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,
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 It was published in five languages, but is now out of print and of mainly historical value, having been superseded and refined in later works.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 1993, 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 December 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 proponents.
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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.
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@permanentculture.com Biographical details adapted from Mulligan and Hill (2001)
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