenges of our time?

🥕 Isn’t Permaculture About Gardening?

It was my mother who was the exceptional gardener in our family. She had an intuitive knack for plants, patiently figuring out what they needed—whether it was the right light, water, or nutrients. She didn’t hesitate to dig things up when they were in the wrong spot or plant things when the timing was right. Even indoor plants thrived under her care, often nursed back to health with quiet persistence when something went wrong.

I didn’t inherit her green thumb. I’m not a terrible gardener, but I lack the natural instinct she seemed to have. I consider myself more of a lazy gardener—experimenting when I have energy, rarely understanding why something works or doesn’t, but always delighted when it does.

Still, I love nature. Its metaphors are endlessly inspiring, offering insights that shape my thinking and work. Even if I can’t keep the bugs from eating holes in my kale, I’ve learned that nature offers wisdom beyond the garden. It teaches patience, adaptation, and resilience—qualities that feel increasingly vital in a world that often demands relentless productivity.

🌊 How to Be Right Now

Truthfully, modern productivity models have long felt at odds with my experience. I’ve struggled to fit myself into rigid structures of task lists, priorities, and goals. These days, I’m finding inspiration in voices like Oliver Burkeman and Jenny Odell, who advocate for alternatives to productivity culture. Their ideas resonate because they feel more aligned with how life unfolds for me—messy, interconnected, unpredictable and sometimes beautiful.

I’m inspired by work by adrienne maree brown and Norma Wong and others. These are folks who ask us to remember the natural world as we do our human work, who speak to us in times of challenge and who invite us to consider our humanity as a part of nature.

When I think of my life as an ecosystem—a garden or forest—it shifts my perspective. Viewing life in this way feels expansive and generative, offering more clarity and growth than simply focusing on tasks to check off. It’s a lens that invites abundance, creativity, and experimentation. I appreciate the way permaculture mirrors the systems of nature, teaching us how to live with attention to the systems we create.

🌐 Interconnected

These permaculture principles by definition deeply interconnected. As we talk about these things there will be a spiral conversation with overalapping sentiments, ideas and concepts. This is a feature of this kind of thinking, it enables us to reach into the ways that our own lives are also interconnected.

While I have tried to focus on each principle on it’s own in this resource, there is repetition and that’s the point. Natural systems are interconnected, we’re interconnected, and so we should think of our work and our lives as interconnected too.

📨 Invitation

This website offers reflections on each of the twelve permaculture principles, paired with examples from nature and questions to explore how they might apply to your life, your community, and beyond. It’s designed to be a living document—one that grows and evolves as we cultivate a more interconnected, interdependent, and abundant life together.

I encourage you to read, use, and share this resource. Let me know what resonates with you, what you’re learning, and what you find meaningful. This will grow as we grow together.

Written by Beth M. Duckles. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Contact me.